"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
12/12/2013 at 14:52 • Filed to: Project Car Diaries
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"BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires" (biturbo228)
12/12/2013 at 14:52 • Filed to: Project Car Diaries | 6
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New flywheel for the Spitfire arrived today. At 6.3kg it's a little under half the weight of the stock item. Aww yiss. Also did some work on the Jaaag...
The last little bit of custom work needed was to fashion a bracket to hold the hydraulic pipe fast against the movement of the transmission on its mounts. Here's the little bracket...
...and here's the hydraulic pipe mocked into place. As I couldn't get bulkhead fixtures in the size I needed I've had to use a spring washer to hold it in place, and a couple of standard washers used as shims to ensure it clamps the bracket at the same time as the hydraulic pipe inside the union.
From there, it was a lot of measuring, umming and arring about where to place the bracket. I could have bolted the transmission into place and test-fitted it, but that's a massive PITA. I think I've got it right, but only time will tell.
It was a bit of a bastard to weld it in place though. A combination of welding upwards and the lack of space under the car made it tricky. This may be the ugliest weld I've ever done but it's solid.
The last little bit I did was to cut away some of the nut on the step-down union I got to convert the standard sized pipe to the odd-sized union that Jag uses. It wasn't quite long enough to make contact with the bottom of the slave cylinder, so wouldn't have made a seal. By hacksawing and filing the nut part, it will now screw all the way in.
After that it's just finding where on earth the tool for splaying the end of pipes has gone and I can bolt everything up :)
RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
12/12/2013 at 15:08 |
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Well done on the flywheel and line work, I've been involved in similar work but a few steps further behind. Last Friday I was out to the local clutch shop to make sure my 4.2 Landie flywheel would accept a GM 10.4" clutch, and it will when I get a new set of holes done in it (6/11.625" vs. 6/12"). Probably going to get a bit of weight knocked out of it when I take it down to Ingram Machine to get that done, but not too much.
Bit of a trick overall, as the trans I want to use has to have the depth matched correctly to the engine, flywheel, and clutch, and RV8s vary a bit in depth of all three - hence the GM clutch for one. The bellhousing supplier I've got likes to sell all three in a matched kit, but $1800 or so all in is not for me, not when parts will be difficult then on. Better to stay GM as far as the flywheel. I'm also using mechanical clutch bits to stay away from the same sort of fiddliness as your Jag.
What size is the spit clutch, anyway - 9"?
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BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
12/12/2013 at 15:38 |
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You know, I haven't got the faintest idea what size clutch it is. It's fairly beefy as far as ones I've come across go, but considering I'm comparing it to clutches from engines ranging from 1.3l-2.5l that's not surprising.
Mixing and matching parts is always a little tricky, although you seem to be doing quite well with yours. I would have gone with a mechanical clutch, but I'm fairly certain it would have been even trickier (not to mention had a detrimental effect on clutch pedal pressure).
You should definitely get some pictures of what you're doing. It'd be great to see how someone else approaches roughly similar problems.
Speedmonkey
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
12/12/2013 at 15:46 |
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Love the photos
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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
12/12/2013 at 15:51 |
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The stock clutch on an RV8 is a 10.4", just uses a different bolt pattern than GM. Friction area, spring cutout in the flywheel, most things virtually identical. It may well be the same clutch bolt pattern as your spit, but the friction area, instead of stopping short of the gear ring, extends much further out. It also uses a similar trick with bolt pattern offset radially a few degrees and made up with three locator pins.
Taking a GM friction plate, the fit is perfect, and the height of a GM 10.4 pressure plate is no greater - about an eighth shorter, actually. The friction plate splines are closer to the crank as well. This helps the crank/flywheel/friction plate combination all end up in good proportion to one another where an American trans is concerned, leaving only overall depth and pilot bushing size to work out.
For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, the RV8 mounts in a defender with a stupidly long bellhousing, about 2/3 of which is actually needed. In consequence, the cranks and flywheels are rather long as well, but that's manageable - though I was informed by my bellhousing supplier that different RV8s use widely ranging thickness even among LRs (!) and that the 4.2 for no particular reason has a crank .300" longer than some others (!!). With the specific combo I have, I essentially need a bellhousing or bellhousing +spacer totalling 6 5/8" and everything will be sorted.
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RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
12/12/2013 at 15:54 |
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As a secondary note, I neglected to mention that a Series Rover uses a 9" or 9.5", and looks similarly sized to the area on the Spit.
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BiTurbo228 - Dr Frankenstein of Spitfires
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
12/12/2013 at 16:19 |
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Sounds typical that does :) with the Triumph 6-cylinder there are two different lengths of cranks. I'm sure if Triumph have more money floating around there would be more variations.
I'm sure there was a reason for the ludicrously long bellhousing, but it's probably vestigial come time of the Defender.
As a rough estimate I think you're right about the Spitfire being ~9 inch, which is pretty impressive given that there's no sense of scale in the pictures :)