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| Joined: | 04-07-2022 |
| Location: | Oregon USA |
| Posts: | 84 |
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Latest news on Rusty the car.
The engine has been fully torn down and sent off for machining. I will be installing 0.030" (0.75mm) over pistons that will give me a compression of 9.6:1 in addition to a few more cc's of displacement. I will also be adding a 270 degree cam on the exhaust, rebuilding the water pump, and polishing the crank with new bearings. I am hoping for 175 HP, but think more like 160 HP is a more realistic number. I have yet to tear down the head, but may be able to smooth the short side radius in the valve pocket to get a few more ponies and come closer to my goal. The overall shape of the ports is darn near perfect, so I can't do much there. My TR6 years ago had compromises in port shape, so I could really do some good, but Lotus was pretty careful about their ports and didn't leave much room for me to gain some ponies.
I have installed my instrument binnacle since the last update. The binnacle is secured using a threaded rod, among other things. The original (?) rod came with the car, but not the original nuts, and I discovered that the rod was neither imperial nor metric, so I guess it must be Whitworth. Good luck finding a suitable fastener at your local Ace hardware. So I tossed the original and replaced it with a length of 5/16" threaded rod and it all went into place.
I recovered my center console (complete with new gaiters) as the old gaiters were torn, and the original vinyl had several holes in it. I used new foam and vinyl from Amazon, and Loctite spray on adhesive, and the results are pretty satisfactory. The veneered center was broken, so that got replaced with wood grain vinyl shelf paper. The console had an 18 inch long fracture down its length, but some fiberglass made a very strong repair before recovering. Now that the interior is in, the center console seems a tad wide, so I may need to do some work with a heat gun to bend things around and get it to neatly perch on the transmission tunnel.
I have a spare block, bearing girdle, and complete head should anyone need them. I will be posting them on eBay if no one here needs them.
As far as the engine goes, I managed to break the water pump casting trying to free the impeller. Argh! Had to buy a pump core which like the original pump will need a rebuild before I trust it. The original air box has been cleaned and repainted, so it is ready to go back in. I have obtained a new coil, and rebuilt the distributor and am keeping the breaker points for now.
The carbs have been rebuilt, including the bypass valves which are not included in rebuild kits. I used a separate kit for those, and found the diaphragms in both were severely perforated rendering them inoperative. The carbs had been rebuilt before, but it would seem the bypass valves were not. The temperature compensators were seized, so I cleaned those and tossed in new o-rings. I had to replace the rear carb casting as a couple of screws had been previously broken off, and a rather clumsy attempt had been made to drill them out - so I tossed the casting and replaced it with a good used one. I also replaced the o-ring in the needle carriers, as the dash pot loses its oil past the tired o-rings and causes the car to run like crap. To summarize; if you have not already done so, rebuild your bypass valves, replace the needle carrier o-ring, and clean and adjust your temperature compensators if you want your car to run like it should.
That's it for now.
Vance
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Last edited on 03-07-2025 02:42 am by vnavaret