JohnCh

Given Murphy seems to rule my life with his eponymous Law, 90mm will probably prove to be the optimal length, but I still want to see the numbers. -John

The rod bearings turned up yesterday. However, thanks to flooding and mudslides impacting my commute, I'm working from home this week and probably won't have an opportunity to drop them off at the shop until early next week. Yes, it's wet. Even for Seattle. More good news; the head arrived a couple of hours ago. Steve said it was in great shape and he didn't see the need to do further porting than his original job 13 years ago. However, he did re-profile the backside of the valves this time, which in his experience can help airflow as much as blending the seats. The laundry list of work included: Clean head and valves Surface head Machine seats and reface valves Modify valves with performance upgrades Valve seal set Install new cams, set valve lash to provided specs, assemble -John

With 26 bathrooms, domestic help is probably necessary. -John

I've heard a lot of good things about Driven Racing Oil HR which was designed for older engines that are driven intermittently. It's available in both dyno and synthetic. I have some of the dyno oil in the garage ready to go in the Elan as soon as I have time for an oil change. https://tech.drivenracingoil.com/whats-hr-conventional-10w-40-hot-rod-motor-oil/ -John

Once we get through the spamming issues we'll look into adding the vBulletin feature for this. It would display forum user names which is an extra layer of privacy compared to the Facebook solution. -John

Hi Sean, I think you missed the part where I wrote that Dave found a lightly used set on the shelves that I bought this morning They were only 100GBP, so not expensive. Although even at the new price of 135GBP for the set, they are a good deal if you want to experiment. -John

I'm still waiting for the rod bearings to arrive. I'll ping the dealer again to see if they can get an update from King, but I had expected them to be here by now after placing the order with Priority Mail shipping on the 23rd. One area I've been kicking around for the build is intake length. Longer pushes the torque peak down, shorter pushes it higher in the rev range, and at some length you hit the sweet spot. That perfect compromise which smooths out the torque curve and maximizes the area beneath it. The default for Duratecs with Jenvey TBs seems to be 90mm, but I've been curious what would happen to the shape of the curve when going longer or shorter, particularly given the other work done to my engine. There are rumors that longer than 90mm produces better results, but I've yet to see actual numbers to back that up. Given longer runners require the air filter to stick further out of the bonnet, which in turn requires a larger hole in said bonnet, I'd rather some hard data before pulling out the saw. Although Emerald makes adjustable velocity stacks with a range of 60-130mm (more info here) that are perfect for my needs, the 45mm size required for my TBs have been shown as out of stock for a very, very long time. After speaking with Dave I learned that unless they can find a new supplier willing to do them for a reasonable price, they won't do another run. It sounds like the original shop underestimated the effort, and at the new production cost the retail price becomes, in Dave's words, "silly." Luckily for me, he was able to find a lightly used set in their inventory, so the order was placed this morning. -John

Thanks Bill, but I've always dreamed of being a despot with my own totalitarian regime. Controlling the gates of registration and crushing the dreams of spammers is about as close as I'm ever going to get, so I don't really mind. Final total yesterday was 90 and they keep coming today. -John

Brief update: Spammers have gone nuts with 70 registering so far today. We've implemented manual measures to stop them from completing the registration process, but please report any that have slipped through or who have been laying dormant for a while. As part of the underlying spamming problem, notifications are temporarily disabled. That means you won't receive emails when a thread you are watching has an update, or someone sends you a PM Hopefully this will only last a couple of days, but it could be a bit longer. Thanks for your patience. -John

We had a ton of spammers register over the past two days despite Spam-O-Matic being installed as well as a number of rotating registration questions that require some level of automotive enthusiast knowledge. I've gone through each registration and banned about 20 from that group. If you receive an IM that's spam, please report it and I'll make sure that user was banned. Thanks, John

The EarthX ETX36C is about $240 more than the PC680 (both on Amazon) and 11 lb. lighter. That's less than $22/lb savings which isn't bad compared to some other weight saving areas. Melt down is definitely a concern, but driving a se7en isn't exactly for the risk adverse -John

Talk about two different driving experiences. The Westfield looks like a great option for someone desiring a very vintage driving experience, and the S1 for someone who is concerned a se7en might be a little too raw. Bench seat and A-Series vs. doors with opening windows and a Zetec. -John

Welcome to the forum and thanks for starting a build thread -- with pictures! We love pictures. I believe we spoke at Bruce's party in December (I'm the Westfield owner who was selling the benefits of 13" wheels). Lot's of experienced folks here who can help if you get stuck along the way. Given I'm local to you, don't hesitate to drop me a PM if you need a hand. -John

Croc, I don't think I showed you my Ballistic Evo 2 battery when you were here. It weighs under 3-1/2 pounds and as you can see is tiny, yet it easily starts my car after sitting outside overnight in mid 30F weather. It replaced my PC680 (>11 lb heavier) and worked well for two years, then began showing signs of charge loss after the car had sat for a week or two. A replacement was installed 5 years ago. That battery is still working well, but I'm sure I'll be in the same boat as Supsersportsp in the near-ish future so I'm watching this thread closely. Two batteries that have mostly good reviews are the Antigravity and the EarthX. The EarthX is a little more expensive, but from I've read could be worth it. Anyone have experience with either manufacturer? Any good or bad experience with other Lithium brands? Thanks, John

I may have spoken with the Woodinvile owner at the party. He wasn't aware of this forum but had planned to check it out, although not sure he remembered the URL. It would be good to see him start a build thread as that kind of content is not only entertaining for those of us who have taken the plunge into se7en ownership, but can help push those on the fence over the edge. The more people we can corrupt into lightness, the better -John

Are all three cars staying in the area? If you are doing any of the builds, we won't object to in-progress photos along the way. Having been to Bruce's shop, I can say that it is a really, really nice facility, and the quality of his work is fantastic. I spent some time in December going over a car he was building and it was the highest quality I've seen to date. Outstanding attention to detail. -John

I was in a pedantic mood when I ranted about that earlier (damn bearing issue....) I think Caterham's current branding is fine and more useful than the old one since the sub models have weight differences (S vs. R, SV vs. S3). This system tells you the hp, or close to it provided you can divide by 2 in your head. I just think R&T should know better, particularly when they provide weight and hp numbers in the article that clearly don't add up to 310 bhp/ton. Kind of makes me wonder if they actually understand what that formula means. It's not blatantly obvious to many Americans who have trouble with the metric system and grew up with lb/hp, but I expect better from R&T given their history. Heck, they explained to us that a BMW 328 no longer means it has a 2.8L engine, but they couldn't figure this out? :jester: Sorry for insulting any marketers on the forum. Full disclosure, I was one for many years -John

Good article (link works for me). It was nice to see them use the word blat, although I suspect it confused some of their US readers I was less pleased to see them perpetuate the myth that Caterham continues to name their cars based on the hp/ton rating. That stopped a while ago and now they simply double the hp, round up to a nice number and call it a day. If it were true, the cars would weigh less than 500kg. Damn marketers...they should all be sent to remedial algebra. :rant: -John

Anker, I wouldn't worry about the crossflow. The SuperSprint spec is a well known formula for those engines and unlike the Duratec, the crossflow was designed to be rebuilt rather than thrown away when old and tired. Yeah, I was really surprised by the difficulty. Initially I assumed the machine shop was being lazy, but after multiple Internet searches (I have the blisters on my fingertips to prove it), calls to Clevite/Mahle, ACL, King, and various Focus tuning shops, I realized that wasn't the case. Duratec tuning in the US seems to focus on forced induction rather than spinning at high rpms, and people seem happy with the OE spec. It just seems to me that bearings aren't an area where you should hope they're good enough. The excursion to a winery sounds like a good idea, but a side trip to a place where they sell something stronger sounds better -John

Begin Part 2 This is where things really turned south and my propensity for swearing hit overdrive. Given I am building an engine that is safe to 8500 rpm, I don’t want to use OE replacement quality bearings. Yes, they might be fine, but after all the trouble and expense, this isn’t an area where I want to take chances. Looking at race/high performance/really special -- or however else you want to characterize them – rod bearings available in the US, I hit road blocks. Clevite makes them, but only in the standard size. If, like the main bearings, my engine needs under/over sized then I’d be stuck. ACL makes them in various sizes, but the standard size is out of stock and it is at least 2-3 weeks to get them. Longer if the factory needs to make another run. Apparently demand is low. King Bearings make the rod bearings in the XP range and they are in stock in the US. I spoke with both SBD and Raceline in the UK this morning. SBD sells King and said they’re fine, but added the Mahle Motorsport bearings at twice the price are the best quality. Ordering the Mahles from them is about $230 with shipping. Because they are in a blister pack, they are unreturnable if a different size is required. That would mean more cost and more international shipping delays. Peter at Raceline also uses the Mahle Motorsport bearings, but said he knows a lot of people who use the King bearings and has never heard of an issue, so thinks they’re fine. He only sticks with the Mahle because that’s what he knows. I then went through the runaround of finding a King Bearing supplier who would sell me a set. Some of the places I called only sell to shops. Others don’t deal with Duratecs and don’t want to special order, and finally some just don’t seem to answer their phone. I finally found a shop that was happy to take my money, but they are not allowed to ship to a location other than the billing address. That means more delays getting the bearings to the shop and more delays getting the car back on the road. I hope there isn't a part 3 to this story... -John

The engine rebuild gods have been messing with me lately and I need to vent. This will be long post with no photos to hold your interest, so I’m breaking it into two posts. After doing some research on bearings used in the UK for hot Duratecs and their US availability, I settled on Daido bearings sourced through Mountune USA. They had the various sizes (std, +1, -1) in stock and although not cheap, it seemed a painless option. My machine shop, however, uses the high performance lines from Clevite and ACL in their race builds (not Duratecs – and yes, this parenthetical comment is meant as foreshadowing) and was suspect of Daido since they had zero experience with the brand. They preferred to source the bearings from their suppliers. Given I didn’t want any finger pointing if a bearing-related problem arose down the road, I agreed. Fast forward to the start of this month when the shop called me to say their suppliers can’t get the bearings. We agreed to revert back to my original plan, and I placed an order with Mountune. The bearings arrived at the machine shop last week. On Tuesday they called to say (1) the main bearings are too tight and we need the smaller size, and (2) the rod bearings are wrong. They have a tang, but the rods have no provision for that locating mechanism. The size issue wasn’t a surprise. It seems that Ford has reasonably wide specs on the Duratec which can require fiddling with bearings at time of rebuild, hence the reason it’s important to go with a bearing that comes in various sizes. After investigating the rod bearing issue I realized either my reading comprehension or my attention to details is poor. As Croc will point out, it’s probably a combination of both. The Daido main bearings fit both the Duratec and the Ecoboost derivative. The rod bearings, however, are Ecoboost only. They don’t make the tang-less version for the Duratec. End Part 1 -John

Sounds like a great project. Was it already in the US when you found it, or did you import it from the UK? Thanks, John

Holy crap, how many hours did it take your lackeys to achieve that shine on your exhaust system?? That's impressive! -John

If it has been sitting a long time, you may need to add carb cleaning to the list. A passage or jet could be gummed up which would result in the behavior you're describing. This page has some good setup information. Scroll down close to the bottom for the section on setting the idle: http://www.s262612653.websitehome.co.uk/DVAndrews/webers.htm -John

I've had three different cars with twin DCOEs, including a 1700 crossflow similar to the Super Sprint spec. None of them had the chokes hooked up and all would fire from cold in sub freezing weather. When it's really cold, you need to feather the throttle to maintain idle until you're underway (and this is when a choke will help) but it's never been a problem to start using the procedure above. Let us know the outcome and welcome to the mad world of se7ens! Thanks, John