Some of you may know that I'm having a fair amount of development work done on my car (finally got around to doing stuff to the engine after dealing with weight, handling and the cage!).
Anyway just in case anyone is interested here's a quick update...
So just to recap we're doing the following things:
Fitting the Trophy inlet plenum (this uses 2 thottle bodies and is completely different in style to either the production MK1 or MK2 plenums).
Changing from FBW throttlebodies to cable (or hydraulic) operated
Swapping to KMS engine management
Fitting Trophy spec cams (more on this in a bit but thanks to Tim)
Bespoke exhaust manifolds, near as we can get to equal length headers
Lightened flywheel
The engine is due to go to dyno at the end of this month and then it'll be another week or so getting it back in the car and doing the wiring for the ETB dash.
Fitting the Trophy plenum has turned into a nightmare! - we thought at first it was a bolt on replacement but no way. We've ended up CNCing a custom mounting/spacer plate. Creating a new fuel rail using pico injectors (not enough room for the "normal" ones).
The plenum fouls the variable cam timing switches so they've come out (which in the end wasn't an issue because we're moving to the Trophy spec cams). The plenum also fouls the normal oil filling point (you'd have to take the plenum off to put oil in) so we've had to get a new set of rocker covers so that the oil fill point can be moved to the other side of the V.
New inlet cam pulleys were then a challenge because they're part of the variable timing which is no longer there but you need to be carefully with blanking the oil feeds off if you don't want to empty the oil straight out through the pulley end of the engine.
Trophy cams looked fine and a trip to Piper had them confirm that without doubt they would be fine for hydraulic lifters which turned out to be not quite right (read that as complete b*ll*cks) so off they went to Kent to be "adjusted".
Throttle bodies are still a work in progress but basically they present some "challenges" because the mounting points on the plenum mean that they are offset from one another which means that you can't simply use a straight linkage between them, this and the desire to not have issues with balancing them and seeing that work go out the window when the cables stretch means that we're looking at using hydraulics to actuate the bodies.
I sourced a Trophy airbox from Scott (many thanks once again) which has the combination of enormous volume and the right offset to deal with the offset mounting points for the throttle bodies.
Manifolds are coming along although final routing to try and achieve equal length (or as near as possible) for the headers means that we may have some interesting pipe work ultimately they'll mate up to my existing Quicksilver backbox.
We don't have any pre-concieved notions of how much power we expect to get from the engine but we will have accurate data off the dyno. In theory all the work we've done has addressed some of the fundamental problems with the MK1 (breathing, exhaust) so it should be interesting.
Off topic slightly but whilst I was down seeing the work being done I was treated to a demonstration of supercharged V8 mounted on a cradle which was then fired up complete with foot long flames from each exhaust pipe - engine was dynoed prior to the latest round of work and made "only" 600bhp and 600lbf/ft of torque - unfortunately it's definitely to large to fit in the back of the V
Anyway just in case anyone is interested here's a quick update...
So just to recap we're doing the following things:
Fitting the Trophy inlet plenum (this uses 2 thottle bodies and is completely different in style to either the production MK1 or MK2 plenums).
Changing from FBW throttlebodies to cable (or hydraulic) operated
Swapping to KMS engine management
Fitting Trophy spec cams (more on this in a bit but thanks to Tim)
Bespoke exhaust manifolds, near as we can get to equal length headers
Lightened flywheel
The engine is due to go to dyno at the end of this month and then it'll be another week or so getting it back in the car and doing the wiring for the ETB dash.
Fitting the Trophy plenum has turned into a nightmare! - we thought at first it was a bolt on replacement but no way. We've ended up CNCing a custom mounting/spacer plate. Creating a new fuel rail using pico injectors (not enough room for the "normal" ones).
The plenum fouls the variable cam timing switches so they've come out (which in the end wasn't an issue because we're moving to the Trophy spec cams). The plenum also fouls the normal oil filling point (you'd have to take the plenum off to put oil in) so we've had to get a new set of rocker covers so that the oil fill point can be moved to the other side of the V.
New inlet cam pulleys were then a challenge because they're part of the variable timing which is no longer there but you need to be carefully with blanking the oil feeds off if you don't want to empty the oil straight out through the pulley end of the engine.
Trophy cams looked fine and a trip to Piper had them confirm that without doubt they would be fine for hydraulic lifters which turned out to be not quite right (read that as complete b*ll*cks) so off they went to Kent to be "adjusted".
Throttle bodies are still a work in progress but basically they present some "challenges" because the mounting points on the plenum mean that they are offset from one another which means that you can't simply use a straight linkage between them, this and the desire to not have issues with balancing them and seeing that work go out the window when the cables stretch means that we're looking at using hydraulics to actuate the bodies.
I sourced a Trophy airbox from Scott (many thanks once again) which has the combination of enormous volume and the right offset to deal with the offset mounting points for the throttle bodies.
Manifolds are coming along although final routing to try and achieve equal length (or as near as possible) for the headers means that we may have some interesting pipe work ultimately they'll mate up to my existing Quicksilver backbox.
We don't have any pre-concieved notions of how much power we expect to get from the engine but we will have accurate data off the dyno. In theory all the work we've done has addressed some of the fundamental problems with the MK1 (breathing, exhaust) so it should be interesting.
Off topic slightly but whilst I was down seeing the work being done I was treated to a demonstration of supercharged V8 mounted on a cradle which was then fired up complete with foot long flames from each exhaust pipe - engine was dynoed prior to the latest round of work and made "only" 600bhp and 600lbf/ft of torque - unfortunately it's definitely to large to fit in the back of the V
