Off Road Success

[rcutler]

Just realised I posted that picture on Page Three of this thread. (No Sun jokes please!)

[amazing 1]

I meant pics of the engine swap.Etc.

[rcutler]

I don't have any pictures of the new engine, have to leave that to Mark.

[mgmark]

I meant pics of the engine swap.Etc.

Dismantling the knackered turbo did not reveal any internal damage to the impeller or fins, and the noise it was making was very much a bearing thing, however, we will be doing a precautionary oil change just to make sure.   I'll take the camera this weekend and post some pics next week- just with the way the engine goes in, how it is packaged and where the ancillaries sit compared to the 2.5, it's a neater looking and more compact installation, which has also allowed us to refine the intercooler/radiator insatllation which should provide us with even better cooling capacity.   

MG Mark

[amazing 1]

Sounds great,looking forward to the pics.

Just curiuos though.Will you be able to use a variable waste gate on the turbo.

The racing you do are they timed events where speed is the essential?Or are they like a trials event where slow is the key?

[mgmark]

Sounds great,looking forward to the pics.

Just curiuos though.Will you be able to use a variable waste gate on the turbo.

The racing you do are they timed events where speed is the essential?Or are they like a trials event where slow is the key?

The wastegate is variable (vacuum controlled) and has variable vanes as well.   The events are speed events - imagine WRC but  off road and you pretty much have it.   

The replacement turbo is in and the first test in a local farmer's field today (before competing this weekend) was v. successful.   A couple of minor snags were resolved on the spot and it runs beautifully.   Not just beautifully but like a scalded cat with a bunch of lit fireworks up its ar*e - the difference in perfromance is truly awesome - now difficult to keep up with the gear changing, so we may look at upping the ratios depending on whether it tops out too early on the straights.   Off up to Driffield tomorrow, and racing on Saturday and Sunday.

MG Mark

[Martini...LB]

Sounds great,looking forward to the pics.

Just curiuos though.Will you be able to use a variable waste gate on the turbo.

The racing you do are they timed events where speed is the essential?Or are they like a trials event where slow is the key?

The wastegate is variable (vacuum controlled) and has variable vanes as well.   The events are speed events - imagine WRC but  off road and you pretty much have it.   

The replacement turbo is in and the first test in a local farmer's field today (before competing this weekend) was v. successful.   A couple of minor snags were resolved on the spot and it runs beautifully.   Not just beautifully but like a scalded cat with a bunch of lit fireworks up its ar*e - the difference in perfromance is truly awesome - now difficult to keep up with the gear changing, so we may look at upping the ratios depending on whether it tops out too early on the straights.   Off up to Driffield tomorrow, and racing on Saturday and Sunday.

MG Mark

Hey

Good luck fella


>Martini...

[mgmark]

Thanks for the good wishes chaps.   The weather was too sh*te to take any pictures - cold, freezing, gales, hail, rain etc etc.   A good course, very wet and muddy, but unfortunately we succumbed to first round gremlins, having not had any testing to speak of before the event.   We managed two runs before we reached the "unfixable on site" stage.   An intermittent electronic fault kept cutting the engine in a random way (which restarted on the button, but it's still not nice losing all power when you need it) and halfway through the second run, the turbo decided it had had enough - later diagnosed as an over-pressure on oil (104 psi) blowing the seals.   How that happened is unknown as yet.    So not an entirely successful first round, but never mind - that's racing and we have a 2 month gap to the next one to diagnose, fix and test..... I'll post some pix of the engine installation soon

Mark

[mgmark]

Should have added - when it was running on song, it doesn't half go now........

Mark

[Steve Pyro]

Congratulations and commiserations Mark.

I little inter-round tweaking to do, then you'll be flying around the course.

[Papa Lazarou]

Good to here that the engine transplant and upgrade has been worthwhile, if a little frustrating on your first outing.  I bet you can't wait o get out in her again.

It's a pity there isn't a round of the championship over here in Northern Ireland or I'd come to show my support.  Did I see the Scottish round has been change too?

Good luck!

Patrick.

[mgmark]

Right - here goes with an update, having got a few spare minutes after getting back off holiday and caught up at work.

We had a very frustrating second round at Ellesmere back at the beginning of June a coupe of weeks before Le Mans, with the car's engine seemingly running well (but still cutting out randomly occasionally).   However, we appeared to be very short on gearing, whereby the only gear that resulted in anything like acceleration before running out of revs was fourth, and the top speed from that was pretty lamentable.   And drastically over-fuelled.   Still managed some half credible times, but only just on our pace of last year, so something was wrong.   The something became even worse when we lost drive to 2 of the wheels on one run (a sheared halfshaft) and the competitor wa*ker driving the vehicle running behind us caught us up, and couldn't be ar*ed to wait as we pulled over to let him through.   Result - he punted us up the rear end - no damage to him, but a severely bent radius arm and cracked chassis mount to us put paid to anything else for that weekend.  So not a good weekend.

Once we got back to the workshop and stripped things down, the source of the gearing issue became apparent, once we had worked out that our gearing ratios should have been giving us the right sort of speeds - although the gearbox internals had been seriously strengthened, we suspected that the culprit was the torque convertor (untouched) not being able to handle the extra power and torque.   True enough once it had been split, every single impeller fin was bent over virtually flat.   The acceleration in fourth was only there because, unable to get drive any other way, when it got into fourth, the top gear lock up came into play, hence getting decent drive only in fourth.   

With that re-done, and the repairs to rear end (which once we had stripped it also revealed that the axle casing had been bent as well, so that was a complete strip and replace job!) and the remaining fuelling/ECU issues, we decided that although it was running (after a fashion) we would give the Scotland round a miss - a heck of a long way to travel only to be non-competitive again, particularly as having blown two rounds, we would not be in with a shout for anything this year), but would concentrate on getting the thing fixed and running properly in time for the Welsh rounds.   That has now been achieved, with the ECU issue resolved properly and it niether cuts out nor over-fuels.   Running tests last weekend reveal that we are now back to the earliest scalded cat promise shown at the start of the first round.

So, the next round is on 9/10 September at Radnor forest in Wales http://www.offroadrally.com/Information/Venues/RadnorForest/tabid/198/Default.aspx.   Hopefully, we should be a damn sight quicker there than so far this year!   See you there if anyone fancies coming along.

MG Mark

[rcutler]

Mark,

Good news about the repair of the car, I would love to attend the next round but have commited on going to Britcar 24hours at Silverstone. I hope to make the last round at Hafren Forest if you are able to make it there.

If you are only attending one round in Wales let me know and I will try my best to come along.

Good Luck but most of all have FUN!

For those of you who have not seen offroad racing it is great fun! No FIA getting in the way and a real way to get up and close to motorsport!

[mgmark]

Mark,

Good news about the repair of the car, I would love to attend the next round but have commited on going to Britcar 24hours at Silverstone. I hope to make the last round at Hafren Forest if you are able to make it there.

If you are only attending one round in Wales let me know and I will try my best to come along.

We are definitely aiming to make both the Radnor and Hafren rounds, so the only thing that will keep us away from Hafren willl be if the wagon gets competely stuffed at Radnor - aim on heading for the Hafren round and we'll see you there if you can make it.

MG Mark

[mgmark]

We're getting there in stages is probably the best description of last weekend's round in South Wales.   The engine is now running reliably and consistently, without randomly cutting out (it was fuel mapping issue that caused it to do so before).  Having optimised the size of the intercooler, the turbo is now boosting as it should up to 20psi, but we now need to sort the sensitivity of the wastegate valve to get better pick up and tune the fuelling as it is underfuelled.   Can't remember who was asking, but I have got pictures of the engine installation now which I'll post when I have downloaded them from the camera.   

We had a good 7 runs on the Saturday on a very fast and flowing course on graveltracks and rocky sections, although the fuel tank decided to spring a leak on the fifth run of the day from the pounding the car was getting, it was fixed with liquid metal and enabled us to get out for the last two runs.   Sunday's runs started well, but on the second a cloud of transmission oil smoke in the cockpit during the second run gave us a clue that all was not well.   We managed to trickle it back to the paddock, to find that one of the gear retaining nuts in the transfer gearbox had worked its way loose off the shaft and punched a hole in the casing.   Thankfully no major damage done, but that was the end of our weekend.

From the good runs that we did get, a comparison of our times against the front runners reveals that compared to last year on a fast course like that where were running about 2 minutes off their pace, it is now a minute off their pace.   So there is a big improvement with more to come from our 3 litre oil burner against the big petrol V8s.  We are getting there and hopefully should be in line for a good end to this season - we could do with it!

MG Mark