Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Don't know if they're considered decent, but can't stop wanting one of these

Pininfarina at his best.

Lift vs duration - which one would you pick, and why?

I've gone off Clooney since he started endorsing Nestle.

I don't want a watch advert spec shiny classic, but like the idea of having something amazing looking. There are very few genuinely spectacular cars you can get for £60k. Cars you go over to your front window just to look at.

Eye catching cars, I suppose you could say. Cars like a kingfisher.

You can buy stickers for the end of your plate if you don't have euro symbols

I was always taught that duration was more important than lift

Basically - High duration = more top end power, lower duration cams give more low down torque and a better idle.

You can only physically get so much lift with shorter duration cams, lift is a function of the "rate of lift" that the lifter itself can cope with.

I have to run a solid lifter conversion on mine with the 280 cams, the standard hydraulic lifters can't produce the lift of anything over a 264 or something.

Also worth noting that different cam manufacturers will quote lift at different points on the cam lobe as a function of lift, so if you're looking at a few different ones make sure it's at the same point

Porsche used cams in the X51 Power Kit that are of unknown duration and lift- but they specify valves with longer stems, and go to double valve springs, which is A Clue.

They didn't change the hydraulic lifters, however.

hmm that would suggest they might be reasonably mild. Probably nice for a fast road car.

There are a few kits from Schrick that look like 280 / 272 kits but eye watering-ly expensive

Yeah, I'm likely to re-grind the existing ones, if the base circles are large enough, the Schrick cams are spendy.

The following chart shows an existing 3.7 litre conversion which has the same exhaust manifolds that we tested (and found to be extremely restrictive), a slightly larger plenum, and the stock cams, and a target power and torque for my engine:

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Which is, of course, total fantasy - but was a useful visual prop when discussing targets.

Ultimately, we need to find a way of stopping the engine falling flat on it's face at 6,250 rpm.

As in you need more RPM to get to the power?

Just add more duration :)

I think we'll go with a much less restrictive manifold, somewhat less restrictive intake, some porting of the heads, and cams ground to suit - which I suspect would see increases in both lift and duration, but that's not in my purview.

We shall see.

On a different note, the interior of this is magnificent: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1972-Fiat-130-Coupe-Stunning-Original-Car/142514555546?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D47510%26meid%3D4c406717277c46f28b565e417adf768c%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D6%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D282663500137&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

Ooohh, slap some sleazy saxophone music on top and I'm yours

Yes please:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BuZmJmpTdk

I watched that yesterday - what a glorious thing!

Dammit - If you want 7k plus RPM, I suspect you might need to look at the lifters. HYD lifters don't work so well for high rpm operation, most get swapped out for solids. Pain in the arse for a street car having to set the valves all the time though.

At a guess before emissions became so important?

I took the MiG into Sanspeed for a rolling road tuning session today to try and get to the bottom of the spontaneously ventilating piston.

Bad news, no clue on why it went bang.

Good news, I learnt some things, it now runs even better, I have quite a lot of my peace of mind back as the man in the overalls gave it a clean bill of health and ...

... it now has six more horses than when @BRM originally built the engine; 112bhp measured at the flywheel. Nice.

I hope it doesn't go bang again.

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Good to hear, always fancied some Dyno time. Is it fairly expensive for a session? Also loving the carpet(?) behind the print out, considering the car.

£150 including VAT, for which I was there about two hours, measuring, fettling, chatting, frantically googling things.

That's not too bad, although guess it's the final stage after the expense of specific mods. Hmm...

That's dirt cheap if it included tuning.

For tuning read "adjusted idle speed a bit and checked that timing and mixture are both spot on already".

How near was the hole to an oil/water gallery?

For tuning read "adjusted idle speed a bit and checked that timing and mixture are both spot on already"

If that's what it needed then that's good value.