fiestaturbo.com

[MarkRS2K]

cool vids dude

so...hows the gear change?

[CRF]

Good to see it back on the road again


How do you have your coilovers set damping wise? Firmer at the front or the rear?

Cheers
Chris

[knuckles]

sorry

going from that pic , it looks like the engine is mounted on a angle.

[AndyRS1800]

Man that's eye scrambling stuff! Did you know the silver BMW owner?
Good it's back on road

yea thats neils 320, i was in that so did some of the dodgy filming you saw, wait until i get my engine for my corsa and rawli gets the fez on the road... then we will have a laugh

[heeman10]

Mike - Eye scrambling indeed! As Andy says, that's a guy we all know, nice looking car...and we took a million and one pics of our cars together in a scenic spot, will post up the better ones tomorrow probly

Raymondo - Cheers! I'm looking to change the boost/oil temp/oil pressure gauges. It's hard to find a happy medium between subtle and garish...think I went a bit too subtle for my liking with the current gauges, as nice as they are

Mark F (as you'll no doubt change your name tomorrow ) - I think it's mildly better, but not right yet. Going to the scrappy tomorrow or Monday to pick up a selection of clutch lever arms to chop and weld different lengths till I get the correct lever ratio and pedal feel combo, THEN it should be fast.

Mr Fenton - Amen! I think the fronts are a touch stiffer than the rear. To be honest I've been tweaking them since I fitted them in May, and change them depending on what I'm doing. If there are two people in the car I often stiffen the fronts up, if it's me I'll back them off a couple of clicks. On the strip I lock the rears up solid and soften the front right up etc. But in general, I prefer the front stiffer so the rear doesn't want to skip round corners and step out.

knuckles - Should've gone to you know where!

Andy - Chaos, not a laugh, chaos!!!

[garyhurn77]

very good video jimbo


does look and sound lovely

looks fairly quick as well

[jayrs]

james your really rubbing this in aint ya, I WANNA DRIVE MINE

[mike_wall15]

Cheers Andy & Jim, I watched it a second time and the mirrors on the video car looked like that of the BMW ones, so I thought you must have known them.
Looks like a good evening

[Ollybee]

Mark F (as you'll no doubt change your name tomorrow ) - I think it's mildly better, but not right yet. Going to the scrappy tomorrow or Monday to pick up a selection of clutch lever arms to chop and weld different lengths till I get the correct lever ratio and pedal feel combo, THEN it should be fast.

Why do you need to test the different lengths? Surely the only amount you can shorten the arm by is the distance of hole-centre to hole-centre on the gearbox bracket? Otherwise the clutch cable would start bending around corners which wouldn't be good.

[heeman10]

Jay - Just try to take some joy from mine

ollybee - Nope, that's not necessarily true. I've just done a handful of calculations so I know what I'm dealing with.

A week or two ago, I measured the amount of cable travel I have from the top to the bottom of the clutch pedal's range of motion, and it came out at 32.5mm. So that means that I pull the end of the lever arm towards the clutch cable nose by 32mm. Since it's a 170mm-long arm (the clutch lever arm), that 32.5mm translates into a fairly small angular displacement, i.e. a number of degrees that the shaft is rotated. Through simple trigonometry, that angle can be worked out. Now we go into the inside of the gearbox bell housing. The shaft is connected to the two arms that support the release bearing. From the centre of the shaft to the centre of release bearing measures 57mm. So again, through trigonometry, I can calculate that if I rotate the shaft through a number of degrees (i.e. by pulling the clutch cable), I will get a number of millimetres movement forward of the release bearing, as a function of the angular displacement and the 57mm length I measured earlier. Using all the above, I have come out with the following:

1. 170mm arm gives 10.85 degrees rotation, which gives 10.92mm bearing movement

2. 160mm would give 11.5 degrees rotation, and 11.6mm bearing movement

3. 150mm would give 12.2 degrees rotation, and 12.32mm bearing movement.

Since I'll hopefully need between 0.5mm and 1.5mm extra bearing displacement (i.e. pushing the clutch cover fingers 0.5-1.5mm further), I may be able to get away with a 160mm arm.

The cable doesn't have to be utterly square to the bracket, obviously if it's pulling at a nasty angle I'll alter the lever arm length or move the cable to another hole, that goes without saying.

[MarkRS2K]

[allinking]

Well lets hope the new arm makes it all good and due to my bordem i re read all 37 pages of post and will definattly be trying the 2.0 turbo this year and be looking to compare power on the road lol

[heeman10]

Well lets hope the new arm makes it all good and due to my bordem i re read all 37 pages of post and will definattly be trying the 2.0 turbo this year and be looking to compare power on the road lol

Glad you'll be having a crack

Update

There's no time like the present, eh? Since I'm so keen to resolve this issue with slow shifting, I decided to get my arse in gear and get to the scrappy today. Picked up a handful (large handful ) of lever arms off every single Ford in the yard so we had a few to go at, room for mistakes and variations etc. I say "we" because a) I haven't welded much and b) my dad owns the welder!

A shot of the engine bay above the gearbox...space is at a premium down here!



Arms I bought this afternoon:



My original arm on the right, one of the purchased arms on the left. Both measure 200mm from top to tail, but the 170mm I referred to earlier is the distance from the centre of the pivot point to the point at which the cable is held, which is the true rotation length.



For simplicity's sake, the 200mm was used as a reference, and two cuts were made to chop 20mm out of the arm:



Next thing was to prep it for welding then clamp it to a stainless plate:



A few minutes later, welded up, job's a good un:





Welds cleaned up, filed down a bit and of course a couple of coats of black paint for fancyness



The mark in the above photo is a reflection of the light above. It's just too shiny for its own good!

Fitted back on the gearbox, you can see the clutch cable nose is now passed through the first hole in the supporting bracket as opposed to the second as it was before:



And another shot:



Initial signs are extremely good. Since I've played around with this part of the car so much now, I know how the gear selection feels with the engine off and clutch in, engine running and clutch in and on the road. With the engine off and the pedal down, there was no resistance whatsoever. It felt as though it was connected not to a gearbox, but to a vat of skimmed milk! The story was the same with the engine running too

Pedal feel is still acceptable - the 20mm reduction in length equates to just under 12% more effort required at the pedal, which isn't more than I mind having to use. Tomorrow I will probably give the actuator rod one more turn then take it on the road to check out the gearshift and boost pressure. Outlook is good!

[heeman10]

Almost forgot...some attempted arty shots at a good location Rawli and Co. found in Manchester from Friday night. All pics were taken with my phone..shame really, as they could've been stunners if we'd had a good camera, a tripod, and my car had been clean

[Rhinopower]

well done jim, glad you are starting to get happier with the car Nic bit of welding, i was on the mig earlier today fitting my landa boss, i loved it

[heeman10]

well done jim, glad you are starting to get happier with the car Nic bit of welding, i was on the mig earlier today fitting my landa boss, i loved it

I will pass the compliments on to my dad, he doesn't usually like to get involved but was well up for a bit of tinkering tonight Glad the lambda boss is on there now, handy things!! And yes, I'm always happy with the car...it's not as though every time I change gear I grumble, but I know it's capable of better, and all I do is focussed around making it do what it does as well as it possibly can, so it's satisfying to achieve that, bit by bit

[jayrs]

so i take it you hit it spot on with first try then

[heeman10]

so i take it you hit it spot on with first try then

It would appear that way buddy. By my calculations above, I could see that a 10mm reduction in length would only give another 0.7mm movement of the release bearing. Bearing (excuse the pun) in mind that that movement isn't necessarily directly related to the clutch plate (the force goes through the springy clutch cover fingers first), the 20mm option that gives an added 1.4mm movement seemed the better option. All seems good, here's hoping it works well on the road tomorrow

[mike_wall15]

No hanging around!!
Nice of daddy heeman to help too, fingers crossed for tomorrow!

[heeman10]

Yeah it was good of him indeed, I'll no doubt report back tomorrow with more babble no-one wants to read

[Smo]

Good stuff James, really hope that little mod on the arm does the job!

[jayrs]

so i take it you hit it spot on with first try then

It would appear that way buddy. By my calculations above, I could see that a 10mm reduction in length would only give another 0.7mm movement of the release bearing. Bearing (excuse the pun) in mind that that movement isn't necessarily directly related to the clutch plate (the force goes through the springy clutch cover fingers first), the 20mm option that gives an added 1.4mm movement seemed the better option. All seems good, here's hoping it works well on the road tomorrow

thats cool then mate, you done what you wanted to do, make the pressure plate come away from the cluch plate more.

have you made a spare arm up the same lenth yet, just in case ya know

[Xr_Dub]

Glad Your finally Enjoying driving your car thats what its all about at the end of day..

[Andi]

Good to hear its improving

Where is that photo spot? Might have to steal that for a few shots

[Brammer]

Could be an excellent mod to sort the issue out, good luck for the test

[purple_fiesta]

Good pictures, for a phone anyways!

[purple_fiesta]

Good pictures, for a phone anyways!

[heeman10]

Andi - Somewhere under the Metro in Manchester, ask Rawli

I took the car out just before to try out the new shorter clutch lever arm. Also, earlier, I decided to add some more boost pressure by screwing the actuator rod end further onto the rod. This would've been all well and good, provided the rod end wasn't already screwed all the way onto the rod. D'oh! So I took the rod end off, carefully drilled it another 2mm deeper, tapped an extra 2mm of thread inside, and that was enough to give me the extra 1.5 turns on the rod that I wanted.

Out on the road it proved to be boosting to 14psi, precisely what I wanted. So that's another 10bhp or so, and the gear change is definitely better, but still not as slick as I'm SURE it could/should be. I'm considering trying a different clutch before even thinking about a hydraulic conversion. My dad's Caterham uses a 230bhp N/A 2.0 Zetec and a ring plate (i.e. non-paddle) clutch and never ever slips, even with semi-slick track tyres, so we're going to find out what it is.

Short video clip from tonight:

http://www.heeman10.wefixtech.co.uk/newarmtest.avi

[BUTRE]

Andi - Somewhere under the Metro in Manchester, ask Rawli

I took the car out just before to try out the new shorter clutch lever arm. Also, earlier, I decided to add some more boost pressure by screwing the actuator rod end further onto the rod. This would've been all well and good, provided the rod end wasn't already screwed all the way onto the rod. D'oh! So I took the rod end off, carefully drilled it another 2mm deeper, tapped an extra 2mm of thread inside, and that was enough to give me the extra 1.5 turns on the rod that I wanted.

Out on the road it proved to be boosting to 14psi, precisely what I wanted. So that's another 10bhp or so, and the gear change is definitely better, but still not as slick as I'm SURE it could/should be. I'm considering trying a different clutch before even thinking about a hydraulic conversion. My dad's Caterham uses a 230bhp N/A 2.0 Zetec and a ring plate (i.e. non-paddle) clutch and never ever slips, even with semi-slick track tyres, so we're going to find out what it is.

Short video clip from tonight:

http://www.heeman10.wefixtech.co.uk/newarmtest.avi

From the video I can say.... IT'S MUUUUUUUUUUUCH BETTER! Now you need a quickshift kit

Also, the road was really slippery or you have too much negative camber at front?
You need to sort that wheel spin mate
Try to get less negative camber... -0.5º
Get the rear of the car higher.

[heeman10]

BUTRE - Why is it you always talk to me like it's the first time I've used a spanner on my car? The rear ride height is fine in relation to the front, the camber is fine, what DOESN'T help is the tropical rainstorm-style rain that was drenching the roads all day and night Perhaps you can't see that in the video Even with 0 camber, 15psi in the tyres and the back end stacked up on two sets of springs, it would've spun the wheels

Still not going for a quickshift kit yet, it's not perfect.

[BUTRE]

BUTRE - Why is it you always talk to me like it's the first time I've used a spanner on my car? The rear ride height is fine in relation to the front, the camber is fine, what DOESN'T help is the tropical rainstorm-style rain that was drenching the roads all day and night Perhaps you can't see that in the video Even with 0 camber, 15psi in the tyres and the back end stacked up on two sets of springs, it would've spun the wheels

Still not going for a quickshift kit yet, it's not perfect.

hum... I can go the typical boyracer post if you want me too... but you'll have to pay me for that since it's something that I need time to get it perfect

I don't have any problems with tropical rainstorm-style rain here

You can have FWD grip... even if it means going like the FWD USA Drag Racing cars

[heeman10]

Annnnnd you're still doing it!

Did you know it's possible to swim AND see underwater at the same time?

[BUTRE]

Annnnnd you're still doing it!

Did you know it's possible to swim AND see underwater at the same time?

Ok mate... I think I understand your point of view.

Never going again to try helping you sort anything in your car.
Never going to give a typical happy boyracer post.

So... there's nothing else for me to say on your topic...



Cya












Gone.

[AndyRS1800]

Just to clear this up, i found that spot 1 nite with neil,

Its on the same road as the science museum, as ur facing the hilton hotel with the museum on ur left, turn right about 1/2 way up and you'll find it down there under the arches,

[heeman10]

BUTRE - No need for that, my point is that you seem to forget I've had this car close on six years now, studied Automotive Engineering for two years, followed by Motor Sports Engineering for a further three years and have been involved and interested in motor sport since I was about 7! I've spent quite a while developing my own car, so issues such as traction at the front wheels aren't new concepts to me. There is only so much front-wheel weight bias you can give a car, and when the roads are wet, it's pointless even trying to find grip in the lower gears. I understand that you have good knowledge when it comes to cars, but I find it a little patronising to be told what I need to do in order to find traction when it has been a pursuit of mine for a while, hence the purchase of camber adjustable lower arms and coilovers, then many adjustments thereafter

No idea what this "happy boyracer" stuff is all about though?!