Jonny-Jimbo

There are a few entries in already - I won't post them on here until the start of June as specified in the regs, unfortunately one of them is only a reserve team, but it's an entry just in case...

A more accurate statement would be 'Rimmers have a problem', or even 'Rimmers are a problem'. Overpriced tat, and as said, information is often incorrect.

Sounds good Mike, good to have you along to one of mine. The winter one is pencilled in again for me and AJ, it's near enough on my birthday this year!

That sounds rather fun Dazzer - fancy bringing it to the treasure hunt in July 😉

I would have thought that round the back of the block would have more stagnant hot air than round the front of the bock, where although there is hot air, it is at least mainly moving.

That is vile.

Anyone interested this year? I was out last night again hunting for good roads and the usual questions that will make you scratch your heads... and so far NO CHURCHES! So a bit more variety, but a tad harder to navigate without the obvious way-point of the village spires. Lots of interest from the other motor clubs I have invited, including Rugby, and I have an entry form already from last years winners - so they're keen to come back. Can anyone from Club Triumph beat them!? The art work for the T-shirts is nearly finished, hopefully you'll all like them!

Yes John, that is undeniable - the Zircotec coating is expensive, which is what I said previously, it's only worth going for if you're into the realms of finding fractions of a second at hundreds of pounds. Would you use it on a Ferrari 250 GTO worth millions? Yes. Would you use it on stock engined Vauxhall Corsa? No. As you said as well, the cost per degree loss is much better with a heat shield. However, the point in the Zircotec, to an extent, is to keep the heat in the exhaust gas as much as keep the heat out of the engine bay. I believe that our heat shields are aluminium, but they have a ceramic composite core in them too. We did okay at FS, but we were never going to win against the likes of Charmers (Chalmers?), and Graz etc. They had sponsorship from Volvo and Red Bull etc. We did what we wanted to though, we knew we couldn't win so we set ourselves our own targets. We came 3rd overall in the presentations, including the business one, so that made our vehicle a more 'credible' item if it were to be manufactured and sold as a single seater track day type car. We had the wrong engine, chosen for the right reasons. We used a GPZ500 twin, it was a good chunk lighter than the standard R6 engine, and cheap - we bought 5 of them for £100, including all ancillaries etc. But it didn't make as much power as the R6 and there is a lot less tuning knowledge out there for the GPZ. Oh, and Warwick Uni got blue flagged to get out our way on the endurance race which was a goal. It was a good strong car, and reasonably light though, during testing our driver got the car up onto two wheels at about 30 degrees or so whilst cornering without a loss of stability or braking - as James Hunt once said 'Big Balls'.

I'll see if I can dig out my old lap top and see if I can find it. I know that the air space went from not being able to put your hand near the engine bay to being able to put your hand in for short spaces of time. Still very hot, but not horrendous. To give you an idea of the packaging we were working with, this is a doodle of the cross section of the exhaust area. The exhausts came out of the engine, zig-zagged across the car into the collector, which then turned back on itself again for the secondary, and then back again to enter the 'silencer' (Ha, silencer, it was still 110dbA!) As you can see the seat back and fuel tank were very close to the exhaust, as I said, around 30mm or so...

Well, as I said, for us it worked and was free, which was a major constraint. The best insulator really is a reflective shield and an air gap. We used aluminium sandwich heat shield as well as the Zircotec between the exhaust and the fuel tank (only around 30mm at it's nearest point). Although I never took a reading of fuel temperature, we never suffered from any obvious signs of the fuel getting hot or boiling in the tank. So, as I said, it DOES work, and in some cases a heat shield MAY not be possible to fit (possibly some regulations or rules about originality?). But due to the cost of the ceramic coating, I would say it's not a feasible option to reduce the engine bay heat in something like a mildly tuned Vitesse road car (to go back to Stu's predicament). Something like a tightly packaged Formula Car or similar, where you are into the realms of spending £100s of pounds to find fractions of a second, it's worth it, otherwise not. From a longevity point of view, it lasted well in our application, although the car was only used in earnest for a shortish length of time, a few months in total running on the dyno, then in the car testing and then in competition. However, I used 0.9 and 1mm stainless steel for the exhaust (no budget for inconel   ) and where the headers came out of the head, they did glow bright red - by the time they got to the collector they had cooled a bit, and then at the collector it would glow occasionally, but mainly sit at a 'hot blue' colour. With the ceramic coating on the whole exhaust ran hotter and thus the gas velocity didn't drop as much, so we got better volumetric efficiency of the engine. Through the ceramic coating you could see the pipes still glowing red, and it did stay hotter further along the pipe. So, there were minor power gains from using this too, but again, on anything but an all out race engine, it's use may not be valid. Also, from a cosmetic point of view, being ceramic it is slightly porous, so the white colour stained easily, particularly with oily thumb prints etc - these may sand off easily, they may not, I never tried it. Also, the white turned to a dull yellow after a number of heat cycles, so if you were after a pristine engine bay, something other than white would be a good choice. I wanted blue to match our car, but they were doing a batch of white and it was free so I didn't complain.

Ah-ha! That's a little more reassuring then!

We used Zircotec white ceramic on our Formula Student car I used that on the exahust - I had to due to packaging constraints. We did a before and after test, and it reduced the ambient temperature of the exhaust space (between the engine block, carbon floor, fuel tank and seat back by around 50C depending on engine speeds and ambient temperature etc. We did also use heat shield between the zorst and the fuel tank, although the Zircotec did reduce the temp of the aluminium skin seat back to the point you could almost bear to put your hand on it... However, we got the coating done for free as 'sponsorship' - would it be worth the few hundred quid it would have cost? Hard to say for anything other than a serious race application where you need all the help you can get...

Is that bent in the middle??

My mate told me that his Beetle needed them done to 400! In all seriousness though, you NEED a torque wrench, and they're not that expensive. Look after them well and they'll last a long time. DO NOT use them as breaker bars or ratchets. That is not what they're for!

Also the shuttle had a surface temperature of (arguably) 1600C, roughly, but the exhaust GAS is around 800 to 1200C, depending on A/F ratio and turbos etc. If the GAS temperature is this, then the metal exhaust is going to be less than this, so the metal surface of the exhaust is not going to be  any higher. However, John is right that a heat shield will be more effective.

Tetraboost. Actually contains lead, not lead substitute. Noxious stuff, but can be used as an octane booster too. Can make 100+ octane if needs be. Also helps prevent that nasty ethanol crap from absorbing water into the fuel. My mate runs it in his vintage / Edwardian stuff and it's the only thing that seems to actually work. I'll be using it in my 2000 when it's back together.

Flange to flange. You'll need to compress it slightly to fit it, and it'll need to lengthen a bit in use due to movement of the engine/box and diff on the rubber mounts.

Yeah, I got done a few times - sold 6 meters of braided hose, on a signed for thing, the buyer said they never recieved it, even though it had been signed for. Then I had to give them a refund for £35. That put me off selling on ebay. Iggy, look up your rights - easy to find consumer law on Which.com etc. You are entitled to a refund for any reason (which you do not have to give I think), and the seller has to pay for the return postage, or refund the cost to you anyway. Get a refund and get the better quality one from Canleys etc.

Yeah, I got done a few times - sold 6 meters of braided hose, on a signed for thing, the buyer said they never recieved it, even though it had been signed for. Then I had to give them a refund for £35. That put me off selling on ebay. Iggy, look up your rights - easy to find consumer law on Which.com etc. You are entitled to a refund for any reason (which you do not have to give I think), and the seller has to pay for the return postage, or refund the cost to you anyway. Get a refund and get the better quality one from Canleys etc.

Is it a good idea to remove the starter motor too so you don't cover it in cruddy water? Thinking of doing a flush out on my 2.5 engine before RBRR as I haven't flushed the block out properly.

Buy these and the Chinese will win. I hate fakes...

Which is why I linked to the Mk2 Vitesse brakes on the Canley site 😉

Which is why I linked to the Mk2 Vitesse brakes on the Canley site 😉

Could use your steel one as a template to do the aluminium one, and means your spacer will be a lot lighter too!

Haha, I wasn't suggesting you buy a Porsche, just saying that it is a very expensive way to save few kilos!