LMAO!!! Reason I asked is it looks like something I might be able to afford lol!?!?! The first Ferrari powered Miata...
Huge progress. Pulled 'er out of the shop and have done multiple pulls for tuning without the engine lid. A wideband AFR meter is priceless for this. I got her tuned good enough that I decided to put the engine cover on and check the final fit of everything. I discovered some inteference with the air cleaners but I can move them enough to make them work. They fit perfectly in the hump but the offset of the banks made the rear air cleaner intefere with the edge of the hump by the amount of the bank offset. Modifying the air cleaners will be pretty easy now though. I know ... pics and video needed cheers
How did the engine pull, and I forget what cams you are running in this thing. Early carb cams I think? Still using your custom aluminum cut headgaskets? Great news Sean. Glad it's out and about
She pulled great. I only have a 500 ft strip to do my initial pulls right now but it's pretty steep. In first gear I slammed the pedal to the floor at 2k and she did not hesitate one bit. Yes they are the early higher lift carb cams. I'm also running my aluminum head gaskets. They are sealing fine so far but I had issues on my other driver, primarily due to sleeve protrusion not being correct. I ended up making a seperate fire ring insert for that motor. No issue to do that for these gaskets if they start leaking. I'm going to try and get something to fail while it's in this car so when I swap motors with my other driver that has the suspension mod's I can address any "minor" issues like head gaskets LOL. Here's a couple pics. The front air cleaner had to be tilted a bit to clear the lid as she closes ... plenty of room once she closes though. I tilted the rear air cleaner the same amount for symmetry ... can't really tell in the pic. I don't think there will be any air cleaner restriction or restriction due to lack of clearance above the velocity stacks. cheers Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I'm seriously about ready to get a plane ticket and make a video of this thing on my own. For the good of the Ferrari world of course. Looking fantastic Sean. Is it quicker than your other car?
Thanks John ... I took some video last night but haven't even had a chance to even look at it let alone post if IF it's worthy . It's really hard to tell what she's like compared to my other motor 'cause I've not had a chance to really wind 'er up (driveway isn't long enough to get over 6k rpm before I have to brake) and I'm far from optimizing timing/accelerator pump/mixture, etc. I expect this motor to be much stronger but we'll see. I have a telemetry setup with accelerometers so I'll know it's not in my head, whichever is faster . cheers
I've got quite a few miles on 'er now. This engine has a completely different personality than my other EFI motor that has the stock injection cams. At low rpm this motor pulls like a "Chevy" in comparison to the other motor, but because it pulls so hard below 6000 rpm once I go over that engine speed I can really feel the tq fall off. I was looking at some dyno charts for the carb cams and I think this is the personality of these cams. I think once over 6k rpm the pull is actually about the same as my other EFI. I haven't calibrated my telemetry to get actual g force numbers. Initial numbers without fully calibrating looks about the same over 6k rpm, but a lot more tq down below. I wasn't expecting this and am thinking about advancing all the cams a bit. I really like spooling these motors to redline. I drove a euro dry sump carb car and recall thinking the exact same thing that I am thinking about this motor ... there is no need to get even close to redline when shifting ... totally different experience than my other motor. Here's another comparison. I have an old air cooled 911 with a 3.2. I never feel the need to rev the motor past 6500 rpm. She has gobs of torque down low and it really falls off the higher you rev. This is very similar to how this Ferrari motor feels. After a few weeks I'll see if I warm up to the lower rpm tq curve ... then I'll decide if I want to play with cam timing, put in the other Web cam grinds I have, or put some miles on 'er as she is. cheers Image Unavailable, Please Login
A couple pics of the wiring after spending a bit of time yesterday cleaning things up. Building wiring looms can be a bit frustrating ... sometimes it is almost like an art form. I'm going to mount the MSD and ECU in the left side of the trunk area on a plate or bracket of some kind so I can just remove the entire unit with all the wiring and put it in another car easily. There are only 2 looms running to the engine not including the connectors to the coil on plugs. I also want to come up with a slick way of mounting and moving my telemetry. I have a harness mount in my other car to put it on. I kinda want to put it in the trunk because I have multiple oxygen sensors to hook up also. If I put it in the trunk I will be able to run all that wiring to the main telemetry and then run to the passenger compartment with a serial cable, instead of running all the data cables up to the passenger compartment ... that's my thought for now. cheers Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Having build Miata with ITB's I gotta love this! Hard reving flatplane crank engine with ITB's, it doesnt get better than this. It must sound extremely good and be insanely loud without filters. I know mine was loud, standing still with hood open and giving revs suddently made friends admiring the setup jump back 3ft. Please, can I see and specially hear a video of it, drive by's, in car and WOT fly by's.
I haven't been around for a while, but WOW, you've made some nice progress Sean! You are using early carb cams, right? Are these the same as the GT4 Euro cams? I'm running those and torque dropping over 6000 rpm is definitely NOT the personality that they are showing me. On the contrary. They seems to be pulling harder and harder the more rpm they are producing. This contrary to the (US spec) 1987 328 of my ex GF, which indeed was a lot like a non-M BMW engine (lots of oomph low down, dropping off as rpms rise). Are you getting enough air in or does it stagnate in your intakes somewhere?
hmmm ... I will definitely play around with some things. Hans you have always had a very good running engine. I think you posted a dyno curve right? If you haven't I would really like to see an acceleration curve for your car. There are many inexpensive devices out there that will give you a graph. Do you absolutely know that your car has the stock cams? Ferraripilot ... did you get your rebuilt motor pulling hard to redline or did you feel a big tq fall off. SamuliS ... hopefully tomorrow I'll take someone for a ride with a camera in hand. I need to buy a suction cup device also. I thought my other 308 with EFI sounded good but compared to this beast it sounds "generic" LOL. I just have some generic mufflers on it right now. The sound is the intake noise. Regarding running out of air, I think I've seen carb cars with air cleaners just sitting on top of the carbs without the fresh air intake ... do they run out of air with this config or is the fresh air really only for the extra couple hp? Also, I have about 1" from the top of my velocity stacks to the underside of the air cleaner. That ends up being about double the area for flow of a throtte body so I don't think the restriction would be there. The other thing I haven't done yet is machine a taper in the velocity stacks ... they are just straight and the same diameter as the entry into the TB's ... would this be creating a choke point? I wouldn't think so because it was my thought that these TB's were oversize. I could do some very short stacks like I've seen on the TWM's which would give me another 1/2"-1" clearance above the stack and completely radius the entry corner to blend with the TB ... there would be no 4 degree taper then ... just the radius blending right to throttle body bore ... any thoughts about this? Appreciate any thoughts and input ... especially driving impressions from well sorted carb guys. Like I mentioned I drove a euro dry sump car and the power band was very similar to this. cheers all
The early stock cams have a lot of torque down low but they did fall off a bit at around 6500-7k. I believe this was an issue of head airflow rather than cams though. Of the 2v engines with weaker cams I have driven, there was no fall off post 6500-7k, but there still wasn't nearly as much power. I think that's why you're feeling a difference really. Might want to try a different ignition curve perhaps making peak timing come in at say around 6k and then dropping a couple degrees through to 8k?
Thanks for the info John. I should be able to get my data acq box properly mounted today with a setup that makes it easy to move between cars ... be cool to see an actual acceleration comparison. I just bumped the timing up to 36 full. Something a tuner told me is you can actually dial in more timing after the torque peak ... logic being cylinder pressures are falling off so the engine will handle more timing. This engine runs great ... I'm just addicted to redline and getting near 8k rpm. Anyone here have a simulation program to see the implications of playing with cam timing a bit? cheers
No, I am not sure. I am the nth owner of this car, and the engine HAS been overhauled in the past. I do have the receipts for that, without the mentioning of other camshafts. Not sure though, as indeed mine is running very well. Here's my Dyno graph. I am not going to be doing acceleration test any time soon with all this salt on the roads, sorry... Image Unavailable, Please Login
Thanks for posting that Hans. I just backed out a couple of numbers from the speed ... so most likely you're in 4th gear, and it looks like you pulled all the way to 7k rpm (180 kmh) and it looks like the hp peak is about 160-170 kmh ... 6200-6600 rpm. I like looking at tq curves a lot more also because you can really see where the torque falls off. I should have my data acquisition properly mounted soon so I should get some good tq curve data. Yesterday I went for a romp and my motor is behaving very similar to this I think. As I stated earlier I think the tq fall off is what I'm feeling and wasn't really expecting after my experience with the anemic fuel injection cams. It is going to be really cool to have real accelerometer data comparing the pull of the two engines. I set my rev limiter around 7200 rpm yesterday and she's hits that mark pretty easy. Post a tq curve if you happen to have it ... thanks again and cheers, Sean
I should have some more graphs somewhere, including torque graphs and rpm rather than speed. I think. i'll have a look for you and will post if and when I find them.. H
Quick update. I machiend radii on the velocity stacks but she still didn't have the grunt to redline I was expecting. Pulled off the air cleaners (Mke advice) ... OMG! ... now I just need to do something with the suspension. I wanted to try and keep it somewhat stock but I just took my other 308 for a spin and that car is just so precise in comparison ... we'll see ... got lots of other things to tinker with before diving into the suspension on this car (actually just need to do the front but it's the shocks on all four corners that I'm on the fence about upgrading ... sooo many options out there). When I took the air cleaners off I just stood there staring at it for an hour or two ... I'm going to find it very difficult to cover the stacks up again so I'm contemplating some kinda lexan box like some of you guys are working on. ... or nothing at all ... Should be doing a dyno run pretty soon and I know ... you guys like video ... I like building things . cheers! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Thought I'd share a pic of where I put the ECU, MSD, etc. I've had the Haltech and MSD in my other car in this same location since 2006 but the ECU was mounted on the underside of the factory metal plate and the MSD was on top ... didn't like that 'cause if I ever needed to get to the ECU was a bit of a PITA. You can see the one wire I hook into the old digiplex harness which is key on. It still looks messy in the pic but once the carpet is trimmed properly (P.O. upgrade LOL) it looks really nice. The innovate box is my telemetry system and I move that between vehicles so definitely wanted to be able to get to that. cheers Image Unavailable, Please Login
I guess saying I told you so is too cheap here?? Good to hear that you've found those missing ponies!! How do you reckon the power compares to Webers??
Sean, put some chicken wire mesh on those babies and call it a day. Man, that picture of all that wiring reminds that I need to tackle my harness too.
