rotary powered kit car project - help needed!

[bill shurvinton]

Right,

I have a few minutes to go through things.

The 13B can be made to fit into any sort of se7en, from a caterham through to a westfield. It would help to know what you have to get an idea of clearances. However you have to do a few mods

1. the thermostat housing needs to be cut and shut to reduce height. Not difficult if you get an iron one. Obviously if you have an aluminium one then you need to find an ally welder. Makes sense if you see it on my car

2.  With the water sorted the heighest points should be the dizzy and the alternator. The alternator can be moved to the side if required and somewhere i have some pictures of a race engine with this on. The dizzy you are stuck with until I get my rotary spark management SW sorted (which I have been promising for a year now).

3. Sump. I was forever clunking the sump on mine, which hastened the decision to dry sump. The setup I have would cost around £800 to replicate, but means that I have everything above the chassis rails and a level engine. In fact I lowered too much and had to modify the inlet. The usuals solution to this is to get the sump cut and rewelded. Pip at WGT is good to talk about on this, as he was involved in perhaps the looniest 13B engined se7en ever: imaging a 340HP PP in a light car. Won everything and was then banned. Don\'t worry too much about loosing sump capacity as there is a lot of space above it and no windage problems to cope with.

There is a 2nd option, which is to copy the 1/2 DS arrangement that Caterham use. This uses a scavenge only setup and the remote tank then feeds the standard oil pump.

On the fuelling side I recommend to everyone to put in a megasquirt and a lighter more optimised inlet.  Bike throttle bodies are my current fave and I must get around to getting a manifold drawn up. Even with the stock inlet you can get 10HP more ditching the built in computer and horrid airflap

Any other questions please ask. I finally have some photos of mine, just have to get them developed

Bill

[GO.]

Hi Bill,

Again, great advice.

Answering your points in order...

1. Yep, figured that, was hoping one of the other models had a shorter version. I\'m pretty sure mines ally, not really inspected it yet.

2. The alternator I can sort, I\'ve removed the air pump, planning on mounting it where the air pump was - it may cause problem with the steering column and exhaust all ending up trying to occupy the same space but I think it\'ll work. Which just leaves the dizzy, which is the lowest of these anyway.

As an aside, after removing the air pump and the associated bits bolted to the side of the engine, can I just put a blanking plate across this or will it require some kind of plumbing?

3. £800 isn\'t as much as I\'d thought it would be, still out of budget unfortunately. I\'ve spoken to Pip, seems pretty helpful, he\'s already said he can help out with a sump. Actually, it was Pip who suggested using a 12a cover. I\'ll have to try and find a picture from the front.

Glenn, thanks for the pic, thats a nice clean looking engine - do you have any more from lower down and the other side?

A scavenge system had crossed my mind, but I\'m trying to keep it as simple as poss at the moment.

The bike throttle bodies sound interesting! Love to see how you\'ve set that up.

Hmm, I\'m torn now. I\'d been planning on leaving it relatively stock and getting on the road asap and learing more about the engine as I get to know it, but now I can\'t wait to rip it to bits!

I think I\'ll investigate how much I can save with modding the sump, using a 12a front cover to make the mounting simpler and chopping the thermostat housing. And then I\'ll see what problems I have after that.

Thanks for the advice.

[bill shurvinton]

Any News?

have to admit to having got nowhere fast on getting mine back on the road in the last 3 weeks.

I do have a 12A front if you need it though

Bill

[GO.]

Fraid not. Friends keep having weddings, keep getting in the way of my build!

I have looked at the mounting situation. The 12a front mount isn\'t going to help I dont think, even pushing the engine back as far as possible the front would still be too close to the bottom wishbone mounts to be able to use the 12a mount. So unfortunatly I\'m still going to have to come up with some kind of ingenius bracket for the offside mount to allow the engine to sit as low as poss.

Biggest issue at the moment is working out how to support the engine whilst I remove the sump! I dont have an engine stand, only a block and tackle which is attached to the rafters in the garage - its fine to take the weight temporarily to fit/remove the engine but I really dont want to leave it there for any length of time whilst I investigate and mod the sump. Might have to bite the bullet and get myself a proper standalone engine stand/hoist.

[bill shurvinton]

What sort of kit is this? My front mount (westfield) has bags of clearance and I have seen the same used in a caterham which is smaller.

[bill shurvinton]

Oh and I have a 13B 6-port sump  you can have to modify in exchange for yours when you swap them over.

[GO.]

Its a Luego Velocity...

Luego Sports Cars

The engine would sit a lot further back but the starter motor sticks out just a touch too far to fit inside the tunnel so unfortunately the whole lot has to sit in front. If the tunnel was an inch wider then I\'d be laughing.

6 port??

Graham

[bill shurvinton]

Odd. Even caterhams you can sort of squeeze them in. that will muck up your weight balance a tad. My entire starter is down the tunnel and I still reckon I need to move back a bit.

Having said all that you should be able to mount it on the middle provided you don\'t try and use the stock brace. Nag me to see how Glenn has done it on his locost.

Its a normally aspirated sump pan, so doesn\'t have the turbo oil drain. I don\'t really need it for now as I have the dry sump fetish.

We must meet up sometime. And I must get those photos developed.

Bill