Archive for the ‘Project Cars’ Category

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Four wheel alignment

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

We’ve been working with Practical performance car magazine for some time now helping with their race efforts and carrying out a feature called ‘Car Clinic’. Here we take in cars either from road or track and improve their handling with some geometry set up. This involves measuring the various positions and angle of the wheels and suspension and adjusting them as required, it’s just a short leap on from tracking which a lot of people have done on their road cars. The latest car to pass through our hands is PPC’s Westfield XI.  Measurements were taken for tracking, camber, castor, heights, wheelbase, track and axle offset . A few tweeks later and the car’s ready just in time for the last race of the 2010 season.

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Mad Mini

Monday, September 13th, 2010

When a customer called to ask if we could do some work to get his mini through an MoT this wasn’t exactly what we were expecting.  The car had obviously seen some pretty serious modification before it came to us, with the whole centre section and roof having been chopped out. You now sit on the back seats to drive it, or at least you would if they hadn’t rotten away. The car had sat for around 7 years and although it had been covered it wasn’t looking well. Everything is seized or rotten but we managed to get the engine fired into life and free of the gearbox and brakes. There’s a lot to do but it’s such a wonderful little car we can’t wait to see it back on the road again

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Westfield barn find

Monday, September 13th, 2010

In truth it’s less of a barn find and more of barn remembrance. The car is owned by Kev Leaper of PPC Magazine who we do various work for. This is a westfield XI, a copy of the Lotus XI. This car has been graced with bigger arches and a bonnet bulge to accomodate it’s vauxhall XE ‘redtop’ engine. It’s a fair deviation from how Lotus intended it to look but I thiink it looks like a rolling work of art, assuming that is you can see past the dust, rust and cobwebs.

The plan id to get it race ready, no mean feat but one we’re all set for. So far we’ve got it running and resolved a few cooling problems. The next obstacle was freeing off the brakes which wasn’t too hard, but then found that they wouldn’t bleed back up again. The master cylinder had seized so once that was replaced and several tight bleed nipples freed off it had brakes once again. Now we’re down to the nitty gritty of getting it set up and all those little details that take so much time but I can’t wait to see the car back on the race track

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Mallory Park PPC Show

Friday, June 18th, 2010

AA Silencers was out in force at this years PPC show. We ran several cars there and drove the Practical Performance Car magazines Porsche on their behalf as the other magazine staff members were rather busy organising the event. Several staff members and customers drove on track in array of cars and the AA Silencers Capri was busy all day long giving passenger rides. The trade stand was busy with enquiries ranging from geomtry set up information to aerodynamic devices and engine conversions.

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Full of hot air

Friday, June 11th, 2010

We do lots of development work on this customers track day car. Work is always done on sensible budgets so it’s enjoyable engineering solutions to a cost and often using parts which aren’t quite meant to fit. It seems more fun trying to engineer a way to fit a round peg in a square hole rather than spend 2 thousand pounds on a brand new billet aluminium square peg or a carbon fibre round hole.

This time we had to make a few adaptions up to mount a larger turbo. All of the flanges and pipes need making for air, oil and water. Next on the list was to pipe in the largest radiator we could squeeze between the chassis rails and not infringe on the intercooler. Once this was done we decided residual underbonnet temperatures would be no good for the air intake so it had to be moved. Fortuantely this car hasn’t been seen by an MoT tester for some time so lights are an unecessary luxury, and a perfect place to scoop up some cold air.

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Moggy 2000 update

Friday, March 12th, 2010

It might not look like much has happened on the moggy but there’s hours of work happened to get the zetec engine to fit. It’s now been mated to the type 9 gearbox and all of the associated clutch issues dealt with. Engine and gearbox mounts have been made and some more chassis work done to accomodate the final assembly. The radiator just fits into the front panel so now we have lots more fianl dressing of the engine bay and then the endless task of wiring and piping. Next on the build list is the prop and exhaust manifold!

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MGZS T16

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

We’ve worked closely with this customer for some time and his skills and ideas have become ever more adventurous. When faced with the usual K series headgasket failure he was easily talked into a T16 engine conversion. He has tackled a lot of the work himself including wiring and hydraulic installations  but the mechanical engineering side has been left to us. The process is fairly simple- line up the driveshafts, get the engine as low as possible and make some  mounts. Then all you have to worry about is  the fact that none of the driveshafts are the right length and nothing else on the car fit’s the engine. It’s during a project like this you realise how many things there are connected to an engine. We’re currently working on new front suspension location points to give better traction and make the most of the new engine position. Development of cars like this is never ending but the owners enthusiasm seems endless so we’ve plenty to work with. 

DSCF1611 The rear wing is nothing to do with us by the way!

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Moggy 2000

Monday, February 1st, 2010

If you have an old classic and love the character but get tired of the gasping little engine you have 2 options. Modify the engine which may cost a lot to return a little or modfiy the car the take a better engine. I favour plan B as did our customer when he brought in his Morris Minor. Various options were discussed but a Ford Zetec 2.0l from a Mondeo was the power plant of choice.  Rear wheel drive conversions with this engine are well documented and it’s a nice tractable and readily available engine so all we had to do was work out how to make it fit!

There were a few small problems such as the steering rack being in the way and the engine bay not being long enough but as each challenge develops so do the solutions. It’s lovely watching a project like this grow. There’s still a long way to go but here’s a few snaps of the story so far.

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Residential MK1 Escort

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Progress has been slow on our residential MK1 as we’ve been very busy of late. the snow in January stopped a few customers reaching us we had the time to get some done on it. We left it last time with very little floor and as welded began so more rust became apparent and more floor needed replacing. The metal that wasn’t rusty was like tissue paper so welding in structural modifications such as 4 link boxes or a roll cage without extra strength being added wouldn’t have been wise. After much welding, grinding, swearing and welding again the car finally has a large proportion of it’s major components and a floor pan strong enough to build in to. There’s a few finishing touches underneath then on to the roll cage.

 

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A Mk1 that didn’t need welding!

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Another Mk1 Escort joined us recently and this one had already had all the welding done on it.  The shell certainly seemed solid and it was built to a simple, honest, budget DOES matter standard and I loved it. It’s so nice to see one that hasn’t just had thousands heaped on it and is too valuable to use. This car will see some road rallies and maybe some stage rallies in it’s future. The owner wasn’t happy with the seating position or the seats so we made some subframes to fit some mazda mx5 seats. It also needed an alternator to solve a charging problem and some brackets making up. Nice easy jobs and a great car.

 

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