Restomod Racing

I’m playing with the idea of installing a solid roller cam into Restomod.  Currently I have a hydraulic roller

 cam with a center line of 14 degrees.  The solid will have a center line of 110, which is not in theory advantageous to a supercharged engine.  Bare in mind that I have a 12.4:1 compression engine with a supercharger on it.  I mainly run on 92 octane unleaded fuel.  Granted I have a secondary fuel system that runs F&L racing fuel.  I’m looking at having the larger overlap to bleed down some of the pressure in the lower rpm range where most of the problem with detonation occurs.  At higher rpm the supercharger should make up some of the lost pressure.  I know that I can continue to run the current setup with no major probems, but i feel like trying something different.   When I had cam similar to the solid roller my engine made 454 rwhp and 538 rwt naturally aspirated.  My current hydraulic roller cam a best of 444 rwhp and 488 rwt with a severly slipping belt on the supercharger.  The boost jumped to 8 psi and immediately dropped off to zero. 

In order to do this correctly, I should first get baseline dyno numbers with the hyd roller cam so I can compare it with the solid roller cam.  I’m thinking that the solid has more advantage over the roller even with its increased overlap.  I’m impatient, so I more than likely will install the cam witthout doing a baseline run.

Keith completed the engine install and to my surprise the engine runs fine.   Smoke is still coming out of

the exhaust to a small degree, but there is still a lot of oil in the exhaust system.  While I was installing the exahust pipe, oil came pouring out!  At any rate the car went home. 

Keith took apart the old engine from the RX-7 and one housing was found to be no good.  In order to use this engine, it will require the replacement of the housing.  The rotors still were good but I don’t see any future in this engine for sometime to come. 

Keith has completed the transfer of the accessories and has lowered the engine into the engine bay.  He had the engine and trans bolted up but while trying to get the clutch cable to grab the pressure plate, the lock ring fell out.  Now he is going to pull the trans from the engine to reposition it back on the pressure plate. 

Did I mention that he fould the exhaust turbo blade in the catalytic converter?  I guess the new/used engine turbo combo still has a better chance of running better than the old engine!  I’ll keep you posted on how the car runs once he puts it back together.  It will have to wait until this weekend.

The engine has arrived.  It looks worse than the current engine.  Upon arrival we examined the engine and the turbo.  The turbo has oil in the exhaust ports, but the current turbo has oil in both the exhaust and intake ports.  The body of the engine is stained and dirty.  Keith is now in the process to swap the accessories from the old to the new/used engine.

A guy that Keith met wanted him to switch his poorly running engine with one he bought through the net.  It

is a used rotory with a turbo.   Personally I would have preferred to rebuild the current engine.  Granted the current engine is a smog maker as it creates a smoke screen while driving down the street.   We will see how it all turns out.