[project] Nothing To Do With 205's, But Behold!

[Galifrey 1]

no, new from pace

[base-1 17]

For what engine? I'm guessing you didn't get a complete kit, you still had to sort hoses etc on your own?

[M3Evo 0]

Crikey o'reilly, a tank costs about £200!

 

And the pump came direct from Pace too!

 

Tell a lie, the pump cost £512.74

[Galifrey 1]

For what engine? I'm guessing you didn't get a complete kit, you still had to sort hoses etc on your own?

 

3 Stage pump, Sump for zx12r and tank, hoses with all the nice blue fittings came to quite a lot, they are criminal price!

 

 

Tank was extra, £125 as well

 

 

I am guessing it was because I got trade price? Same pump as yours tho I believe, just with a fitting to drive off the old zx water pump drive.

[hman205 1]

any updates to this?

[M3Evo 0]

Only that I've been working my norks off for other peoples projects.

 

Finished one off last weekend and will hopefully get the last one done towards the end of November.

 

After that, I'll be back on my project though, and never taking on anything for anyone else ever again!

[M3Evo 0]

Bye all, off to Vietnam for a week!

[Dom9 2]

The less you do on this project, the more I have to work during daylight hours...

 

I am not impressed!

 

Get a move on man, so I can amuse myself during the short winter days!

 

 

Enjoy Vietnam, it is meant to be beautiful!

[M3Evo 0]

Woo hoo!

 

If anybody's ever thought about motorbiking around Vietnam, than absolutely, definitely and positively do it!

 

The people are all very friendly and life just seems to plod along at a fairly gentle pace.

 

We got talking to some guys on our first night in Hoi An who'd biked up from HCMC. They were full of tales of massive thundering trucks which force you off the highway and being swamped by wave after wave of local bikes.

 

Our experience was that if you treated it like a computer game, weave in and out of traffic, overtake trucks and generally make sure you're always going faster than the locals, nobody gets in your way.

 

That said, the bikes we got had one or two problems. About two minutes after getting them, one of my mates fell off and, not that we noticed at the time, bent the gear selector so the bike was stuck in either top gear or neutral. One of the other guys had never ridden before and though it was normal/a result of him being hung over for the steering to have a massive amount of play in it, and my bike had a completely bald and canvassy front tyre....something I didn't notice until we were about 60km from our hotel and it was hammering it down with rain. Luckily, a trip to one of the millions of little garages out there had all these things sorted out for about £6....and much laughter and shocked expressions from the lads in the garage.

 

Anyway, moral of the story is, if you're like me and drive to pretty much the letter of the law in the UK (believe it or not) it's incredibly refreshing to be able to cut in and out of traffic, drive down the wrong side of the road because it's more convenient than going the long way round and generally keep beeping at people so they get out of your way, then Vietnam is the place for you! That probably sounds wreckless, but it's just how people get about there, and nobody seems to care at all!

[M3Evo 0]

We're off again! After months of doing other bits and bobs, actually got something done for my car today, feels great!

 

This is take 3 on the charge cooler!

 

The first was all aluminium with a welded in core, but I had my doubts about the water tightness of the core after it'd been made so hot (it did weep just a tiny bit!) plus it could only flow water one way too which wasn't ideal, so that one was scrapped.

 

MkII was made using two oil cooler cores. I'd made these a bracket arrangement and was going to bond carbon fibre air tanks either side. I made the tanks but when I offered them up, it became apparent that sealing them reliably to the cores was gonna be troublesome soooooo:

 

MkIII charge cooler will be one continuous molding (acutally two bonded together with a removable panel underneath, but much easier to seal!

 

Also, I've had enough of flow coating CF as it just increases the weight of components unnecessarily so I'm making a proper pattern this time:

 

Here's the bones of it:

 

 

 

Next thing it needs is some nice swoopy sides and a little bit of a release angle so that moldings will come out easily. From what I can gather, this is how people make speaker enclosures. Just drape some glass cloth over the skeleton:

 

 

And wet out with resin:

 

 

Once that's set, another layer can go on to make it more rigid. Then the process is repeated on the other side.

 

Having made the pattern, I'll be flow coated and polished. Molds can then be taken from the pattern, and finally some proper pre-preg carbon will be laid up into the molds to hopefully make a strong and light charge cooler.

 

The cores will drop in via a door in the bottom of the assembly.

 

The large sheet of MDF in the middle of the skeleton is to act as a parting line. When the final moldings are done, they'll be bonded together along this line.

[hman205 1]

Nice to see you back on this was starting to think you had lost interest in it.

[shalmaneser 26]

yey! it's started again! nice to see some more updates on this. The charge cooler seems a right pain in the arse, aren't you temped just to wack on a normal, easy intercooler?

[M3Evo 0]

Tempted yes, but in my quest to minimise lag I really wanna keep the volume between the turbos and throttles as small as possible.

 

I'm reasonably confident that this way will work well (and look good!)

 

It's one of those "why didn't I just do it this way in the first place" things....although I had no idea you could DIY carbon fibre at the time

[shalmaneser 26]

Tempted yes, but in my quest to minimise lag I really wanna keep the volume between the turbos and throttles as small as possible.

 

I'm reasonably confident that this way will work well (and look good!)

 

It's one of those "why didn't I just do it this way in the first place" things....although I had no idea you could DIY carbon fibre at the time

 

I'll be interested to see how it turns out! These things are always a compromise, the tubing for an intercooler would be a pain in the arse, and the higher volume of in intercooler vs. the complexity and added weight of a charge cooler...still, good to see things are moving ahead anyway!

 

Best of luck!

[hman205 1]

could you not just adapt a charge cooler from a lotus carlton ?

[M3Evo 0]

The lotus charge cooler has two inlets and twin outlets to it's twin throttles. I could weld something up to it so it'd work for my ITBs, but then I'd be back to square one wondering if the core's gonna leak.

 

Who knows though, there could be a revision 4!

 

 

Made a start on the other side of the assembly this weekend, still finishing off bits and bobs for other people hence the slow progress though.

 

Made a very accurate marking out tool so I could get both sides of the mold to meet in roughly the same place:

 

 

 

Plopped another couple of layers of glass on the other side. It's quite nice the way woven glass will take on a fairly organic curvy shape without too much prompting:

 

 

 

 

And finally made a start on the new plenum side of the cooler.

 

 

Next up will be to get the throttles, make up some formers for the outlets and tie the tank to the rest of it rigidly and with a parting line.

 

Just have to be absolutely sure it'll fit under a standard bonnet though!

[M3Evo 0]

Bit more progress today with the charge cooler

 

First step was to make a board for the mold which is accurately located on the throttles:

 

 

 

 

One of the problems I've been having with the first and second versions was locating things accurately as the shape is fairly complex. Being able to build this version in situ is making thing much easier!

 

Next up was to locate the inlet and core side of the cooler. Did this by drilling a couple of holes in it and bolting it to the old inlet manifold supports on the cam cover. I've spaced it up by 1/4" to give things room to move a bit. This one will be supported solely by the rubber couplers going to and from it.

 

 

It's amazing how much room there is under the bonnet!

 

 

 

Needed a little modification to the outlet side to get clearance to the bonnet:

 

 

 

 

 

Next up is defining the profile the tank around the trumpets can take so that it clears the bonnet and also the servo:

 

 

 

 

And once that's all done and marked out, taking the whole lot apart and mounting it on a spare 'head so that the pattern can be finished off. The great big sheets of MDF are margins for the split lines again:

 

[oz. 2]

You appear to have a garden growing by your wipers

[M3Evo 0]

The aim is to make the car as eco friendly as possible, and turning it over to farmland whilst it's being built is a great way of achieving that

 

Had to do some christmas shopping today which has stunted progress....would've been finished by Christmas otherwise though

 

 

 

 

Just gotta do another one or two layers of glass on that side and make a former for the tank.

 

Thinking more layers of glass on this side would be a good idea to keep it rigid when it's unbolted from the 'head. Once it's removed from the 'head, it can be turned over and the pattern completed with glass infils on the underside.

 

Then starts the process of flowcoating, flatting back and finially polishing.

 

Will probably make a cheap glass fibre sample just to check everything for fit before making the final product from prepreg carbon.

 

Once the cooler casing pattern is done, it'll be time to make a filter enclosure pattern and molds. With any luck, the filter enclosure will be a bit more universal than the charge cooler!

[M3Evo 0]

Bit of a nerdy early Christmas pressie from Santaaaaaa arrived today:

 

 

It's a PC based oscilloscope.

 

The main idea idea behind getting it is to let me determine exactly how much fuel the OE injection system puts into the engine on start up.

 

Brown and my mate's 205 Mi16 both start first time, but only after a little bit of cranking whereas OE systems literally start on the first revolution of the engine.

 

Also be useful for having a look at the kind of signals things like IACVs get and what the Emerald outputs. Being PC based means it should be able to record signals too so they can be reviewed and compared at a later date.

 

All good geeky fun!

[M3Evo 0]

More Christmas shopping on Saturday and the extreme cold(!) have slowed progress a bit this weekend....being hungover didn't help either!

 

Started today's little bit of work off by finishing off the parting line where the chamber passes the throttles:

 

 

 

Then made up a simple card board former to stop the glass from just hanging from the MDF board at the top:

 

 

 

And after that, it's just a simple case of laying up a couple of plies of woven glassy goodness, letting the drape of the cloth make up the shape of any bits I'd not produced formers for:

 

 

 

[M3Evo 0]

How's about this for an idea:

 

The dump valve I made was very pretty, and very unreliable! It works at room temperature, seizes up when it's cold and leaks when it's hot!

 

So, while rummaging in the garage last night, I spotted a 320i throttle body.

 

I'm wondering if it'd be possible to close it right down so that it's near as dammit sealed and then attach a nice and reliable vacuum actuator to it (I can make them reliably! )

 

I'm also toying with the idea of making a butterfly style wastegate for reasons of packaging and sparkplug access.

 

What do people reckon to the dumpvalve idea though, runner or non-starter?

[M3Evo 0]

Little bit more progress with the cooler pattern over the last couple of days. Obviously there's lots of festive drinking to be done (we're having a competition at work to see who can gain the most christmas fat!) which has slowed things up a bit, and the chilly temperatures in the garage mean the resin takes about 24 hours to cure instead of just a couple.

 

Had a good ol' think about how to seal the cooler to the throttle bodies in a way that'll be easy to remove for maintenance and also which uses off the shelf hose couplers. Here's what I've come up with, essentially there will be a 3" diameter spigot molded onto the each outlet of the cooler and a 3" dia skirt bonded onto each trumpet (the U shaped grey bit in the pic). The trumpets will be bolted to the throttles through the U shaped skirt too:

 

 

 

So next job was to find some 3" diameter stuff to make formers with. One of those giant workshop rolls of paper towels had just the job but this showed up a bit of a problem with the design: With the 3" spigots in place, there's not enough room to get a hose joiner in!

 

Luckily, a bit of modification to the pattern has solved this. First up was to make a little hand held router to cut away the pattern:

 

Yep, it's a snapped off drill bit

 

 

Then the underside needed to be scalloped to clear the spigots. Chose to scallop it rather than just chop it off straight as the corrugations should serve to stiffen the casing a bit:

 

 

 

 

And last up is to lay up a couple of plies of glass:

 

 

 

Hangover allowing, should be able to get the spigot formers in place and finish off the tank tomorrow. And if I'm feeling really adventurous, the filling of any bits I'm not happy with can start. Once that's all done, it's polishing time!

[M3Evo 0]

Up at the crack of 10 today to glue the spigots in place

 

It's another chilly one so they won't be cured for hours and hours I wouldn't have thought.

 

 

 

Had a sudden nasty thought that there wouldn't be any draft (release angle) between the spigots and the scalloped bits I made yesterday. Looks like it should be ok, just need to fill in a couple of dips here and there. Phew!

 

[M3Evo 0]

Last little bit of filling in just completed:

 

 

Tomorrow starts the task of filling and finishing