MkII Cortina Perana V6 racer

[Waterhond]

Thanks for the effort KSF,

Starting to make sense to me...

Pieter.

[KSF]

It is still about brakes and in the next post I will finally get to the point of how and why!

To conclude this particular diversion: I got caught believing you MUST have huge brakes and in doing so effectively forced myself into big wheels too. It proved to have been a mistake that actually made the car slower. The mistake was to start with the brakes and I should probably rather have started with what the proper size of wheel would be for the car and then selected brakes to suit. This is what I eventually did and with good results.

After that race with the new personal best I gave back the borrowed semi's, sent the rims away for some work before they went onto the Capri and set about doing the smaller brakes properly. The matching calipers for those 285mm discs would have worked fine, except their piston diameter at 54mm was too small to work with my rear brakes. I did find though that their friction surface was the same width as the 330mm discs and that you could get the 330i's 57mm caliper to work on the smaller discs. It is a tight squeeze and I had to do a bit of polishing to get clearance to the new 15" rims I bought.

These are Popstar's from Autoquip. Does not look like much, but they were the only 7.5J with the right offset I could find. Plus they were lightweight.

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Here they had a new set of 205/50 Bridgestone RE11's on. They replaced the RE55S and early reports were they were close to a second quicker.

As racing cars go, it does not look all that low standing there, here below a pic I snapped at the time with clearances added. I sent it out to some other racers for opinions on the clearance.

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The replies, BTW, ranged from "That should be fine, just don't drop it anymore." to " What, are you building a 4x4??? Drop the thing down, man!"

I had also built a new engine for it.

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I never got to race the car like that, sold it a couple months later. Then bought it back and sold it again. The buyers did not want to pay the price I was asking, so to make the deal work, I sold it with a much milder, basically street car engine.

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This is one that I had actually built for the Hayden Dart I had at the time.

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It had probably about 30 to 35 kW less than my previous race engine, but still the brake and wheel changes worked out so well that the guys (3 different drivers) immediately matched my best times.

Just a final word on the big wheels: I think a racing car much lighter or more powerfull may well be able to properly use the bigger wheels and brakes. The Sapphire was no lightweight racer, me and car together on the scale was 1440kg's.

[KSF]

Just have to add something: Those bright yellow plug leads in the last pic above was off a Chevy 350. I still blame them for the oil leak the engine had......

[IndianaJones]

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Is the carburetor on the mild streetcar engine, turned 90degrees?

[KSF]

Good eyes. Yes it is. It is still the 38DGAS, but sits on a modified manifold. Instead of the usual 1 barrel feeding 3 cylinders with a divider down the middle, this one both barrels feed all 6 cylinders at once. Like a V8's single plane manifold.

[KSF]

So back with the Sierra, the brakes were on and bleeding done, Cortina's wheels on for the time being. It was now time for drivetrain to go in.

The gearbox was in place already, I had opened it to check condition and it was surprisingly good, obviously not the original anymore. All that gets done to them are new seals and a bigger breather with a long pipe added to get to the breather bottle in the enginebay area. I also usually modify the gearlever, chop them shorter and beef up that rubber joint thing, otherwise they feel too floppy.

So engine: My original plan was to build it a nice 'Fine Car' engine that could run on pump fuel happily. Then I changed my mind and decided it needs an engine good enough to go chase my ex-Sapphire that was still running and doing well. Then my mind changed again as all that would take too long and I want to get to the Cortina. So in the end I used the engine standing pretty much ready to use and put that in. For now....

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This engine has now earned the name "Old Faithfull" (JSCustoms had an even older "Old Faithfull", so I borrowed the name from him). This is the 4th car it runs in, 5 if you add that some bits of it ran in a drag car years ago too. Originally I was going to use it in the Cortina for its first runs and shakedowns. And I might still do that.

It can at a pinch run on pump fuel, but it is not quite happy there. Better with either a 50-50 mix of pump and avgas, or pump and toulene, or pump and a booster than actually works. I cannot tell you how much power it makes now, never been on a dyno. It runs at about 11.5:1 CR, flowed heads, bigger intakes, 300deg cam, roller rockers and the double 38's. STD crank, STD rods, STD oil pump, STD bolting. It does have an aluminium cam gear, that is a good idea on any v6 running more than about 280deg of cam and especially if you uprate valvesprings.

It uses a wet sump with simple baffles (not even sure you need those, a couple quick cars run happily without them) and there is an inline oil cooler (a must for a V6). No fancy oil either, in fact we found these older flat tappit engines are happiest on diesel oil. So Rotella, Rimula, Delo400. It gets changed every two meetings. And it works.

Since then (about a month ago) I have been slowly adding all the other bits and pieces, having to repair, replace etc along the way. Simple things (clutch and cable) can sometimes take the longest. Along the way the radiator went in. Normally probably the only true "5min job" on them, but I made a 3night event out of it. I had been bitten by dirty radiators before, once with the Sapphire after it had been 'cleaned'. So since these ones are easy to open and close, I decided to ignore the fresh looking sticker on it from a radiator shop, and opened it. Just as well I did:

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Then, being the sucker for punishment that I am, I decided that since it is here and open, I'll just clean it myself, then I know....

With the radiators (water and oil) in, piped up, filled etc, it got close to where I could crank to see oil pressure and check leaks. Just the ignition and some wiring to sort out, clean up to do next.

[KSF]

Wiring is wiring, cars that has been around for a while seems to always gather more wires as they go. This one was not too bad, the harnass needed rewrapping here and there and I had to run the extra wires for oil temp and pressure senders. I prefer to use insulation tape, hate those crinkly plastic tube things that are so popular now.

Then the ignition system came up. Usually we use the Bosch electronic off the later Sapphires, it is quite a good system and used with its own Lucas coil and Bougicord leads. On hotter engines there is some benefit to adding an MSD Streetfire system, they also give you the benefit of an adjustable rev limiter. This car was originally equipped with the Bosch points distributor, but when I got it, it had a Fomoco converted to electronic. I posted it here at the time and with the help of a couple guys it was identified as the Uno Fire's pickup and amplifier. Still don't know where they got the 6-point chopper, but that should never fail.

It looked pretty awefull, extremely dirty, the rotor electrode bent, cap had been on skew at some time.

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And the coil was spraypainted, did not expect much good news there either.

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I took it all out for closer inspection and saw that under all the dirt, it was actually a very neat and well executed conversion. The bottom bush was quite worn out, but aside from that and needing a new rotor, it all looked good.

So I stripped it and found another Fomoco on the shelf with almost new bushes top and bottom.

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While it was all taken apart, I did the usual mod of reducing the mechanical advance. This is a poor photo, but you can just about see the slots on either side that limits the travel.

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Those nylon "bushes" that sits on the pins are quite important. Without them the advance increases by between 5 and 6 degrees. If you then set your timing at idle, the total once you are at speed is a lot more and can be too much, causing detonation, gasket failures, piston failures.

Normally and in good condition, their mech advance is 22 deg. It gets reduced to about 17-18 deg for high CR engines (11 or more).

After all that it cleaned up pretty well.

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The painted coil I started wiping with a thinners cloth and found a very decent Bosch electronic coil under it. So after a further cleanup I decided to re-use it.


That pic was late last week, so almost caught up to present.

[Waterhond]

KSF,

Thanks again for the formula you stated in judging what vehicle's brakes would work on my project.

I found that the v6 Hilux DC would provide more than enough to keep my truck safe at 235 kmh !

THIS is a proper thread !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pieter

[KSF]

Great, glad you found something. Are their brakes any different from the TDi's?

If your project bakkie is not also a double cab, it might have less weight on the rear axle. That may affect the required biase setting for the rear brakes. Can always be corrected, but is worth keeping in mind.

[KSF]

Some more pics to look at. Here below the distributor is installed, wiring tidied up.

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Excuse the dirty engine, it is still as it stood on the floor for a couple years. The vacuum advance is completely removed here and the slot covered with a bit of aluminium plate. Once I have had a timing light on it, I will mark the plate with the actual advance it now has for future reference. There is no performance advantage with removing the vacuum advance, it is just not required for racing and the sliding plate is just another potential source of timing variations and scatter. On road cars I like leaving them in and functioning, they do serve a good purpose there.

The coil cleaned up well and after a general clean-up of the wiring and connections, it went back in with the amplifier, both relocated further away from the manifolds.

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About then I realised that everything required to crank the engine is done and in. So I did that, the starter spun it fast enough with the plugs still in to get oil to pump through the cooler piping and get pressure going. I checked the piping for leaks (there were none) and after running the fuel pump for a bit and checking for leaks, I thought I might as well give it a quick start to make sure everything works.

It only took a couple pumps of the throttle and half a turn to fire up. I makes a huge racket of course, it only had the headers on and is in a confined space too. It set off car alarms in the main garage and probably finally woke up the few late sleepers in the neighbourhood (this was late Saturday morning), so I did not let it run very long.

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The sound always reminds me of drag racing or old Cape Hell Drivers when it was still at the Showgrounds and no-one bothered with noise regulations and silencers and decibel meters like they do now.

There is still a fair bit of work to do sorting out the breather pipes and airfilter etc, but it is all left like that for now while I finish up under the car with the rest of the exhaust system.

Sharp eyes will see the mechanical fuel pump on the engine. It is part of an experiment on this car. Generally speaking I have used the Holley pumps (red usually) with a regulator and gauge set-up. It works very well and very reliable too. But in the interest of the KISS principal I wanted to try a simpler and cheaper option here. We now have a shortage of decent fuel pumps for carb engines (there are loads for EFI available) and in many places all you find are the little Facet pumps. They do have a bigger one, but that costs almost as much as the even better Holley pump and is also not freely available everywhere. Anyway, the usual Facet's work OK, but struggle to keep up with fuel demand. Worst seems to be the days the southeaster blows hard, then you are on full power from early in T4 and then all the way up the back straight. Then it starts to run out of fuel after halfway. The OEM mechanical pumps are actually quite strong in terms of pressure (about 0.6b) and flow, but can struggle at sustained demand with the suction all the way back from the tank. So, here I am using the OEM mech pump and have placed a Facet at the tank as a booster. It should boost it enough. While it is still pumping anyway. If this does not work out, then red Holley and regulator it will be.

BTW, those Facets (and the old Huco's) used to fail on the electrical side mostly. They just stop in "midstride", so to speak. They use a points and solenoid system and it seems the points get stuck in the closed position. Sometimes a smart tap will loosen it, sometimes not. If it stops and leaves you stranded, you can make it pump by switching its power supply on and off rapidly. It will pump enough to get you going and get you home. Or to help.