Parcours

The maps for the big day are ready!
So if you have entered the "PMGR" your navigator will be needing one of these .....

Lightening the load!

The R&D department are always thinking about ways to improve the power to weight ratio on our 

cars, here is the latest offering they just produced. 

A balsa wood gear knob, we haven't weighed it yet, but were sure it must weight a super heavy 5 grams.

Every little helps....

Yet more progress......

The Master of Metal has been busy this weekend too

Looks like he found some time to make his front hood instead of working on the Pantera's arches...

6 weeks to go.....

Normally we should be at "The Champagne Vintage Weekend" with all the other vintage boys, but we are burning the midnight oil in the workshop as it is only 6 weeks before the PMGR...

The '53's case is now ready for full flow, although we had to again give the case a full clean afterwards.

We also installed some longer oil pump studs, although were not 100% sure what pump we will run at the moment.

We already cleaned all the oil galleries on this case and then refitted aluminum plugs so it looked original, we got side tracked and it was just left laying around, then the plans changed and we went back to work on it.....

The case was put together dry with the Mahle Nicasil cylinders and heads to check everything fits OK. We searched for a set of NOS pushrods, but couldn't find them.
What we did come across was another set we had for another project. So, as we had them laying around we thought we'd use them and after a little machine work they were now the correct size for this application.

Never enough time.....

 The "Master of Metal" has been busy working away on his project :)
Although we are hoping it will be finished in time for the "Petermax Müller Gedächtnis Rennen" as he seems to be far too busy working on someone else's race car ;)

Lift off...

Or should that be "lifters off"

More work on the '53's motor today, the NOS lifters were removed from the pushrods and then the inserts fitted into the lifters.

Next up was some machine work to make the lifter ends fit into the cut to length pushrods, we decided to use chromoly ones as they are going to suffer some 'Torture" and don't want them to bend.

Now they are all ready for their final clean...

People ask us how we remove the lifters from the pushrods without damaging them.

We do it how we have always done it, quite simply really, we don't use any fancy slid hammers, pullers or heat on them.

First we spray dismantling lubricant (plus gas or something similar) between the lifter and the push rod, stand them up vertically and let them soak for a few hours.

Then take an old 11mm spanner and slide it over the pushrod to seat against the lifter, clamp everything into a vice, that accepts a pipe, so not to damage the pushrods.

Then with a gentle but sharp tap on the spanner the lifter easily comes away from the pushrod with no damage.

Automuseum Prototyp...

Back on track...

Home early and there has been an special delivery, looks like we can finish the rear brakes on the '53 now we got the wheel cylinders...

Big thanks to Jules over at KK for top Express service as usual ;)

Four little soldiers standing in a row........

In the workshop early before going to the "9-5 work", so just enough time to give the rods their last clean, before attention turns to the '53's motor.

We could have used 912 rods we have laying around, but decided to go for normal 356 ones.

They've been magnafluxed, shot peened, end to end balanced, weight matched and new bushings installed.

People say these rods won't stand up to full race "torture" and you should only use 912 ones, well we will see.

If they survive the Petermax Müller gedächtnis Rennen, lets see how they look after going down the Mulsanne straight flat out a few times.....

A roll in the nettles!

We had the full flow oil lines made today and thought we would see how things would look and what we would need to change.....

Yes we know people are going to say "We would rather roll naked in nettles than fit those restrictive banjo fittings to our full flow application."

Well regular visitors will know we only do what was available in the day and therefore period correct for our cars.

If it was good enough for Wolfgang Denzel and also Porsche to run on their Le Mans cars in the '50's then it's good for us.

Maybe we all just like nettles ;)

Go with the flow......

Full flow that is....

We took a look at the full flow filter that we were thinking to use on the '53 today, Imperial and metric, Hmmm

We had a look around the workshop to see what fittings we had lying around that could work and came to the conclusion that maybe we should take a trip to Hansa Flex.......