dallasdude

I have a Raceline sump with the cutout for the leftside low strater mount. Its on one of our cars now but the engine will be coming out for a refresh, and we have some other unmodified Raceline sumps. As far as the alignment for the current bellhousing, be sure you install a spacer between the bolts that attach the bellhousing to the sump. If its not there, the bolts will pinch the bellhousing out of alignment, causing a bind between the transmission input shaft and the clutch splines. Don't know that is your problem but something to be careful of. You can shim it with washers, I but make a spacer out of a piece of the blocksaver sheet metal so it matches the top exactly I believe the original bellhousing was made by a Denver company named Quad for Rods. They make a bellhousing for Olds Quad 4 engines to T-9s and some others, including Zetecs. I may be wrong about the origins, but its all I could find. The company is long since gone I believe.

I gave my last ones to Quicksilver. T2's is still the spec computer for FF2000 engines. Might want to check with them. We converted everything over to Haltech a long time ago.

Good list of suppliers but you could add Esslinger Engineering. They do Pintos mostly for midgets and sand rails, but with their cylinder heads and parts.....the lowly Pinto can make big power. Since its the engine used in Sport 2000s, Quicksilver does rebuilds also.

I had a side to side with another car in a race in Atlanta. The Minator on the front didn't break even though it had huge rubber marks all over it, the Panasport racing wheel on the back did. Not very scientific, as they were probably subjected to quite different loads, but I'd lay money on the same thing again. I think the racing only wheels are lighter and a little more fragile and don't have to comply with JWL (or TUV for that matter) standards. Yes, the Racing Only label relieves the manufacturer of some liability, but not having to comply with road standards reduces costs also.

The Mystique/Contour Zetecs have a lash cap that fits on a cam follower, much like a Duratec, but I suspect you are talking about a shim on top of the valve stem. You usually use than when you have camshafts that have been ground to a smaller than standard base circle. The little cap makes up the difference. These are fairly standard, (6mm in this case) the last time I got some was from Supertech. Not sure how these could seize, but they can crack.

As a point of reference, we weights are with a full cage, a 190 pound driver and and 30 pound of ballas on the passenger side. Wet sump Zetec and a cast case T9.

This is correct. Try to get the cross weight close to 50%, but try not to have the LF and RF over 40 pounds difference. On a LH drive Caterham, the left rear is gonna always be heavy, so the RF is gonna be light. Bottom line is, try to get to 50% cross, but compromise before you get the RF too light. Or LF in the UK.

The water pump interference problem is common, made even a little worse if you use bump stop shims under the steering rack. The simpler thing to is cut the nipple back on the stock WP housing. I also normally cut the little nubs off, and use two hose clamps, one outside in the normal clamping place, and one behind the rings to make sure it is retained and doesn't slip off. I also did some right angle housings which is the better solution if you can make it work with the rest of your plumbing. Quicksilver has assembled an engine with one of these pump housings on it. Eric can probably help you. I attached some pictures. We regularly make about 170 hp, 150 foot pounds at the rear wheels on a Dynojet or Mustang dyno With a HP peak 6800. . That is with a stock early Focus intake, stock pistons and rods, 10-1 compression and Comp cams camshafts (pretty mild). There is a lot of attention to detail, valve job, cylinder sealing, windage etc. Qucksilver did a lot of the work. Giving the engine the cam timing it wants is critical.....the difference between straight up at the timing marks and optimized is close to 20 hp. The main reason for not running in the RPM range that ITBs begin to make a difference is not the crankshaft itself but the way the oil pump mounts around the nose. Creates a vibration that cause it to be ineffective or the gears shatter. A dry sump of course solves this. The is an aftermarket wet sump pump that is probably good for 7500. At one time Quicksilver made billet gears for the wet sump pump. The Duratec has a chain drive pump. On thing that has become a problem for building Zetecs is the cam followers are on longer available new. You wind up limited to the thickness followers you have, and to get the right valve clearances you have tip the valves....remove them and take a little off the stem. Labor intensive.

Moss Motors or Pegasus Racing can fix you up on the front kits. Much easier to deal wit than the rears. There is one trick on the rear calipers.....you have to screw the pistons back in after they adjust out. I use the same tool I use to change out disks on my 5 inch angle grinder.

Arm restraints are required in SCCA racing (or a window net) but I don't see it in the requirements tor track night. Probably not a bad idea to use them and they are cheap. They do mention some tracks have more stringent requirements however. https://www.tracknightinamerica.com/pages/rules-and-regulations

SCCA/Tirerack Tracknight in America series is a completely different thing from SCCA road racing and the General Competition Rules. Tracknight was set up to be very inclusive. I doubt you would find an SCCA chief of Tech there. It has been a very popular program in most parts of the country and is a good value for tack time.

Honestly, we never had a problem with bedding. Usually take it easy for a lap or two and then go on. Part of the bedding process is the transfer of pad material to make up an invisible material layer on the disks themselves. You should always replace (they're cheap) the rotors or rough up the surface with sandpaper when changing compounds.... the deposits on the rotors need to match the pads. Otherwise bedding can take much longer.

I have used Carbotech pads for years. They normally have no problem supplying the rear (Ford Sierra) or the front Spitfire pads for Caterhams within a few days. The most they might ask for is cores for the rear. For track use, you have 3 reasonable choices, depending on the braking torque. XP 8, 10 and 12. We always used XP10s front and 8's rear. We do use a bias valve on the rear. Recently we changed one car to the Caterham uprated /Jack Webb/Canley front calipers with vented rotors. Huge pads compared to the Spitfire pads. We went to XP8's all around. Certainly easier to warm up on the pace lap. The other car we converted to the Ultralight setup. The pad is a little smaller (I think Elise front) but we went to XP8s on it also and still maintained good balance. This setup is really light, couple pounds less unsprung weight than stock and several pounds less than the uprated setup.

Jeff is a great guy and about as straight as they come. One problem an independent machine shop will have with your Zetec is getting the valve lash correct. This is normally done with different thickness cam followers, although the valve stems can be cut. Its pretty tedious to get it just right. I have a pretty good selection of followers. Older engines use shims that sit on top of a follower, but if your engine came that way it was probably converted...the shims add about 3 grams to the weight of the valvetrain. I will be glad to help with followers. I have at least 50 . Otherwise you could do worse than sending the head to Eric at Quicksilver. They can cut all three valve angles at the same time. Anything to do with the dry sump setup they are experts on also. They have built hundreds of these with dry sump for FF2000.

Two ways to run a Caterham in SCCA without backdating to 60's specs. As a S3 narrow chassis Zetec with a full width cage. You can build your own approved cage but it must have a full width of the cockpit front and back. A fuel cell is required. Most one the cars with the spec were brought over a part of a spec series here about 20 years ago. You can bring over an Academy car (Sigma engine) from the UK (or replicate it here). The SCCA allows more modifications than the series does there, but someone brought one back after racing it there, put on better tires than allowed in the UK and was competitive. The FIA cage used in the Academy series is approved. The SCCA requires fuel cells in cars where the tank is not protected by the main vehicle structure. Your 310R probably could be modified to this spec and would probably be cheaper over seasons to maintain with a Sigma rather than a Duratec. Both these cars run in E Production. A class with a lot of history, but not one of the classes on the way up as far as participation. A car with a Duratec (MZR) would race against Miatas with the same engine...that would have to weight hundreds of pounds more. I see you are from Georgia. Last year a Caterham set a new record (or close to it) at Road Atlanta. To give you an idea of what Zetec in SCCA trim can do, I think it was about a 1:36. The back straight is a limitation for a Caterham at that track, I could never do over 130. I almost ran a NASA race a couple times but their fuel cell rules are more strict. Their classes were (and I believe still are) based on power to weight based on a required dyno test. There are modifiers that move that up and down, but from what I could see you would be in a group with some very large powerful cars. Difficult to compete with and not as safe.