House's ITB XE build and re-build

[Benn]

Better than all the clag, cause Christ that is sh*t. Wrap looks better, just a shame about the creases on the corner.

[corsa1987]

it looks good i love the carbon texture

[House]

Better than all the clag, cause Christ that is sh*t. Wrap looks better, just a shame about the creases on the corner.

Fixed this morning mate, not perfect but better than last night!!

[Benn]

Bit better, ouch at the sunroof marks tho... See why you wanna reskin it.

[House]

Yeah to be honest mate it's the photo!! It doesn't look quite so sad in person!!

Still needs a re-skin, which I will get round to. Just fancied having a go at it really, I would have been better off with a 3mm ally plate instead of the 1.5 that I used but you live and learn!!

[Benn]

Yeah, photos show alot up. It's good enough, means you can use it ok..

[House]

Yeah, photos show alot up. It's good enough, means you can use it ok..

yeah it's not a show car at the end of the day, it's a tool, that's going to be used for driving mostly on trackdays where I don't doubt it will end up with a lot of gravel rash!!!

[House]

Decided to start work on my switch panel today, before everyone tells me how crap it looks it is mock up only, I've got some DPDT toggle switches for the windows, had to mount the original switches back in cos of RR tomorrow and needing the windows working.



Mounted a 4-way fuse box on the back side of the centre console to supply power for the cigarette lighter and interior light along with the windows once the proper switches arrive.



Mocked up in place, got the windows and the cigarette lighter working to charge the laptop on the way to the RR tomorrow.

Doesn't look too sad in place.



Wires under the steering wheel to be tidied when the whole lot is re-wired, I'm constantly adding to that wire run so there's no point wrapping it yet.

[House]

So, it's been a while.

Quite a bit has gone on, after fitting the Jenvey throttle bodies the original 20XE the car came to me with developed more leaks than a Norfolk leak farmer in high season. Both crank seals, sump, 5th bearing cap, it was a mess. I took the decision (as I was incredibly busy with work) to have an engine assembled for me by a well known someone else.

This engine was a standard engine with a bit of head work, nothing major. Got this engine built for a reasonable price, got it back to mine and in the car, running well, got it to the rolling road, start to map the fuel and ignition, as soon as we dial in the ignition we get some serious big end rattling. At this point I believed it to be an oil pump failure, so parked it in the garage and pretended the car didn't exist, after spending 3 months in the garage as I was rather brassed off having wasted £350 on a useless RR session, I finally decided to get the engine out the car and have a look at what was going on.



Standard shells clearly 000



Clearly an undersized big end. Big ends should be 48.970 - 48.988. quite clearly 0.22mm too small for standard shells. suspiciously close to a 0.25mm big end grind.

Anyway, after a bit of soul searching I quickly decided that you can't trust anyone, no matter how good they claim to be, the only way to do anything in life is to do it yourself.

So, got my original engine apart, cleaned, inspected, new shells, rings, gaskets, back together.
















So with this built, I slung it back in the car, got it running and up to Jim and Steve at Track and Road in Essex.





4 hours and 3 cups of cold tea later, this is where we ended up.





Dialling out a bit more ignition we got it up to 187.1 BHP and 149.5 Ft/lb of torque, I need to up the rev limit to 7400 rpm and we should see another few BHP as the power curve is still rising as the limiter comes in at 6800 rpm. I need to fit the ARP's I've got in the garage, I didn't fit these during the engine build as I wasn't sure on the chamfering, I now know what to do and will get onto it within the next week. Might see 193 BHP with a slightly higher limiter.



Just so no one points it out the green power figure on the screen is power at the wheels, with run down transmission losses calculated the RR said 187.1 BHP as shown on the graph, the pictures above and video were taken from an earlier run while we were still playing with the ignition advance a WOT.

So in summary, you want it done right, do it yourself, trust no one!!!!!

[Craigy]

how come you never went further with the engine that failed? surely its the guys fault who built it with wrong size bearings?! i'd be cheeses off if he didnt pay for it all!