Just over a week ago I had a call from a friend asking if I could help out a team from Bulgaria that had damaged their engine in Germany at an event but were still coming to the UK to try and run at the Performance Vauxhall show.
I assumed the damage was not going to be too bad or that they had a ton of spares on them so it was a simple case of pulling the engine out replacing some parts and getting it back up and running.

Monday afternoon the car arrived, certainly not what I was expecting, all carbon panels, one piece front end, custom everything, It had a very serious looking C20XE naturally aspirated engine fitted so out came the tools and off came the head which was when I suddenly realised the situation we were in if it was to be out running in less than 5 days









In short the block was scrap, one piston was destroyed, a rod was bent and the head appeared to be totaled !

At this point it was 6.30 on monday evening and luckily I managed to get hold of Ric Wood who made the cylinder head for them and he said to come up to his immediately, we are based in Cambridge and he is up in Stockport I believe so off they went and left me to scratch my head a little on how we were going to go about sorting the bottom end out.

Tuesday morning we got onto stripping the bottom end out to find the rest of the damage and started to source some parts, a call to Steveboyslim and a new block and bearings and were sourced followed by new rods and pistons from PEC as the original items were extremely rare and it turned out there was no chance of sourcing them in a hurry.

7.30am wednesday I was at the machine shop with everything to get it checked over and machined to their specifications, by the afternoon it was all ready to be collected and Ric had called to say the head was nearly ready so off they went to Stockport to pick that up whilst Kristian ( their mechanic for the tour ) and I set about cleaning everything and getting the bottom end assembled, that was until the mains bolts turned out to be faulty so I had to get back down to Steves for midnight to collect some new ARP's, by the time I was home I was right ready to get some sleep.

Thursday arrives, I'm starting to panic a little as in one way everything is going a little smoothly although in the back of my head I can't help but think we are going to get let down at some point or have some catastrophic failure on the dyno as they keep telling me their going to buzz it to 10,000 rpm
We get the bottom end finished off and check the shims for the solids and on goes the head along with all the other ancillaries, by now its looking like an engine but its 5pm and its not in the car, everyone is dead on their feet and understandably they all dissapeared off to their hotel to catch up on some sleep.



I'm considering going home myself at this point as I am also starting to feel a little worse for wear but I knew that friday was dyno day and there was a lot to do before we even got there.... if we even got that far, so we decided to get the box bolted back on and get it in the car hoping to make friday a little less stressful.

Friday morning arrives, get to work nice and early although the others don't show up till about 9.30 so I am already starting to worry a bit, they were certainly pleased to see we had got it in the car and semi plumbed up.
Several hours later, around 12 we are ready to fire it up, keep in mind this car has NO silencers so once running I wasn't that suprised to have a couple of complaints about noise

1pm and the car is getting loaded onto the trailer and by 2.30pm we were at Marlin Motors dyno in Milton Keynes, unfortunately as we were late it was already in use and we had to wait till just after 3 to get on there. This is when things started to rapidly go down hill, the manifold was hitting the dyno roller and it took a fair while to get the car jacked up and strapped down before we could get going by which time it was nearly 4pm and they were closing at 5pm.
The break in went ok, not too many dramas although it was smoking a fair bit which if I was tbh didn't leave me feeling all that confident about doing some high rpm runs. Unfortunately it was now approaching 5pm and Martin who owns the garage had to get off so we started making calls around to find another dyno to hire for a few hours, fortunately RGS Motorsport in Wellingboro were working late and said the dyno was available to use if we wanted it We changed the oil on the trailer, cleaned out the dry sump tanks and got it filled it with some Motul and headed off to RGS.


7.45pm and the car is strapped down on their dyno at last, no major issues this time, no smoke either which was a bloody relief.



First few pulls and the engine is sounding superb but were getting wheelspin at around 6k so off came the doors and it ended up being strapped down through the doors .

Fresh fuel was then added



With the rev limit increased to 9500rpm they start to do some power runs


Its sounding ridiculous, already putting out over 220atw ( they said they would be happy with 200atw considering the week we'd had )

50 or so pulls later they had tuned it nicely with the engine giving 244.4hp atw, peak power at 9200 and rev limit of 9450. Happy days





After the long week of worry and concern if it would a: even get done and b: if it did would it actually hold together we had a great result, everyone was happy, we headed off for some well earned dinner then went home !

Saturday morning they all went up to Santa Pod for a photoshoot, I had to work and I'd asked them not to run it as I was still convinced something was bound to go wrong lol by lunchtime the temptation was obviously too much and they rolled it round to the startline and decided to go for one pass.

First run, straight off the trailer 10.6 @ 130mph

Understandably they were over the moon, their previous PB was 11.04 so they had smashed that and possibly broken a few other european records

Sunday was the show and the car was getting loads of attention, most of the day was spent talking and having various photoshoots done of the car with various people but eventually in the afternoon they got it ready and got the car back out on the strip.

First run 10.6, 2nd run missed a gear but 10.7, 3rd run 10.6 and last run a 10.61 @ 128mph with a 1.55 60ft which were both PB's for them

All in all its been a very successful and memorable week, meeting the guys from UPG and getting the job turned round was great but seeing the car run that well was just immense.

Here are a few pics taken on sunday :











Finally one of the 10.6 runs

 

good work.............. hope they had deep pockets

 

Top work! Read about this over on png very interesting and good work.

 

Very cool and very interesting! So you basically built a 10 second engine in 5 days!

 

Cool car.Not bad power for a na engine.

 

thats some going in 5 days


quality thread

 

Its about time passionfacebookcosworths got a like button!!!

Love shit like this

 

Oi... where's my mention?

that aside, top work now get on and build a fast ford instead of fannying around with shonky old vauxhalls!

 

nice work james, and glad you got a pic of the stickers in as well

 

Thanks for getting everything sorted Martin.

Wish I'd had some bigger ones done now Pete

 

What a wicked story!
Well done

 

you had many done then?

get some more done

 

They are on the ever growing list of things to do

 

What needed to be done to the head??

 

awesome! what kinda weight is that? guessing around 800kg?

 

Lots of welding, new Beryllium valve seats, 8 new valves, springs, re shim and I think that was about it.

Not quite, it weighs in at a extremely heavy 540kilos

 

That thing must weigh sod all.

 

Not hugely dissimilar to myself then! jesus!

 

ahhhh, don't mention it