When I build a ground-up custom Ferralfa, I know who I want to build my engine... ;)
You guys are tooo funny. Lana already made me throw out the big pile of chips. These cams with the longer than planned durations are giving me some odd results in the sim software. It's saying I really want to put the intake in at about 102 lobe center on the intake and run about a 112 Lobe separation angle....then a 14" intake track and. serioiusly short headers with 10" primaries and 12.5 " collectors. We'll what what I get once I have the final cam numbers ans I'll probably ask Burns stainless to run it through their software too.....10" is a WAY short header tube.
The motec guys are still saying only special projects will be selected for beta testing. I told them there will be a lot of dissapointed ferrari guys when they learn this project isn't special. This is looking like a dead end.
Have they SEEN this thread? Dude, you friggin completely redesigned a f'n Ferrari engine!!! What part of SPECIAL doesn't this fit in? How about the Big Stuff guys? Do they have anything that may fit your bill? Only special projects... If they don't choose you, then I sure as hell won't use their engine management software for the 4 rotor street car I'm planning. I'll have my computer genius friend build me an ECU from scratch if I have to. Good gawd, they're on crack. They need to read this thread from start to finish, not just skim through it. I wonder how we'd make them do that. LOL
Get us an email address at Motec that they won't mind being flooded with requests that they "bless" your project as "special"!! Probably wouldn't go over well if we flooded the email address for sales though would it?
Yeh, they are pretty short.....They would look like the porsche Le Mans car headers. When I was playing with the tuning it was the low end believe it or not that drove the lenghts down. There were a few nasty dips, one right at 3000rpm that all but went away with this set up. I think the peak hp was up around 850 hp this way, I had it as high as 875 with a longer intake stack and a little different cam timing, but that tuning created a 50 ft-ft torqu dip at 3000 rpm. I'll play around a lot more once I get final cam numbers....I just wanted to see how afraid I should be of the additional duration the cam guy felt he had to add to hit the lift numbers and as expected it took some doing to get idle-5000 to play nice.
Lets give it another few days for me to work on them a little more. I'm trying to understand how exactly they do development and whether I would even want my engine involved in it or if it would really be better to wait and pay/pay more and start with a more finished product. I want to be certain risk to my engine is limited and I'm not convinced yet that that would be the case for "special" projects. I suspect being "special" has a lot to do with the size of the check that comes along with the request for special treatment vs my request that is an attempt at avoiding writing a check all together
Another note on the SHORT headers. The way I was playing with them last night was the primaries are 10” step tubes going from 1.625 to 1.75 and the collector was a 12.5” megaphone going from 2” to 2.25” so the whole thing as an assembly should in theory act like a 22.5” taper tube which I think is about the right length for this engine and that is why the hp numbers looked good. Every time I tried using more normal lengths like 22” primaries then the collector I kept getting at least 2 spots at about 3000 and 5000 where the pulses just added up all wrong and produced 50+ ft-lb drops in the torque. With the short headers that all goes away….but they just seem wrongly short. I’m going to need to talk to someone with more header knowledge before I make any plans I think. The other complication is the cam specs I’m working with now seem to really want to be tuned up around 10k-10.5k vs the 9k-9.5k the original specs I was looking for would do. This led me to have to change a lot of stuff to get everything playing nice and in the correct rpm range. I had to roll the cam lobe centers off the nominal 110 points, and that changes all the pulses in the intake and exhaust systems giving results like the very best intake track length came out to 17” and with matched headers p gave 876 hp peak at 8800 rpm….but I have no idea how I would get a 17” intake length and I had those nasty 3k/5k dips. I was able to find exactly 1 combination that seemed to work well and the tolerances were pretty tight at +/- 0.25” on the header lengths, and maybe +/- 0.5” on the intake length. Usually I see more like +/- 1.0” in the headers lengths.
Yeh that will play a part in any final set up too. Heres tuned with an 18 intake length vs an 11. The peak numbers are maybe 20 hp different but the longer stack pulls a lot better from 4k-8.5k vs needing to spin it to 9.5k to find the peak with the shorted stack. Ill probably end up with about an 11 inch intake track (measured from the back of the intake valve to the top of the stack, so about 4 is in the head) for packaging reasons, but the longer length sure is appealing. Image Unavailable, Please Login
As I mentioned before Mark, breathtaking work, and an inspiration for many. You have my utmost respect. Brian.
It's all going to come down to timing think. They are further along then I realized and I'm further behind then I'd like so they might be done before I'm ready to go....it's hard to say. I should be rolling again in the next 2 weeks but I've got a lot of work to do. If my engine is not in the car and waiting for an ecu by spring I've probably missed the boat I'm guessing.
Im trying to get my head into getting rolling again .Im thinking it might be easier with less welding to build the manifold right on to the head instead of trying to construct a new flange on the head from weld like I did on the test port. That means the first order of business will be to drop the engine in the car and the hood on to see what can be done with the intake track length. I want 16, the next best thing is 11.5 it looks like and the difference is about 20hp. Once the engine is on the car I may go ahead and build the headers. That way the engine shouldnt need to go back in until final assembly and also when I get going on the heads I can stay on them straight through assembly then plastic bag them until the block is assembled in theory. I need to get EFI car out of my shop
Kind of reminds me of a project I saw many years ago, an old VW beetle with a Chrysler hemi V8 where the front seats used to be, think it had a regular American auto trans. Pretty crude, but audacious, street-legal, and over the top for the time (early 1970s) But this...Pure, wonderful applied insanity! The guy is a master; watching him work on it was as good as hearing it fire up.
Hes just showing off because his runs ..Im guessing it doesnt run for long though as that is an air cooled engine mounted inside a closed car I sent my engine info to the Burns guys yesterday to see what they think about headers. I should hear back in a few days then I can order material so it here and waiting when efi car goes away. I was forgetting I need the headers to finish the heads anyway I cant flow the exhaust side with no exhaust.
Agree on air cooled run time....it's an ultra-eccentric project, for sure, and not streetable in the usual sense! I've been watching yours near since you started. Carefull done, great project, and practical as a street car.
Cam guy says he's got 4 lobes picked out to test grind for the intake....a few more days. I had a nice talk with Vince at Burns Stailess today about my exhaust system......he knew of the project. I was thinking 12 into 4 step headers....Vince assures me that is the wrong answer. What I need is 12 into 4 into 2 and out with at least 3" tail pipes and if possible an X or H pipe would be good too. He says if I do it this way I won't have the nasty holes in the torque curve I was getting. Who knew.... This is going to be a challenge to fit I think. I'm going to have to get the engine in and start thinking about how to do it so I'm ready to roll the day efi car goes home which will be soon. Also, I think I found valve springs and Ti retainers set up for shim under bucket that will fit....I need to get a couple more measurements, but they seem right. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Yes it does! Victor and I dropped the engine in this evening. It looks like the intake track at 11" the injectors are just touching the deck lid mesh. With a wider scoop I could get to maybe 13"......I think I'll go with the too short 11" and see what happens, I can always make a new deck lid to allow the longer stacks later once it's running if I feel I absolutely need it. I also took a couple pics of the spave the headers need to fit in....it will be tight but it looks possible to get the 6 into 2 into 1 header in there and then exit over the bell housing and then somehow get an X pipe connecting the the rear bank.....maybe. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Engine looks good in the car Mark. I removed the screens from under the rear deck louvers. It bought me a little more space above the engine and it can't hurt air flow. I also shaved the bottoms of some of the louvers to get more clearance for the throttle bodies. It doesn't really show on the outside. You may be aware already but Burns sells ultra thin stainless rod to help keep the weld beads really small and the Solar flux they sell saves you from having to back-purge your stainless tubing welds. You just need to be real careful to keep the flux on the inside of the tube joint. If any gets on the outside it generates a red flame (with TIG) that makes it hard to see what you're doing.
