Westfield Elevens

I can only type with two fingers so I won't go into too much detail!

I shut the garage door on the XI last spring, and got on with the job of rebuilding our kitchen. Rudely interrupted for a month by having to learn BA SOPs (you wouldn't be interested in my translating that, honest) I finished the kitchen, and hence the entire downstairs of our house, in the week before Christmas. So, time to get the XI back on the road.

I'd put it away in disgust! After a major engine rebuild it sounded as sweet as...., but driving proved to be impossible. Inspection found that the engine was only running on 2 and 3. I could disconnect 1 and 4 at the same time, and the engine would run as smooth as any. Unsurprisingly it wouldn't drive though! Everything was checked! Nothing was wrong, yet putting a strobe to the engine suggested that not only was it only running on 2 cylinders, but it was firing 33deg BTDC at tickover!!

Don't try to diagnose this. Some very experienced A-series people stood in my garage and declared that they'd never seen anything like it before.........

So I put it away and got on with the house.

Earlier this week it was trailered away by Neil Slark (Slark Race Engineering). Brian, his father, was an original engineer with Downton and still puts in a few days a week in the machine shop. Neil is an ace at set-up and general race engineering. If anybody could get to the bottom of it, they could.......

Except they didn't have to. It's cured itself! It's running on all four (admittedly rather lumpily at tickover) and, corrected back to the crank, the freshly rebuilt, not yet run-in 1320 A is making (wait for it)

105bhp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, it's as cammy as hell. There's a huge hole at 3500 and the rest of the powerband looks like a 2-stroke race bike. Peak power is at 7500! This is a road car and I don't want to rebuild every 500 miles, so Neils suggestion is that we try slightly less extreme rockers (presently 1.5 Titan full rollers).

Oh, and it's on 4" skinny wires!

Fancy a race, Jon?

My 1380 gets over 100 HP at 5800 RPM at the rear wheels. About 125 or so at the clutch. I use a 6,500 RPM redline, though I can go safely to 7200. In any case, there is about 125 HP available.

I have built 3 of these engines, and all produce the same power. There are no holes in the power band and it pulls smoothly from 2300 RPM using an APT SPVP3 scatter pattern cam. The car goes 13.9 seconds and 101 in the quarter mile. This takes about 125 HP to do.

I would suggest that you take a good look at the cam timing and your carburetion.

What cam did you use? Duration and lift? Cam grinder's recommended rocker ratio?

Carburetion?

Your problem is unusual, and is probably due to a mismatch of parts or really wrong cam timing. My guess is that the cam is way too far retarded, probably out by about 5º or so. Or you simply have an inappropriate cam, and not enough compression.

One of my cars is on 185/70/13s, while the other is on 4.50 and 5.OO Dunlops. Much more fun on skinny tires.

My race 1330 makes 121hp on Northampton Motorsports rolling road. Not an "ultimate" spec engine, but respectable, given my self imposed 7000 rpm limit (for the sake of durability) and limited budget.
The high lift rockers won't make that much difference I suspect - it's duration that mostly makes a cam less driveable.
As Jan suggests though try to get it on a decent rolling road and get the timing and carb optimised. That should dial out any big holes or misfires. What they can't sort is then due to mismatched or incorrectly time components.
As for racing, I don't know where you are based, but I'd love to see more Elevens on the track...

As mentioned, the engine is neither set-up nor run in. This is straight out of the box (or at least off-the-bench). The cam is an unaltered Piper 285 and the Weber 45 is similarly untouched as yet. Neil uses a SUN RAM 3000 rolling road and it's permanently occupied by every historic FF, FJ and Minisprint car in the area. Proper work on set-up begins on Monday......

I'd love to have the time to get back into racing (I road raced on two wheels for a couple of years in my twenties) but I can't guarantee weekends off and I've just bought a share in a Chipmunk, to swallow all of my spare cash!

Much as I hate to agree with Jan I deliberately removed the 6" Minilites because the car flat refused to slide.

More later.

I've got two fingers for you, matey:

Bring it on.

BTW, I chucked Jan's numbers into a calulator and it pullod out a target weight of 518Kg and 0-60 of 5.4 seconds.

That'll do!

http://www.torquestats.com/modified/ind ... =Calculate

For years my uncle would state that he starred alongside McQueen in LeMans. How we scoffed. Then along came plasmas and DVDs. And there he is................ vigorously washing his face in a French pissoir during the opening credits. If it proves reliable then we'll be taking his Mini JCW and my Eleven to La Sarthe this year. Otherwise it'll be my Clio V6 smoker.

Joking apart Jon, as you know we're not a million miles apart. When mine's finally on the road we must get together.

I weighed mine on my bathroom scales corner weight set up at 530 kg. And that's with a pretty hefty roll cage and extinguisher. So the 518kg sounds reasonable. I find mine more than fast enough on the road. It's on the track I always want more...
Like the Chipmunk thing. Flew on as a cadet many years ago (70's) and can understand the appeal. We have one locally that flies over occasionally.

My first flights were as a space cadet in Chippies in the eighties. My last light aircraft flying was also in Chippies some fourteen years ago. This one is an eight minute drive away but seems to me much smaller than it was when I was fourteen..........

I've driven Jan's car and his 1380 is really a sweet motor. Lots of power, lots of torque, smooth, very well dialed in Weber 45 carb.
I'm trying to copy his build to the letter this winter because I can't imagine a better street/track motor than what he's got.