Alfa 33 1400 16V Rallycar

[rsfruitbat]

As it says on the tin.

Fairly sure most of you know about me and the car but will keep this thread up to date with our plans, exploits and any developements.

ATB rsfruitbat

[AlfaCorseChris]

Sounds like a good idea

[rsfruitbat]

Entry is in for our first event of the year at MIRA near Nuneaton on Saturday April 26th. Non- spectator event this one but they are always in need of marshals. Organised by Quinton Motor Club

One after that (barring probs) will be Down Ampney by Cirencester on May 24th. You can usually get into spectate on that one.

Good luck to all those involved in motorsport this year

rsfruitbat

[Johnboy]

Morning adie
I was wondering how you was ?
Glad the 33 is sorted now and luck in the rally

[AlfaCorseChris]

Best of luck mate

Have fun

[rsfruitbat]

Hi Guys

been pretty busy lately but thought I would update you on how things are.

MIRA
Had a few problems first thing in the morning. nothing car related but it overshadowed the rest of the day. first event since December so a bit rusty but not too bad. Straight away we discovered we had got a problem with the brakes. First application had a long pedal and you had to immediatley reapply to get pedal up. Tried various things but couldnt improve it through the day. Not a big problem but definately knocked your confidence in them. Stage layouts were different to normal with lots of hairpins. Couldnt get the car to handbrake for love nor money. very frustrating.
Started at 65 out of 80 finished 37th and 6th in class. dissapointed with result as we were beaten by people that we had been quicker than previously.
After the event I knew that I had to sort the brakes out. Then the wife got a message; "does Ade know theres loads of smoke coming from underneath the car?". Even got the pictures to prove it. On investigation the camshaft oil seals on 2 and 4 were weeping oil that was getting blown onto exhaust manifold.

To be continued....

rsfruitbat

[PETROLHEAD]

Ooops!


sounds like you have some work to do Ade, but i'm sure you'll sort it, no problem.

shame you didn't do better, but onwards and upwards i'm sure, twas but a minor Blip!

[rsfruitbat]

pt II

so to do the camshaft oil seals you have to strip the front of the engine. Ok lets time the camshafts up on TDC before I drop the belts off.
Thats weird the marks dont line up with TDC on the front pulley. Check the flywheel, that isnt on TDC. Put the flywheel on TDC and the cam pulley marks line up but now the front pulley is about 10-12 degrees retarded. (One point I need to explain is that my front pulley came from Edward and is modified to act as the trigger wheel and to be adjustable so the timing can be set.)
Bugger I thought it must have moved, thats weird the bolts are still tight. Hang on a minute I can rock the trigger wheel backwards and forwards . It must need some more shimming so it clamps up tight (or so I thought).
With the cambelts lined up I stripped the front of the engine down ready to do the camseals including using my new campulley holding tool (thanks for the idea Kev). With some assistance managed to undo the crank nut to get the pulley off. thats when the problems started. When I took it off it was in bits. The centre had been torn out of the pulley .
First problem find a donor pulley. After several hours searching through the lock up, found one. Next problem was modifying it / using it to resurrect my original. Passed it all over to the father-in-law to have a play with. Several days and much discussion later we decided to try and resurrect the original. After much trialling and toing and froing eventually we got something fitted. Rebuild front of engine after fitting new oil seals.
Hoorah engine starts, but the tickover is higher than before . So when did the pulley move? Before or after the last rolling road session?.
No option but back onto the phone to Dave at Mech-motorsport. Luckily he fitted me in one evening Timing was slightly different to when he had set it last but he estimated that with that amount of ignition retard I must have been loosing at least 10-15% power. Hopefully this explains somewhat my poor performance at MIRA .

To be continued...

[Johnboy]

Wow never rains when it pours . At least you've hopefully sorted it now

[KevJTD]

show us your tool




well done mate, hope it's put a spring back in your step and a few more ponies under the bonnet

if you get stuck for a pulley i think i have some....soemwhere....

[rsfruitbat]

Pt III

Unfortunately after doing all this work the car was still about 5bhp down on when it was set in Dec but we think this was due to running on forest tyres and the previous occasion it was tarmac Yoky's.
Anyway that was the Wed, Saturday saw us at a venue called Down Ampney. An old airfield which in the dry is great but show it any water and it developes the grip characteristics of a block of ice sat on oil covered marbles. I'll let you guess what the conditions were like!
We had driven the car down on the forest tyres and elected to leave them on. We started at car 57 out of 70. We hoped that being a lower number would have cleared away the rubbish and standing water. I wish.
Conditions were pretty bad with the car weaving about on the straights, aquaplaning on the puddles and having no grip on the corners. We had a few incidents as the stages progressed but kept the car going and in one piece, mainly. Conditions worsened during the morning but we were used to it now so it didnt seem too bad until the bung came out of the floor. This then acted like a jetwash every time we hit a puddle soaking the drivers footwell area, driver, roof above the driver Rectified with silicone sealer and lots of tank tape.
Early afternoon and conditions began to improve with the stages drying out but black clouds overhead. Decided to stay on the forest tyres which as the rain didnt happen was the wrong decision.
Anyway pleased with the final result of 23rd O/A and 3rd in class.
However would have been even more pleased if the rain had arrived. Before it dried out we were up to 16th O/A .

Next event is on Saturday June 21st, Rally of the Midlands. This is based around Mallory Park using stages there, at a local stately home and MIRA. If anyone makes it there come and say hello.

RSfruitbat

[rsfruitbat]

Seeded at car 39 on saturday out of 50ish cars.

For those who are interested in coming to mallory there will be 6 stages there aswell as runs from the Group B car club.
Event web site has a full list but there are: Fiat 131, stratos replica's, fulvia, Beta Totipo?, 308GTB plus a raft of other non-italians 6R4, 911, A2 Quattro, 205T16

rsfruitbat

[rsfruitbat]

What a day. What a very hot day. I have never had before where even my driving gloves are wet from sweat

Started on hard tyres and stayed on them for rest of the day. Liked Mallory. A suggestion for all the racers out thee is that if you dont like the rumble strips my solution was to take a bigger cut so that only the outer tyres were on the tarmac and the inners were on the grass. Except for the loop off the track after the gooseneck. The concrete domes on the exit were something else. Nealy took the back mounting off the sumpguard.
2 stages at MIRA, 14 miles each. very little time in between, maybe 10mins, not even time to take the helmets off. One thing I need to find a solution to is the gearbox heating up. After the MIRA tests it was difficult to move the gearstick and very difficult to get 3rd. Had to cruise along on road sections and give the box time to cool down before things returned to normal. Merevale - the people getting married at the church at the entracnce to the estate must have had a shock when all these rallycars started turning up. Nadgery little stage. 1.3miles of cattle grids, broken tarmac and blind bends. Didnt like it.
PR exercise next. Off to the middle of Hinckley town centre for a regroup before returning to service at Mallory. Lot of interest from the townspeople so hopefully get a few converts.
Mallory was crowded. best turn out i have seen for spectating for a long long time.
No real problems in service so back out after 40mins for a repeat of the stage loop with the stages being slightly changed. Enjoyed this loop of stages even more. Heat was still bad though. Discovered I can carry a lot more speed around the long curves in MIRA than I thought. My prefered handling combination appears to be slicks on the front and Yoky AO21's on the back. Just seem to be able to get the back twitchy and drifting and keep the nose in.
Merevale survived and the town centre much quieter. Back to service. Dissappointed to hear one of my rivals had had problems which had put him down the order.
Another 2 at Mallory at event over. Fairly damage free. few cone and bail marks to T-cut out, sumpguard to repair and see what we can do about cooling gearbox.
A bit surprised after all this to discover we had finished 21st O/A and won the class by 4 secs. Chuffed to bits

Not sure what we are doing next. It is supposed to be Barkston Heath but have heard that military wont release the venue so that might be off. Will let people know when we do

rsfruitbat

[KevJTD]

well done mate, very well done indeed

a class win is a great result, know how there is plenty of competition in your class so to beat them all is a great result for someone thinking outside the box and not using a corsa or 106 etc. brilliant result mate



as for the gearbox heating up i guess the only easy way would be to pipe airflow down there. must be a fair amount of heat soak coming through from your brakes which goes back and heats the casing up too besides the internal heat from the 'box itself.
can you somehow get some lengths of 3" flexible pipe and route it from the front near the headlights down to the tunnel and pointed towards the gearbox casing, or/and the brakes to help cool things?
or maybe a couple of small computer fans fitted in the car just above the gearstick hole towards the dash, one on each side, blowing at the casing?

maybe daft ideas but just throwing stuff out there

a gearbox oil cooler would be the obvious choice but then you'd need pumps and pipework etc, a lot of work.





well done again mate, really chuffed for you

[Johnboy]

Great result adie , class win too
Agree with kevs ideas . I can't think of anything else, other than moving the brakes to the outside to help the lack of heat soak ?

Well done tho

[PETROLHEAD]

great result adie, well done car and co too!

i think all reasonable ideas are already out there, but do you already run a 146/6 gearbox sump pan?

they are alloy, stronger, and finned for air cooling if not. a worthwhile addition for several reasons, as they have links to helping prevent torsional twisting of the old cases too over the steel (tin!) sump lids of old!

[KevJTD]

pretty sure he already runs the alloy sump mate.

[PETROLHEAD]

i thought as much, but worth a mention eh!

[KevJTD]

wondering how much hassle it would be to install a cooler for the gearbox oil?

found a few people that have already done it, seems the parts are available..

http://www.saabsforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=227


so, i got to thinking, how much work would it involve

you'd need 2 openings in the gearbox for the oil to come out & return to the 'box, the drain plug for supply to the pump/cooler would do i would think with the level plug being used as the return fitting, so no need to be making and extra holes in the gearbox casing.

so you'd need,
fittings,
hoses,
a cooler,
a pump,
a switch to turn the pump on/off, either thermostatically controlled or on a switch.

pump http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Electric- ... 415ff378e2

cooler http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UNIVERSAL-9-R ... 259034ba60

pipes http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MOCAL-100R6-8 ... 5d4c3a4070

only other thing needed would be fittings for gearbox. can measure the plug sizes for you if you need mate

[PETROLHEAD]

sounds entirely feesible and reasonable too.

[rsfruitbat]

Hi Guys.

thats a weird one? I posted a reply to some of the questions on Sunday but it hasnt registered the post. I probably did something wrong...
Gearbox has a billet sump at the moment to help with strengthening the casing. I did think about putting a 145 sump on but havent found my spare ones yet.
Looks like oil cooling the gearbox might be an option? I think I would have to use armoured cables though for rallying. Methinks that might be a winter project along with changing the rear suspension over to coilovers. just got to sort out the time, money and enthusiasm!!!
So many jobs around the house and so little time.....

Thanks guys. Will let you know what we are doing next and when.

rsfruitbat

[rsfruitbat]

Hi All

done a couple of events since I last posted but nothing anyone could get into and the results were nothing to write home about. one DNF one 9th in class from the venue where we rolled the car so that ghost is layed to rest. Car is still in one piece though with just the addition of a few more battle scars.

Next event is planned to be at Rockingham on Dec 6 / 7th. Cracking venue. Rally starts at midday on the saturday running into the dark for 2 stages and then 9am start on the sunday finishing late afternoon. All normal hospitality is open so you can see virtually all of the stage from a warm room with a pint in one hand and a meal on the table.

rsfruitbat

[Veesix75]

Any pics of the car in action ?

[rsfruitbat]

Last rally we did

http://www.edpphoto.co.uk/rallying/patr ... index.html

we are car 76

rsfruitbat

[Veesix75]

Great pics, like the colours, could pass for a Martini Inetgrale without my specs.

Really hard to tell from the pics as you're at speed and the wheels turned, but on a couple of shots the front wheel looks close to the rear of the wheel arch which would infer the longer front arm?

Don't forget the rear arms are different between a sud and 33

I was told that full 33 suspension on a sud gave more castor hence front wheel further forward (like Berts photo). Would that equally mean sud suspension on a 33 would give less castor hence wheel further back ?

My sud with 16v suspension looked like Berts photo.

The above is all long time ago so I might be confused.

[rsfruitbat]

Just a heads up for everyone on our next event.

Its the Rockingham stages this coming weekend (Dec 6 / 7th) at the Rockingham race circuit just outside Corby.

You cannot find a more user friendly rally venue in the uk. See 90% of the stage from inside the heated stadium with food and a bar on tap!!!

Saturday starts at midday and goes on until 6pm with 2 stages in the dark.
Sunday starts at 9am and goes on until 3:30pm.

All the best

rsfruitbat

PS we are car 61. Come and say hello

[rsfruitbat]

Hi Gents

Does anyone know what flow rate you need through a gearbox oil cooler or how to calculate it?

Oil capacity in my gearbox is about 4l and I am looking at a pump that will do 4l / min?

Problem that I have is by the end of a stage at a tight and twisty venue the gearbox is that tight the gearstick stays where it is put and its difficult to move around. Give it a couple of mins letting things cool down and its ok again. Pretty sure I am cooking the gearbox oil.

Also looking at one of the pumps with brass gears from the states but if someone can reccommned one I can source from the UK that would be much appreciated. Looked at the mocal one but its a diaphragm pump and the pipe fixing is plastic so concerned on longevity for that price

Many thanks RSfruitbat

[rsfruitbat]

Hi All

At very short notice ( about 2:30pm today) we decided to go and do a rally on Sunday at Llanbedr airfiled above Barmouth. If anyone is in that neck of the woods come and say hello. Running car 27

All the best RSfruitbat

[KevJTD]

good luck with that mate, hope you have a great day out.

decent number too, that'll bring you some luck

[rsfruitbat]

Car 27 out of 28 !!!!

Given up on getting annoyed about the seeding but that was down to me and the late entry.

Anyway..... what a hoot!

Weather was rubbish but that played in our favour. Airfield style venue with good atrmac but quite a few fabricated twisty bits. Really enjoyed the venue. Managed to do some Top Gear style drifts (you know the ones, broadside and smoke coming off the tyres), at the 90 in the middle of the venue. Only pity was the rain stopped and the venue dried up.
For a last minute thing we came away with a good result, 15th O/A and 2nd in class.

After some advice now.

How could I get air in the braking system whilst the car isnt in use and during use? Did the last rally about 6wks ago and brakes were ok at the finish. When I get back in the car on Friday we have a long pedal. I have been getting this for a while now and cant find the problem.
We arent losing any fluid but as the day goes on the pedal deteriorates, brakes work but by end of day you may have to pump to keep pedal at the top. If you leave car for a few weeks then pedal travel gets longer. Once you have bled the brakes then everything is ok again for a while

A have a bias pedal box. On the front (which seems to be the problem) I have a wilwood master cylinder going to a Girling remote servo, the line then splits to go to the wilwood front calipers.

Any suggestions appreciated.

rsfruitbat