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

[M3Evo 0]

Interesting, someone was selling steel rockers a while back on the E30zone site. At £148 for 12, that's a really good price though!

[taylorspug 7]

Im certainly interested in hearing a price and a bit more info once you've spoken to your man about getting tthem made, PM me with a few details.

[Sandy 191]

It might be worth ringing Newmans to check, I've had the occasional glitch with info from their website.

[Dom9 2]

See, i knew you were secretly making progress!

 

You will be forging your own crank soon, or at least machining one from billet!

 

Danny boy, are you on the BMW's these days?

 

My car is off to Autofarm this week (google them ) for some fettling... Can't wait! All this snow has had me in Lous Alfa 147, which, although nice and new, is a bit dull!

[M3Evo 0]

have tried that before (although only a tiny little crank it was)

 

Oooh, more power fettling?

[M3Evo 0]

Well, had a meeting yesterday about the rockers.

 

The shape's set to change quite a lot in order to make them much much MUCH cheaper and easier to machine!

 

Just need the results of the hardness test so that the material for the follower pad can be chosen. The hope is that the pads can go through the hardening process with something else which the company does so that I don't have to pay for the furnace to be turned on!

 

Still, made good progress with the design, will post more piccies of the revised design later on

[M3Evo 0]

I've been a busy bee today! Got woken up good an early by the smoke alarm, cycled my fat and hugely unfit arse over to my folks' gaff, and finally started doing some work

 

Started off by bracing up the machining jig for the manifold:

 

 

 

 

Welded the manifold on:

 

 

 

And then started to machine it. Decided it might be nice to cycle home in the daylight so this is as far as I got:

 

 

 

The process seems to involve doing a pass over the surface of about 0.1mm each time as of course the jig's not all that rigid, and then sharpening the tool again before doing another pass. I figure it's better to take my time and actually get the job done than to have the cutter go blunt and the whole thing to work harden.

 

Finally, here's the redesign of the rocker arms. Not as pretty, but much cheaper to make!

 

[aCe 0]

Wow, that looks awesome.

 

Alot of work- i take it your an engineer?

[base-1 17]

Still love following this Those rockers aren't as nice as the first design though Could they at least put some radius' on them?

[M3Evo 0]

Cheers aCe, much appreciated I'm an amateur engineer at best, isn't something I do for a living anyway

 

Could put more radii on the rockers, but it makes almost no difference to the weight, just adds cost. They did look nice before, but there was no easy of holding them, so there'd need to be a jig made (even did a drawing for the jig!) but this way, there are a pair of flats to hold in a vice, and another flat to reference against, which means no special fixtures are needed.

 

The things get tucked away under a rocker cover anyway so it's not like they get to look nice in every day use

[Rippthrough 98]

The things get tucked away under a rocker cover anyway so it's not like they get to look nice in every day use

 

I've got shiny, rounded polished rocker arms, OK I can't see 'em, but I know they're there, all shiny

[taylorspug 7]

Cheers aCe, much appreciated I'm an amateur engineer at best, isn't something I do for a living anyway

 

Could put more radii on the rockers, but it makes almost no difference to the weight, just adds cost. They did look nice before, but there was no easy of holding them, so there'd need to be a jig made (even did a drawing for the jig!) but this way, there are a pair of flats to hold in a vice, and another flat to reference against, which means no special fixtures are needed.

 

The things get tucked away under a rocker cover anyway so it's not like they get to look nice in every day use

 

 

From the looks of Newmans catalogue they are still doing steel rockers with carbide insert pads for £148 a set, what sort of price are yours going to cost all in, or is the price still being calculated?

Edited February 15, 2009 by taylorspug

[M3Evo 0]

I did have a quick search for the Newmans ones. God knows how they make 'em so cheap!

 

Should get a price next week with any luck. The biggest factor is how hard the pads have to be. If they can be run through the hardening process on the back of somebody else's project then it'll be relatively cheap (although still not £148 cheap!) On the other hand, if they need doing on their own, it'll be mega bucks! Be interesting to see though.

 

Got the remainder of the manifold surfaced today.

 

Encountered a slight support problem at the other end as I'd only used three supports. The unsupported end was waggling about a little and giving a really crappy cut so.....

 

 

Knocked up a quick in-situ support. This has almost certainly lifted or dropped that end of the manifold, but it'll be nothing compared to the 2mm bow that it did have, and the gaskets and clamping force of the studs should take it out altogether.

 

So here it is in all it's freshly flattened glory

 

[Dom9 2]

Nice!

 

I would just buy the rockers and concentrate on something else, I can't really see you bettering the shelf price, or do yours 'need' to be different? (he says, without going backa nd reading the last few posts)

 

Just get this thing bloody running will you!

 

My car may get a little more power... But most of the work will be with the suspension and seats etc etc...

 

Will post some pics up when it is done!

[base-1 17]

Could put more radii on the rockers, but it makes almost no difference to the weight, just adds cost. They did look nice before, but there was no easy of holding them, so there'd need to be a jig made (even did a drawing for the jig!) but this way, there are a pair of flats to hold in a vice, and another flat to reference against, which means no special fixtures are needed.

 

The things get tucked away under a rocker cover anyway so it's not like they get to look nice in every day use

 

I meant more so you didn't have all the internal stress concentrated at the sharp edges when the rockers are under load. The looking nice bit is just a bonus

[M3Evo 0]

Really it's only internal corners which might cause problems, and even then, the design is such that cyclical loadings are largely eliminated from the sharp corners.

 

Oh, I have lots of free time all of a sudden Welcome to dumpsville, population...me!

 

Checked flatness of the manifold face today, it looks like it's not sitting flat, but that's just where I filed a chamfer on the edge. It's not perfect, but it's now flat enough that pressing hard with one finger brings it all into contact with the mill bed

 

 

 

So having done that, I started a dummy build of the engine. There's no timing belt yet so I thought it best to take the cam out of the head. It needs to come out so the new "turbo" cam can go in, although I've yet to measure the new cam, and if the lift is less than the original I might not bother with it! We'll see. Also, a new set of rockers will need to go in either way, and it makes sense to replace the rocker shafts.

 

I consulted the Haynes manual for how to remove the cam. It says "special tools" or "use four assistants to wedge the rockers down". I figured out how to do it when I rebuilt the head a few years back so I figured I could again......and here's how:

 

You take all the eccentrics out (might not actually need to do that even, just slacken them all off. Then, you push a couple of loose rockers over towards the other rocker for the same cylinder:

 

 

 

Then, you rotate the cam a little bit until the remainder of the rockers on that shaft are loose, and then just slide the rocker shaft out, removing rockers as you go. Easy peasy. The other one is the same process, just shift rockers about so that no valves are being held open.

 

 

Finally, just take the cam out

 

So anyway, here's the manifold in place. No gaskets, but a couple of washers behind it to space it from the 'head:

 

 

 

Turbos in place:

 

 

 

And the ITBs too

 

 

 

Finally, (to kill some more time so that I didn't have to go home and think miserable thoughts) I machined the oil spacer:

 

 

Next big thing to do is to get the inlet plumbing and chargecooler made so that I can set the route of the oil feeds etc. Might see if I can't do that this weekend.

[base-1 17]

Really it's only internal corners which might cause problems, and even then, the design is such that cyclical loadings are largely eliminated from the sharp corners.

 

Oh, I have lots of free time all of a sudden Welcome to dumpsville, population...me!

 

True, I saw the nice cutouts where the top corners of the pad fit into the rocker 'housing'. And unlucky, hope it wasn't anything to do with spending so much time working on this

[M3Evo 0]

And unlucky, hope it wasn't anything to do with spending so much time working on this

 

I almost wish it was, at least I could do something about it then.

 

Apparently the reason she broke it off was that being in a long distance relationship was making her unhappy, but I simply can't afford to move up to where she lives and she can't afford to live near me, so if we even tried the money issue would almost certainly cause arguements. Of course, being a bloke, I was quite happy with the arrangement as getting to see her made all the missing her inbetween bearable....but guess she doesn't see it that way

[Dom9 2]

Where did she live? It's grim up north, you know?!

 

Sorry to hear that mate, throw yourself into this and hopefully you will get over her soon enough...

 

If you can't, maybe you will have to move!?

 

Either way, get this finished to keep the rest of us amused, will you?!

 

Chin up mate!

 

Dom

[DrSarty 90 1 Cars]

I'm sorry to hear about the break up.

 

Still: twin turbos has been known to be a decent replacement for a set of (moody) tits.

 

[M3Evo 0]

She lives near Dumfries, and I live in Farnham so only about 372miles away.

 

Guess the thing to do is keep busy and hope I can forget about her.

 

The trauma diet seems to be working wonders too!

[M3Evo 0]

Tiny update from the weekend. Had a massive hangover on Saturday (well, I have just been dumped!) so pottered around the house and tried to service my mate's car which all went horribly wrong when the HT leads fell apart

 

Finally got to my parents' late in the afternoon and set about re-making the piston for the dump valve. I did some very basic testing of the nylon piston by leaving the whole thing in the garage on some very cold nights. It worked fine when it was icy cold, but as soon as it got up to room temperature, the piston jammed shut!

 

Seems that nylon does lots of expanding and contracting with changing temperatures and it was likely as not gonna cause problems on the car so I've made an alloy one which should expand at the same rate as the rest of the valve body:

 

[M3Evo 0]

Made progress this weekend on the gear linkage.

 

First thing to do was establish whether or not the 525tds 'box was gonna fit. Looks like it should, and like it sits at the same angle as the 325i 'box.

 

Wanted to make the shift as meaty as possible, so it's all a bit heavyweight

 

 

The link at the bottom is 1" dia solid steel with 6mm plates welded either side. The lever itself is made from solid stainless (I welded the gear-knob onto the rest of the lever rather than machining it all out of solid!) And everything is welded onto the ball from a scrap lever. Simple really.

 

Last thing I could be bothered with this week was to clean the oil filter housing and see whether it'd actually fit with the little turbo in place. It does....just. And I'll need to make some much tighter unions for the oil cooler, but fit it does and that's the main thing!

 

[felix2566 2]

I have been following this projetc for ages. Hats off to you your work is inspirational! I do a bit of milling and turning at work sometimes, so I really appreciate the skill put into this! Keep up the good work!

[Crazy-legs! 0]

Ive been follow this thread for quite some time now, and i am SERIOUSLY impressed with your machining abillities mate!

 

Seems that nylon does lots of expanding and contracting with changing temperatures and it was likely as not gonna cause problems on the car so I've made an alloy one which should expand at the same rate as the rest of the valve body:

 

 

 

I had a very similar problem when i tried to make a PTFE D/V piston for a Charade turbo i was building. Some plastics actually expand when cold, and contract when hot, due to the moisture in them! In the end i settled for brass, as its fairly self lubricating, and its expansion rates arn't a million miles different to aluminium.

 

Keep up the good work!

 

Marc.