NWL – Project Concours Carmine Sprint

[James467]

Sorry, went to see Spectre last night and it finished at about 1am, I needed a nap today!!

Haha, the food containers are from Waitrose, they are the ones you can put in the bottom of the bbq when you;re roasting, really cheap and available in various sizes!

Back to collets, this is a bit of a cut and paste with an edit to make more sense here from my question in the Dolomite Related section.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=30006

Measured my inlet valve.

All the same apart from the stem dia - 7.12 on mine, 7.86 on an 1850
Top of valve to top of the hemispherical undercut where the collet fits is the same - 2.84 mm.
Max depth of hemispherical undercut, same - 6.27 mm dia,
Length along the valve stem of this hemispherical undercut, same - 2.48 mm

I also got some 1850 collets from Rimmers to test them and you can clearly see that the 1850 ones are bigger, looks like to accommodate the increased stem dia.

154060 (Sprint) on the left, 106663 on the right







You can see the Sprint collet fits the valve nice and snug. It's not worn, just moved slightly in the photo.





Whereas the 1850 collet on a Sprint valve does not





Sprint collet



1850 collet



Thanks Mart, yes if you have a couple of good used ones can I have them off you?

Thanks

[James467]

It had a recon one fitted at 68000 miles in 1991. How do you tell it's a pre 75 casting?

[James467]

Thanks Mike, is one head better than the other in any way?

Here's the service record!



Obviously didn't like the Wadham Kenning price then!!



Head came from Rimmers as well!

[James467]

Thanks Mike, that's the page I found from your thread.

I'll check them as I reassemble the head and report back, it would be interesting to see if it has the same issues. It has done 50k on this head though and it wasn't overly noisy though.

It leads me to a new conundrum, given what I'm trying to achieve should I have a late head on it?

I'm not sure.

Part of me thinks that the replacement head is part of the cars history and should be retained.

Another part of me doesn't want to fork out £600 for a late head, valves, machining etc...

Another part of me is concerned that it would be shown up if I'm trying to do shows etc to get some silverware

I suppose the same could be said for the TR7 airbox cover, technically it's wrong. I have never done concours before and don't know what the judges are like. Is this something that they would spot?

Any opinions?

[Mahesh]

Does anyone know of any judges who would be able to shed light on whether they check for this.

James, the problem you now face is, do concors judges look at these pages?, if so, they may add that to the list.

You might be able to make a mould from another engine and get the letters made. With your keen eye a colour match shouldn't be hard.

[Carledo]

I don't think the head will upset your quest for silverware, this car will be so far ahead of the competition that you can afford to drop a point or two for that, if anyone notices anyway! And the airbox, though technically incorrect, is what the car came with when new, so they can hardly mark you down for that!
At TDCIR, the judges are likely to be Dolomite anoraks, anywhere else the likelyhood is slight to zero!

Steve

[Jon Tilson]

Don't do it for silverware....do it for yourself!

The most dolomite savvy folks in the country are mostly on this forum and dont do concours judging.

The praise you get from your peers on here is much better for the soul...

Jonners

[James467]

Thanks Jonners, I'm doing it for the challenge of building an absolutely perfect car, the silverware is simply tangible proof that it's the best it can be.

So minus one collet this is what makes up a Sprint cylinder head.



As I'm missing a collet I cant fit everything together so I decided to fit the inlet valves and as it's an early head measure the fitted spring length as per Mikes suggestion.



It's supposed to be 36.58mm in my book



I make it about 32.1mm, so unless I have measured wrong this head needs more work. Everything else is fine, valve stem length, free spring length etc... We don't think 5mm cam come off of it though.

I'm less than happy and feeling a very fed up at the moment, I have a £535 large paperweight sitting on my kitchen table. What I want to know is how this head did 50k without dropping a valve then?

A replacement late head plus machining and vapour blasting is going to cost me another £500, it's going to cost me about the same for the machining work.

[tony g]

re the machining work needed James can you ask your machinist if he has a cutter that will go over the guides and cut the diameter for the spring seat without removing the guides? Seem to remember americans used to do this in situ on a lot of their ohv engines.

Tony

[tony g]

heres a quick google image search I did

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=valve ... gB3H_tM%3A

Tony

[James467]

Thanks Mike, I'd rather you ruin it now than finding out about it when everything's back together and I've dropped a valve writing off the whole engine!!

I think this is what I'll do, rather than get all disheartened with the situation I am going to get on and reassemble the bottom end and continue to go through the list, so gearbox, overdrive etc... and have a good think about what to do here.

I still need a collet so if anyone has a pair I can have/buy then that would be great.

[Mad Mart]

I've got loads of spares James if used ones are ok?

Ha! you missed my post on page 23. PM me your address and I'll pop a few in the post.

[James467]

Sorry, I think I did, I've PM'd you!

I'll try to get over to Roe's tomorrow and have a chat with Leon and Mick and see if they have one of those cutters.

Got to try to get down to Taunton this week to drop off the exhaust as well.

[xvivalve]

You're not going to use those shitty paper thin gaskets are you?

[James467]

What, for the head? No, they were the Rimmers ones I just used for the photos. I've got a Payen set, a Moprod set and some other brand that has asbestos warning stickers all over it!