DDK - Die Deutschen Klassiker

Yes, 4500rpm in first to almost 6000, pull 2nd and open the carbs to the max (etc)

RR is amble to 4th and from about 3000 floor the throttle and to the red line or power tail-off. Record 269 bhp in my case.

Shelsley Walsh: Practice day.

What a bummer of a day.
Went to Shelsley read for some action with my new silencers and full of promise.
Not so.
The engine behaved just in the worst way ever, absolutly flat as a pancake, 'climbing' the hill in a lathargic 44 seconds, a full 10 seconds longer than my previous best this year.
What misery.

After some consultsations I made my own mind up and when home to get my old Custom Chrome silencers, removed the Techcraft ones and just made it back on track to get my second practice run.

The car was back to it's normal self, slow but at least it goes.

Cut a low 35 second run, 9 seconds better than with the wizzo straight through silencers...
The plugs are as sooty as a victorian town house chimney pipe.

It just has to be the fueling and the balance of the whole carb/headers/silencers.

Going back to the rollers next week and see if we can straighten it all out.

Desperate!

Bloody THING!! Just WHEN will it ever pay back?

Graham

Sorry to hear of your frustrating day.

Knowing the hillclimb paddock, it is usually full of very helpful characters. If you don't have the gear, i am sure there is someone(or ones) with an adjustable timing light and a carb balancer.

Perhaps you could have a look at the carb balance and ignition settings before your timed runs, just to check these basic settings.

If these are fine then, it's something else, that maybe can't be sorted out on the day, but at least you can go to Bob's knowing that those settings are OK.

Interesting that the potentially lesser exhaust back pressure gave less performance, especially so spectacularly, very strange.

It is difficult as you know Mike to do much in the busy paddock, but here i've removed the restrictive (are they?) silencers of the original rolling road test, replace with straight through Techcraft silencers and the thing is seriously flat, as in very very flat.
I could not believe it.

Even crawling through the paddock to the start line at one point i thought I'd selected 3rd, not first!

So, add back pressure and the engine runs better!??

Bob has a lot of thinking to do.
One theory is the mixture is so rich it cannot explode well, some said it sounded like a miss-fire was 'present' and others said black smoke came out on launching at the line.
The plugs are so dry and sooty it is untrue.

Without other size jets there is nothing i can do.

I have never had so much aggro with any other engine in my life, incliding a very irritating Frog model aero engine and my Lambretta 2 stroke.

Good news though is the gearchange is very nice.

You should take it to Wayne Schofield - he always seems to get rave reviews.

Hi Graham, I've been following this thread for ages now and have been fascinated by it! The trials and tribulations played out here for us all to share
echo my own restoration project and the problems that are thrown at us, I'm yet to reveal my latest set back! I hope my feeble attempt to help may
be of some use......

At 2am this morning working with Neil Bainbridge in his engine dyno room, we came to a stop on testing a special engine he currently has running in
the cell. As we sat mulling over cam timing with maximum lift and duration charts and my head spinning with degrees and number overload, I
mentioned your problem described the symptoms and wondered out loud if an engine dyno over a rolling road may help, Neil's response straight away
was it would make no difference as the problem you have is fuel surge!

Now forgive me if you have already been down this road, or 'up' the road in your case, but Neil say's that with a hillclimb engine set up the carburettors
will not cope with the gravity and g forces put on them with the fast acceleration off the line, sharp braking, hard cornering and especially on sticky slicks
the on/off style of motion will cause the fuel will surge in the chambers and create the flat spots not giving you the linear power delivery you need for
fast times.

The solution is to modify the chambers to compensate for the surge, this is done by bonding in a small plate to change the shape of the chamber which
then keeps the delivery of the fuel constant. With Webers he say's there is also a small area you can grind out as well to help compensate for the
problem and change the shape. This is a racing engineer's fix for a known problem with these carburettor's working under extreme conditions, it's also of
course one of the reasons fuel injection was developed!

Hope that's of some help.

Thank you Mike for thinking about this Lola at 2.00am!
I appreciate the idea, and these are detailed in Bruce Anderson's book on 'race tuning webers'.
It is certainly worth the thought, but i will say the car does not stutter or fade while up the hill, just dosen't go very well considering 270 bhp in a 600Kg car, about 440 bhp/ton.
Thing should scare me to death, it seems just a pleasent quick run..

Of course, on a rolling road there are no such dynamics to contend with.

I will discuss with Bob as he certainly respects Neil's talent.

Race Day at Shelsley Walsh.

I was determined this was not to be a bloody grey day. Fed-up with Grey Days and this Lola.

I was determined to come away with a personal best today, and as the grey skys cleared to a fab British Summers Day, I was up for it!

First run up the hill was started with a screaming tyre warm pre start where I hurled to the start line to stop (just) in a 4 wheel lock up.

Prior to this I had been blipping the throttle to clear the engine's throat, good boy-racer stuff, and certainly pumps you up!

I had a chat with the car at this stage, quite un typeable, and off we started , 5000 rpm dump the clutch and hand to the gear lever for 2nd all ready.
Take second (MikeB if you are reading this it sure does shift well now after your work) and slam the throttle down.

Slide over to a tight 3rd and slam the throttle again, eeeassse of the tap a little to round two precarious curves and off up the very steep straight.

Hang on to third all the way, to the r-r-r-ev limiter and prepare for the dive into Bottom Esse, stab the brakes just a touch, sneak down to second and through to the Top Esse, sqeeeeze the accellerator down in 2nd, to 3rd, to 4th (Mike, I thought of you then and said a big thank you) and scoot to the finishing line and ease on the brakes to park up at the top.

A personal best of 33.62, 93 mph over the finish line.

This car listens to it's driver.

Second run in the hotter afternoon came close at 33.88/ 94 mph but I know where the time was left behind. I'll have it back next time (next year)

Two more events to go, and that will be it for 2011, so down to Bob's I hope for a serious tune-up and to Prescott in a fortnights time.

If Bob is too busy, I'll leave it alone and get it done out of season.

Have to say I was feeling very confident in the car, snatching the gear, planting the throttle and from where I was sitting it felt and sounded good.

I enjoyed today.

To to put things into perspective, my fellow class mate running a Millington engined 2.5 litre Pilbeam hillclimb Sports racer cut a 28.27 run when I did the 33.62, so I have a way to go.

From all this it does look like the car is simply running too rich. I hope this is the case so the fix is simple and cheap (just for once.)

Bloody Race Cars.

Graham, I was there spectating on Saturday. I came down to the paddock to see if I could spot you at lunch time, but your car was all alone and lonely. Wasn't quite sure if you'd wrung it's neck so to speak. It looks lovely. Anyway, glad to hear race day improved for you. Dave

I think i had done a runn'a and gone for the old silencers.
You saw the car at it's worst this year, a real stagger up the hill, embarrassing.

Now booked into Bob Watson's for a re-tune, so Prescott will be better!
Will re-jet to suit the free flow Techcraft silencers.
Bob sounded confident he can sort it.

It will be good when the car goes well as it is wearing a bit thin now.

Met a surprising number of people who follow the threads running on the car.

There are two really strong ones, this one on DDK at 19K ish hits and the true whopper on Ten Tenths at a staggering 75,000 hits, generating about 1000 hits a week.

Now, if only the flippin car would go as well...!

I think i am also short shifting the car too much, and thinking over Xmas of fitting a light when peak power is reached, but sometimes I get lazy and run to the rev limiter, usually in 3rd between bends, both bad habbits.

Another mystery is the exhaust gas velocity is not even on one bank to the other, so we will look at the leak-down test again before the rollers start....

It needs to be right for Prescott as the car is to feature in an unusual publication and the snappers will be there for action shots.

What a mess I'm in.

Report from Bob is not good.
Engine on the rollers with the free-flow silencers resulted in a staggering 140 bhp. no wonder it felt flat.
Leak-down test hot gave one cylinder at 20% down, one at 16% and the rest ok. So, the re-ring was not too good!

Combustion is crack-on, plugs light brown so is the lambda sensor tip.

Took the silencers off totally and the result was the same!

Took the carb filters off, the engine breather pipe that had kinked straightendand got 190 bhp.

So I'm gutted.

I really do not know where to turn except get rid of the bloody engine/box (some nice bits on both) and put a Subaru engine in it or simply sell the lot and go back to my trusty 911 and kiss the whole fiasco goodby.

Collecting the thing tomorrow, pay the bill and fit the old silencers and race over the weekend.

Utterly p!!ssed-off. I'm just fed up of being fed-up.

I really feel for you, it is a bit of a mess.

What happened to the 260 odd you got last time? Is that now the 190? What was Bob's advice?

Graham

Hi Graham,

I've gone through your thread and it's certainly been quite a roller coaster ride and it appears great fun along the way.

I'm in no position to comment or offer advice although all I can say is that it doesn't seem like much beats you!

You mentioned to me recently that DDK is great at picking you up when you're down and hope this rings true for you.

I expect there will be many who follow your thread who will also be feeling your pain.

Chin up and good luck.
Darren

Just had a good chat to a very old (20 year) friend who has seen the thread.
I've known John for a long time!

It does help chatting about this on line and by phone.

I find it really irritating and to some degree embarrasing that I'm in this position.
I really like the porsche in a lola combination, but if it will not work then it has to go.
I'm here with the car to hillclimb not mess with a duff combination.

However, why shouldn't this engine work?

The only conclusion is that with fresh piston/barrels it should be fixed. £3000 I'll bet plus all the rest, so 4K to get it done.

4K will get me a 400 bhp Impreza and a sound box, and i can hillclimb quickly with that! (550 bhp/ton)

Just so much time, effort and shear hard bloody work has been poured into this car let alone the $$$$.

I don't want to think about it.

Will chat with Bob tomorrow when i feel more determined and see what he thinks.

If I rebuild the top of the engine, will it suddenly work?

Not sure if he's a carb man, but you should talk to Wayne Schofield - at least get a second opinion. A friend of mine had all sorts of bother getting his car setup (including spending fair amounts with Bob) and Wayne sorted it out in a day.

Car back in the garage after the first practice run.
Transmission failed again as it has before, no second, just a blank.

Engine dog rough even with the other lousey silencers on, dissapointing, embarrasing and i'm simple done with it.

Car up for sale on another thread. Maybe somene clever can fix it up.

If it does not sell then I will change the engine and box for something that works.
The specialists I've used have tried their best to sort my problems and I'm grateful to them for their efforts and help, but enough is enough.

There is only so much a poor old hillclimber can take! 3 years and more, £22K and a billion hours have got me nowhere.

If the car does not sell, then an Audi V6 and box sounds good.

Fuel injected, bomb proof, potent. A few engineering issues to resolve but ok, the winter project has started!

Such a shame, crackin' looking motor, breaks your heart!