TurboWood

Thanks Bob. I posted some pictures of the engine mounted in my thread in the members ride section. I'm hoping to get'er-done in the next 4-6mo!

Gents, I'm trying to plan my dry sump system and after doing some research I see that there is some controversy over the breather lines. The base engine side appears relatively simple (tank --> oil pump --> engine --> scavenge pump --> tank...). On the breather side Caterham always connects the tank to the valve cover and to a catch can. This will surely prevent any positive pressure from building in the crankcase, but won't it also allow for the possibility of blow-by gas being recirculated? If the scavenge pump is consuming more flow than the engine is producing then you will start generating a vacuum. By having the tank connected to the valve cover this never happens, but you do allow gas from the tank to be re-pumped by the scavenge pump. Wouldn't we want some vacuum in the crankcase if we can get it? From what I can tell the online opinion seems to be something like 10"Hg (~5psi) of vacuum is a good target. There are even adjustable vacuum valves on the market so this can be specified. Now if there is a vacuum being created and there is a valve controlling it then that valve still needs to be connect to something. I suppose this could still be the oil tank, but why not connect it to the catch can so that it has a better chance of collecting fresh air instead of aerated oil? The other question that comes to mind is the location of the oil cooler. If this is a water/oil cooler then it's relatively straight forward to integrated it with the oil filter mount (as is done on most Caterham's). With an air to oil cooler it looks like this could either be done on the scavenge pump side or the oil pump side. There appears to be arguments for both. Putting it on the scavenge pump side should maximize the delta-temperature between the oil and the air, but it's aerated. Putting in on the pump side should ensure it's all liquid, but the oil temperature should have decreased. Comments? Thanks, Daniel

Man you guys are old. I wonder what would happen if you opened a driving school for 15-1/2 year olds with only a 7 for teaching. We could link it with boy scouts, make it a merit badge! Daniel

2016 Update...the engine is mounted! Thanks to Nathan at Thomas Vintage Motors for his fantastic fabrication skills. I need to learn to weld. The mounts still need a little cleanup work (round the edges of the plates and paint), but they are functional. It turned out to be relatively easy. The plates are both flat and I just machined four 0.515" spacers (two for each plate). GM was kind enough to make the step between the lower mount surface and the upper mount surface consistent. The hole you see in the passenger side plate is for the turbocharger oil drain return line. The position of this was not so brilliant, but the oil line is a slip fit into the block so it should be manageable. I just need to figure out how to hold it in. The sump ended up a little lower than I was hoping, but I was able to retain 3.5" of ground clearance. It's not great, but it should work. There were two limiting factors. The first is the individual coil packs which you can see in one of the pictures below. They are very close to the hood (or bonnet for you English chaps). I might have been able to go another 0.5" higher with the engine by cutting the plugs on these, but this is when limit number two is reached. The main engine oil feed starts interfering with the chassis. You can see this fitting on the picture showing the bottom of the car from the front. I'm going to have a lot of oil lines running under the car...yikes. I guess a skid plate of some sort will be in order. You may also notice that the thermostat housing is really really close to the passenger side pedal box. There is a little margin due to the insulation, but clearly the engine is about as far back as possible. I also got the alternator mostly mounted. I still need to clearance the foam rubber injector cover and drill the hole in the lower mount, but I think it will fit...barely. The steering shaft didn't play fair. I originally had the alternator mounted lower, but you can see from the pictures that there is no room for lower. This extra loop is the result of having the car and the mock engine at different locations. Oh well, I enjoyed the hours of milling a useless bottom mount. Maybe someday I'll need to invest in a bridgeport. Overall I'm relatively happy with how the lower mount is looking. It may not be obvious from the pictures, but that somewhat complex shaped aluminum part was done by hand (no CNC). Both mounts need a little finish work, but it's close. My next steps are: - Install Quaife ATB LSD: I was originally going to start with the open diff to see how bad of one-tire-fires I could produce. The turning point was realizing the gears inside the differential may not survive and Quaife offers a lifetime warranty. I also basically convinced myself that a torque biasing differential was probably better than a plate type. I know this has been discussed endlessly so not everyone will agree, but hopefully I don't find myself with one rear wheel in the air too often anyway. - Modify Intake Manifold: This will likely come by way of Bruce at Beachman Racing who has done a similar modification before which will allow me to install the stock manifold (after modification). This should be the lowest risk and cost to get going. - Mount Scavenge Pump: I bought a Dailey Engineering 2-stage pump. Finding a place to mount it has been troublesome, but I have a plan. I believe I have room to run a secondary belt off the front of the crank and mount the pump under the water pump on the passenger side. I just don't know how much room I'll have over there with the turbo. - Find a home for the Turbo: I decided on a GTX2860R. This should flow a little more than the stock Borg turbo and Tial makes really sweet investment cast turbine housings which will help keep the weight down. Why Garrett hasn't done that is beyond me. - Decide on the intercooler: I bought an Air to Air, but the more I look at it the more I think it will be easier to use water to air. I think the IC can fit right in front of the engine which would make the piping really short. I know another turbo 7 had a similar setup with the IC behind the engine, but I don't think I'll be able to make that work because my throttle body points almost straight down. Time will tell. I think that's it for now....so close, but yet so far. Daniel

Any idea what 5-spd they are using? Is it still the type-9?

The 620S is advertised as 3.44s (http://uk.caterhamcars.com/cars/seven-620s). I wonder if it's a mistake.

Interesting to see the CSR advertised with a faster 0-60 than the 620 despite the power deficit.

No, it was just an option.

Hopefully the OP doesn't mind...

how about a 912: http://www.dailyturismo.com/2015/12/porschev-1966-porsche-912-v8-custom.html Daniel

I'm relatively sure mine were the same size ('13 CSR).

You have a beautiful car. I actually saw Jon put the finishing touches on this a few years back while I was visiting his shop. That's as close as I could get while waiting for my kit to arrive. I'm obviously biased, but $60k sounds like a steal. Given the market for these cars you may be well advised to send it to a Caterham dealer. The increased visibility and them being able to convince the buyer it is a well built car, I would think you could get a fair bit more. Of course I don't know what their commission is. Either way, good luck. Daniel

What an interesting sequence of events. Critical feedback from Mike should be gold to sellers because it gives them feedback on what the market could be seeing from a community that has as much knowledge about this stuff as anyone (for free). Being a public forum he or she has the opportunity to: A) improve the add, B) correct misunderstandings by publicly responding to such criticism, C) ignore the feedback, or D) get mad. I can understand emotion driving sellers to jump to "D", but in the end this is the least productive reaction. Keep it coming Mike! Daniel

Wow, that is ambitious. I thought I had packaging constraints, but nothing compared to a V6 turbo. I would love to see how that looks. Daniel

Mike, are they using the 2.3L or the V6? Eric, I had looked into this engine briefly, but couldn't get a clear answer to which pierce points (sump, bellhousing, and engine mounts) that it shared with the Duratec (see info below). If it shares them it would make the install quite easy, but otherwise it's basically a completely custom job (which is what I ended up doing by using a GM engine). I was able to mate the Ford Type-9 (same as the Caterham 6spd) to a GM engine so I assume it shouldn't to terribly difficult to make it attach to the ecoboost. I just looked back at the questions I had asked different shops (from about 2years ago): Engine Height (from Ford Racing): We just happen to have an engine at the office right now so I measured the from the oil pan to the highest point on the top, which is the cam driven high pressure fuel pump, 26.5”. The cast aluminum oil pan has the bottom row of bellhousing bolts in the pan. Pierce Points of 2L ecoboost vs. Duratec (per Ford Racing Parts Direct.com): "It's totally different" I also had some email exchange with FullRace and they told me the 2L ecoboost was based on the Duratec which made me think it was similar (or the same?), but I could confirm. He did say the bellhousings were the same. As I said, conflicting information. For what it's worth, you can get a similar crate engine of the 2L ecotec turbo for about half the price. There is a considerable amount of work required to make it work though. I've also found the ecotec to be a bit heavy by comparison to the Duratec (not sure about the ecoboost). Daniel

Very nice, congrats.

It has an engine! On the yellow CSR shown below, does anyone know the distance from the frame rail to the lowest point on the bellhousing? On my car I'm at about 2" which by my eye looks similar to this picture, but I thought someone could measure for me. Daniel

Yes, a moving caravan is a much better way to describe what I had in mind. This way you only need 2-4 people that really do the full loop (or opposite halves), but each person can do the portion they are comfortable with. We would just need to classify participants into something like: - Critical: Regional leader to link quarter/halves, you can count on me - Committed: Keys are in a safety box and 7 is ready to go - Tentative: I can probably sneak out of the house, but my keys aren't hidden from the wife - Unlikely: Wife took the keys, but maybe I can find them - Not 'gunna happen: Keys are gone and/or 7 is in pieces Daniel

Maybe I'm crazy here, but why not have a week (or two?) long trip that covers a loop of the US? If done right it would allow people to join for whatever portion of the entire trip he or she desired. People on the west coast could join in Texas, up through Washington, and as far east as they had time for. People on the East coast could join somewhere in the NE, run down to Florida, and as far west as they had time for. Others could join for the few days that the group was running through their city/state/ect. If we created a map of the big route and let people make commitments to the legs they could join then we could see if there would be any gaps. So long as we had a few soldiers that did the full (or groups of halves/quarters) we should be able to hold a relatively epic even w/o forcing people to over commit. Every person could join for the range they had the capacity for. We could even choose regional leaders to pick the best route for their area. This would help ensure linkage between areas so long as the leader joined for more than their city. In my opinion (coming for almost no actual experience so feel free to shoot me down) the only way to make things like this work is to take what people can give comfortably (in terms of time) and find a way to link it together. We just don't have the huge Miata following to make an event in one region. Fortunately we have a group that likes to drive! Personally I'm a fan of the saying "go big or go home". Cannonball 7777? Do you think we could hit them all (lower 48 only): http://www.mensjournal.com/expert-advice/americas-most-thrilling-roads-20130701 Daniel P.S. This exercise has demonstrated to me how bad Bing maps is, but unfortunately google only allows 10 destinations. Cannonball 7777.pdf

Congrats and welcome.

Yikes, it looks like you were overall lucky. If there is one thing aluminum is guaranteed to do it is fatigue. I vote for 2 & (3 or 4). This way you get a running car and a fun (low urgency) engine build. Daniel

It's more of a fish-eye than a bug-eye.

I agree Bruce has been very responsive to my questions. I also have to give credit to Superformance and Caterham UK who worked to correct a few issues I had that Jon seemed completely unwilling to help with (dent in the hood and no center caps for the wheels). Bravo to those organizations for their support so far. I know Caterham's were/are a hobby for Jon, but it does look like I'm getting the short end of the CatUSA stick. Some of the parts on my car didn't arrive with the initial shipment (seats, weather equipment, etc.). As I've been traveling a lot I got some help from family and friends to take the car to him and had him install those things while I was gone (I was not looking forward to drilling/riveting the roof straps or the knee panels anyway). It seemed like cheap insurance to get some tricky work done quickly so I could focus more on the fun aspects of the build. Unfortunately he (or someone in his shop) did a piss poor job of installing the doors (everything else was great). I had every reason to trust his work and I was in such a rush when I picked up the car that I didn't notice until I was home. He wouldn't do anything to correct it unless I brought the car back to him which wasn't possible in the short term (had to borrow a trailer and I was again traveling). Now that I have time to get things corrected it looks like I'm SOL. It's not the end of the world, but definitely annoying. The doors are functional, but I can't help but notice the >1/2" height difference between the two when I sit in the car. I'll just have to order another set eventually and do it myself. Live and learn... Daniel

I'm sorry for bringing this old thread back from the dead, but does anyone know if Jon is still around?

This looks like a good opportunity to make a Walker Texas Ranger joke... Stalker Texas .....Ringer? I like the white. Daniel