UK Outlaw

[Graham Kerr]

Hey Karl, yes I've seen these filters but I'm so restricted on height especially where the back two chokes sit and the engine lid comes down on them. I have a pal who runs the Jenvey injection set up, although it is on a 911, he has individual filters that just snap individually on the top of the ram pipes. I reckon the actual filtration isn't that good but it's got to be better than F all.

[Karl Hashmi]

Graham, if you don't find another solution you could speak to ITG, as I know they do custom fits also.
They may be able to provide exactly what you need?
Could be worth a chat with them.
Karl

[Graham Kerr]

So tomorrow I shall be driving down to Piddlehinton to pick up my engine case. Yes, a lovely name for a little village down in deepest Dorset. Here resides my machine man and the reason he has the case again is that when we installed the crank we felt the tiniest resistance which was barely 5 degrees out of 360 but this was not perfect so the motor had to be torn down for a couple of light passes with the line bore weapon. There was something else we found and this was the bottom skirt of the piston hitting the lower part of the engine case. This does sound diabolicaly serious but it was just a simple error between me and the machine man. Whilst I gave him the piston and barrel which was 92 mil for a 2.8 litre engine, he had set up the depth for the boring bar for the usual 90 mil 2.7 engines. But the 92 has just a tad more stroke so a few more thou clearance was required. When I was speaking with the Mahle rep in Germany he did mention that the 92 piston being a RS item was a lot different to the run of the mill 90 and I simply forgot to pass this info to Stuart the machinist. This is no problem apart from putting the engine build back a couple of weeks.
With some 356 downtime on my hands I thouight I should try something that had been in the back of my mind for sometime. It's just a handling problem I thought I may be able to resolve. When I'm giving the Wee Beastie some serious beans into a corner, that means I'm overdriving the car, the front of the car picks up almost as if it's starting to oversteer. Because the rear of the car is fairly stiff with Koni coil overs and no torsion bars, the front feels very loose. One day when I've got a bunch of spare cash and time I shall chop out all the stock front suspension and fit in either a 911 set up or a four bar arrangement both, joyfully with rack and pinion steering but for now I thought a first step could be to stiffen the anti roll bar, I think you call it a sway bar. The stock size is 15mil but you can buy a 16 and a 17.5 'sport'. Only problem, they are the best part of 500 pounds which seems, like a load of Porsche stuff, excessive. So I reckon I should knock a bar up myself and keep the costs down. What I did was something that I had quite a few years ago on my clubsport 1650 Lotus 105E Anglia and this was an additional bar hung off the existing one. As I said, deadly cheap and quite quick to make. I used a length of 10mil bar and block of alluminium. I chopped the alloy into four on my bandsaw then drilled the bars slightly undersize so they would clamp well. Then sliced the 4 alloy blocks, I had to hacksaw these as they were too small for the band saw, then drilled and tapped them 8mil, heated and bent the bar, bit of paint and job done.
Obviously, I can't tell you if this works or not, well not yet anyway, but I can easily go for a larger size bar if I feel I am going in the right direction to cure my handling woes.

[Graham Kerr]

Got the cases back and the guys did a perfect job with the additional machining requirements that were needed. The bottom end is all bolted up but now there is further problem with the estimated compression ratio. We can't move the barrels up by using a larger base gasket, not that we want to because the 92mil barrels are not O ringed, as this tightens up the cam chains and they are on max as it is. The heads are finished and cc'd to .01 of a cc so I really don't want to start mucking around with them. The final figure for them is 63.7cc but the pistons are designed for a head volume of 68cc. As it stands this gives a comp ratio of approx 11.3 to 1 so I don't think I shall be strapping the twin turbos on just yet. Jokes over, what we are doing now is fly cutting the valve reliefs on the pistons. We shall cc the tops after this has been completed, and the amount that will be shaved will be something of a guess-timation because you are not dealing with a full circle just a half round on the top of the piston. With the cc figure we shall calculate how much we can shave off the top of the piston to effectively give us a comp ratio of approx 101/2 to 1. When this lot has been done and when it goes on the dyno, I hope there will be no pre ignition. I have only got a stock T distributor but I might get a better curve with a S dibby, we shall see.
And O.M.G. there is only one month to go before Portugal. I'm trying not to panic, the rest of the car is sorted, I've even got hold of a suit carrier for my DJ. I did get one tip which I'm sure is very useful. Follolwing a full gearbox rebuild, which my 915 has been, in order to fully lubricate all nooks and crannies, bearings and gears and anything else lurking within the gearbox internals, you should upend the box, best do this with a hoist, turn it all sides, up down, left, right so on the first drive every part has a good layer of EP. Bit basic but sort of makes sense, eh.

[Graham Kerr]

Apologies for getting a bit technical but it's all I've got left now. Anyway the engine finally is complete, everything is bolted down and I'm ready to rock. Unfortunately there is a television film crew arriving at the dyno shop on Monday to ponse around and film 911 stuff for an upcoming production. I have knowledge of these TV associated people and they are all dicks, they f**k around and do nothing, waste time, nothing is ever right for them, too much shade, too much light plus they are generally just 'lovely' if you know what I mean. However, this bunch of fairies are effectively delaying me getting my engine on the dyno and getting it tuned and sorted. I shall be banging on the door Thursday morning that's the 25th April and cranking it up to 73 thou and hopefully seeing something North of 250 brake. Although the engine internals are good for 8K and maybe a bit more, I have only a standard distributor although it is built to S specs it's not the best piece of kit to have. One thing that is good is that we found that following bolting down the heads, cam carriers and cams with the timing chains, we found the cam chains even with running the big CC head gaskets for compression reduction all ran exactly to spec whereas we thought they would have insufficient play, so deep joy, we re-installed the hydraulic chain tensioners so at least I won't be grovelling around under the car with feeler gauges after each thousand miles. When the engine is on the dyno one question to be answered is will the 36mil chokes in the Webers be sufficient to gain decent power. If it flattens off around say 51/2 or 6k we'll bung in some 38mil chokes and hope that this move will allow power into the 7's. I mentioned before I really didn't want to go to big 46's because with my G40 cams I'm not going to have much bottom end and the thought is going over to Jenvey injection, but we shall see.
So provided I get my engine back on the Friday or Saturday this will leave me 7 days to re-install the engine and gearbox, do all the hook ups, test drive, check for leaks - there won't be any then jump on the ferry to Northern Spain and head down to Estoril in Portugal for the 356 International meeting. OMG I can see a few 24hr work days heading my way.

[Graham Kerr]

Sorry folks, in my attepts to delete the engine pic attachment on my last post, it looks like I have added about 4 more. Possibly the esteemed administrators can delete all but one. Thankyou.

[Graham Kerr]

My ferry to Spain date of 5th May gets closer and closer and I'm still going flat out to get my 'wee beastie' finished. I finally got the engine on the dyno Friday last week. With street mufflers and a conservative timing set it pulled out 245 brake and 224 torque so I'm fairly happy with those figures although we would estimate 260 with my 'S' distributor and supertraps for exhausts. I hauled the engine back over last weekend and got to work on it first thing Monday, that's this week. Fitting the gearbox onto the engine was a pain, it just did not want to slide on. I pulled the clutch and flywheel out and checked everything matched which it did and then pulled all four studs from the engine. Surprise, the gearbox slipped straight on. With this I realised what may be happening. When I was getting the engine cases prepped for the 2.8 barrels I asked the machinist to timesert all the threads over M6. The four engine to gearbox threads had been timeserted but although I didn't think they would have been set in at an angle, the timeserts always have a hard shoulder and nothing like the soft introduction you would find with virgin metal. So I eased a couple of studs and left the other two out and bingo I had the box snuggly up against the engine. Great fun but this mucking around cost me best part of a day. Tuesday, today was get the coupled engine and box back in the car. I used a crane to take the weight and a good size trolley jack to juggle it in position. Putting a 911 engine and big 5 speed 911 gearbox into a 356 leaves very little room as I'm sure you can imagine. You have to get absolutely everything right on the money and one of the most difficult aspects of the job is simply getting the angle of the whole unit correct. However, a few cups of coffee and plenty of expletives later, it's all home, tightened down and ready for a few final hook ups. I will have to fabricate a new clutch cable bracket but apart from that I'm hoping all I shall be doing on Wednesday is straightforward stuff.

[Graham Kerr]

Apologies for this gap in my tale of getting my wee beastie all re-engined and over to Portugal for the 49th 356 International meeting in Cascais nr Lisbon. To be brief, I got the engine and gearbox in the car by Saturday all hooked up, just about to take the car out for its first test drive when my dear wife announced a plumbing problem in her bathroom. Just what I really needed. No problem, keep calm sort and fix the problem. I'm no plumber but it was only a washer and thankfully I had spares. Panic over get out in the car, took it through the lanes then out onto the main road, whacked it up to 100mph then braked hard, a grand total of 12 miles, got it back home, checked nothing had fallen off, nothing was leaking, decided the wee beastie was good to go, tomorrow the ferry to Spain then onward to Portugal.
It was a two day crossing over the Bay of Biscay which can be pretty rough at times but was just gently rolling. Met some super people on the ferry, lovely, genuine 356 folks but we were all like kids on our first trip to Disneyland. I cannot go into detail about the event, it was just so good and there was so much happening. I shall endeavour to pick out a few high points but I notice there is a small feature in the most recent Reistry magazine that should give you some flavour of the fantastic place that is the Lisbon area of Portugal.
I drove there solo, my wife said "I'm not getting in that hot rod, you can go alone!" which was fair enough as I hit one twenty five on a few occasions, in fact I was getting there too quick, I had planned two night stops but I could have done it, all 700 miles in a day. I was using quite a lot of gas though, I filled the tank four times in one day. The drive was almost drama free, a couple of fuses blew - my fault, the gear shift wasn't great, again my error and my windscreen got smashed in Lisbon - sort of my fault, but it held intact until I got home.
More travellers tales to follow.

[Graham Kerr]

I've got to tell you this, about the 356 Portugal meeting. I'd smashed my windscreen when I hit a toll booth barrier which should have risen because I had a chip at the top of my windscreen which should open all barriers, except this one a few miles near to Lisbon. At the last second I saw it wasn't lifting, slammed on the brakes but still hit it at about 5 mph. It wasn't too badly smashed, fortunately more on the right and as my car is left hand drive I was able to still drive with good visibility. At the event there were some driving events plus a navigational rally on the second day which I decided not to participate in as I had been advised parts of the route were hilly, very twisty and cobbled. There was no chance of getting a replacement screen so I didn't want any further deterioration of the screen which had to keep intact for the journey home. One of the organisers seeing that I was not intending to get involved with these driving events paired me up with a charming guy by the name of Evandro who was a local Lisbon 356 club member. The rally was fairly serious, Evandro enquired if I had any previous experience of car rallies in general and navigation in particular, which I was happy to inform that I had being competition events secretary for a local car club back home and having competed in quite a few rallies. The format was fairly basic tulip sections but there was a timed section middway through. All competitors had been presented with GPS signal receivers which went on your windscreen. The task was to keep at exactly 36 kilometres per hour over six sectors and there would be GPS markers at the end /start of each section so this 36kph speed, and it was a very hilly, twisty route still under tulip navigation, had to be held all the time. We were given the distances between each sector so with this info I quickly worked out the time which should be taken to keep us honest for the whole route. At the start of each sector I dialled in the exact time to the end of the next sector on my mobile phone and as we approached the sector end I gave Evandro the 5-4-3-2-1 countdown so he could adjust the final speed as necessasary. This was tough and we both were sweating at the end of this rather nasty little timed section. At the finish I said to Evandro I think we must have done quite well there as we were right on the money at each checkpoint and my driver concurred. And to our great surprise we did do well, in fact we finished second to a full on rally 356 with all the in car timing gizmos and accessories. Of course this meant having to receive the award on stage at the gala dinner on the last evening. . . .The tale continues . . .
Sunday evening and I got myself all cleaned up and ready to go to the ball. An advise had been sent by the organisers that the final dinner would be a black tie event, dinner jackets and all that stuff. No problem apart from having to tote the kit in a suit carrier hooked over the roll cage in the 356 all the way from Blighty. I hadn't worn my dinner jacket for a few years and although I had put on a few pounds here and there I had no problems with it except my dress shirt which in years gone by had had an assortment of gastronomy and alchohol done its front, so I thought it best I purchase a new shirt. The old one had ruffles and stuff and quite honestly it looked a bit gay. So I bought a new shirt, folds in the front, black buttons, quite smart. The buttons were a bit of a sod to do up and the top button, just impossible. I struggled and struggled for 10 minutes trying to get this bloody top button done up. I just could not do it, so I went down to the reception, the Hotel we were in was a five star place, reception staff, concierge, doormen everywhere. I chose the most senior looking chap and said "I have a very, very, very strange request" how can I help you sir came the reply "Please can you fasten this very stiff top button for me" No problem Sir, chin up and we shall have you all fixed in a second. And he did it plus he fixed my bow tie as well. Perfect, Cinders you shall go to the ball! I was most grateful of course and in full dinner jacket and black tie regalia made my way to the Gala dinner where Evandro and yours truly picked up our 2nd place rally award.

[Marcus Carlton]

Good to see you in Estoril Graham
Keep posting the tales!