Roaring Forties #80 Reborn!!!!

Peter Olliviere · 03-01-07, 04:58 PM

Last August I purchased Rolf's car for what turned out to be a great deal but even then I new that a new begining was going to come. I spent some time driving the car and deciding what needed to be done to make it into my car not Rolf's. I wanted the car to be set up to my tast and my driving style. This build thread will show the changes and the reason behind each one.

The first items will cover the new engine and getting the car back on the road. I will then cover tuning and setting up the MOTEC ECU. After complete road testing and debugging the car will have the body refitted and painted.

Here is how we look today, Notice somthing missing.

The engine Rolf had build was a very strong and peaky motor, my tast run more towards a smooth idle lots of power in the low and mid bands along with good drivablity. With that in mind the old motor was pulled to be replaced with my 306 SBF with Trick Flow heads, a Comp Cam, Stack Injection with a Motec M800 ECU running witout a dizzy.

Peter Olliviere · 03-01-07, 05:10 PM

Heres a couple shots of the motor. Some of the biggest problems have been concerned with changing the wireing back to a distributerless setup. Rolf had decided to run a distributer with his setup and use that as the source for his Crank and Ref signal. In doing that changes were made to the engine harness and the pin setup on the ECU. Other concerns were adapting my DC&O manifold to the existing RF Harness. Non of these thing are major, it just takes time to figure out what goes were.

Peter Olliviere · 03-01-07, 05:16 PM

Here are a couple of shots showing the CDI that has to be removed.

Peter Olliviere · 03-01-07, 05:32 PM

One of the things that really distract from the pleasure of driving the car was the 016/5N. The gearing was just a pain in the A** when driving on the street. When used on track days it ws not that bad especially with the peaky motor that did not get out of bed till almost four grand.

We all know the choices of tranny, so no need to go into that here, what I needed to figure out was what was the path of least resistance to get good gearing into RF80. Adapting a ZF was out due to cost, time and changes that would need to be made to the frame. Porsche 930 and G50 is the same thing as the ZF. I decided to get hold of one of the 3.22 gear sets and have that installed. When you look at the gearing table adding the 3.22 ring and pinion to the 5N does end up with a very usable overall gearing. No I still can't do five grand clutch but do I really want too?

Here is a shot of the cleaned up tranny with the 3.22 and LS.

Peter Olliviere · 03-01-07, 05:35 PM

Ever wonder what it takes to match balance a RF flywheel to a 50oz SBF?
Since my motor was a 50oz external balanced SBF and I was not going to tear it down to go internal, i needed to get the flywheel match balanced.

Peter Olliviere · 03-01-07, 05:44 PM

Another design area on the RF that I did not like was how the motor sat in the frame. I also was not very happy with how close the pipes come to the cross member and the quality of the RF motor mounts. takinmg all of this into consideration i decided to implemet the Hershal method of mounting the motor. I have installed the new motor mounts and will make the changes to the tranny mount and cross member.

Peter Olliviere · 03-01-07, 05:49 PM

Last but not least for now, I took the advice of the Forum and changed the remote oil filter mount that I was going to use and went with the billit unit offered by Canton.

John · 03-01-07, 07:42 PM

Peter,

Your new car looks a lot like mine down to the Porsche 930 trans - although mine is a KVA!

Keep the pictures of your build coming!

John

Bill Hara · 03-01-07, 09:51 PM

Great work Peter

I remember all these stages very clearly in my own build and I admire your desire and drive to take a car that is on the road and re-work it to your liking.

Keep the updates coming!

Cheers

Bill.

Jim Dewar · 03-02-07, 08:11 AM

Great job Peter, I can't believe your starting over-but it's about the "journey"!
Where did you source those engine mounts from? They look fine! Keep us up-to-date. Regards, Jim

Ron Earp · 03-02-07, 09:29 AM

Those mounts look to the be the same ones I got from Summit on Al's recommendation:

Prothane Motor Mounts: PTP-6-501-BL - summitracing.com

Great work Peter! If that car had come up for sale at just a little bit of a different time I might have bought it. Color was right etc. and was an awesome deal!

Ron

Peter Olliviere · 03-02-07, 10:56 AM

Ron,
You hit the nail on the head, sourced from Summit after reading the threads on motor mounts, the same thing for the remote filter.

I do not post a lot, so for the time I have been on the Forum my post count is low but the Forum is my home page aand is reviewed several times a day everyday. When I read somthing that I find relevant I either file it away for future reference or act on it right away. Either way most everything I know about these cars have comes from the Forum.

Peter

Mark Worthington · 03-02-07, 11:16 AM

Nice work, Peter. I also have the Prothane mounts (with red elastomer) and am much happier with Hershal's mounting system than the kluge that RF designed.

Did you have the RF-supplied intake or did you source that dirtectly from DC&O? I've heard that RF made some very nice modifications to that intake but I don't know what they consist of or why they were done.

Peter Olliviere · 03-02-07, 02:32 PM

I sourced my intake through Wayne at Cool Parts so it did not have any RF mods done to it.

I did install the RF style bleed lines to the back of the intake as shown in the picture. I have heard no negative comments about this mod, only that it helps improve engine cooling and here in Florida anything that helps that area is good.

One area that was a slight problem is that DC&O and RF positions the TPS sensor at opposite ends of the intake, RF at the front DC&O at the back both on the same side. I have had to make an extension that allows the RF harness to reach the DC&O sensor location.

Other than those things I noticed no other differances between that unit supplied by RF and the DC&O.

Peter

Peter Olliviere · 03-02-07, 02:35 PM

Mark,
Did you do the complete mod on the tranny mount? If so what rubber mounts did you put between the frame and the transmission mounts, and were did you get the?

Peter

Peter Olliviere · 03-08-07, 12:20 PM

The first phase of getting RF80 back on the road have been completed, cleaning and wireing. The car had an exhaust that deposited quite a bit of gunk around the engine and rear section, just getting this stuff off was a project.

With the rear clean I started to address the wiring changes that needed to be done to restore the full Motec harness. The harness had been changed to run a distributer suppling the Sync and Ref signal, it is now setup for a hall effect Sync sensor and a seperate magnetic crank trigger. I also wanted to use the coils that RF supplied with the Motec setup but not having the original coils I created my own. The Forum helped identify that the original coils were from a Hyndi Excel, with that information I was able to duplicate what RF supplied.

Since I was up to my arms in wiring I took this chance to clean up the ECU wiring harness area, see the before and after pictures.

Next step some changes to the engine harness then putting the transmission and engine togeather,

Peter Olliviere · 03-08-07, 12:31 PM

Forgot the pictures.

Ian K · 03-08-07, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark Worthington

Nice work, Peter. I also have the Prothane mounts (with red elastomer) and am much happier with Hershal's mounting system than the kluge that RF designed.

Did you have the RF-supplied intake or did you source that dirtectl