1970 Ginetta G15

[Darkspeed]

Nov 19, 2020 7:42:28 GMT jonomisfit said:

I think I've just realised why the paint in the engine bay of my escort looked like it did. Its not textured paint, its been painted with a roller.

Its exactly that texture.

This build is looking great.

Cheers bud - and glad to have resolved a mystery

Oooo! - Misfit - half an excuse and away we go for another musical interlude



And then to Messer Chups



Some Pokey LaFarge



And final a blast from the Transplants



Don Letts - influence next time

[jonomisfit]

A very good selection.

May I suggest



and

[Darkspeed]

It was a toss up between Last Caress and Hybrid Moments at the choice came down on Hybrid after listening to an acoustic version by Brody Dalle, Which was after a full on Tim Armstrong week from Rancid to Timebomb with Op Ivy Transplants Distillers and a bit of Interrupters.

Headphones on now - off on a trip down the Dub highway and not a Beetle in sight...

[Darkspeed]

Chassis off the stands this morning and onto the floor outside the garage. Body off the trailer across the lawn and onto the chassis. Two bolts in the front to fix the body to the chassis then lift and back into the garage onto the stands.

Whilst this was going on Capt Itchy did drive by and left a bucket of G32 hubs and bearings kerbside for me to do a bit of work on.


With the body on the stands it was out with the drill to make a few holes for mounting the cage feet to for the next round of works - Time to place an order on a steel stock holder for some more 1-1/2" CDS and few bits of 1/8" MS strip.


G32 wheel bearings














G15 on the chassis,

[Darkspeed]

Another day in the garage.

Cage work on the G15 - gave myself the task of getting the O/S bar in.

First off I needed to adjust the angle of one of the bends as the early cars body sits differently from the series 4 and 5 cars and the cage was designed around the later cars. That and the cars are not the most symmetrical so its inevitable that the bends will need to be tweaked.

First task was to see if the MAPP torch would generate enough heat to warm up freezing 1-1/2" 12-SWG CDS



Good enough




And after a few checks I was happy enough with the angles




















Now what I should have done at this stage is to fit the dash mount rail and the dash to make sure that there was plenty of clearance - Nope didn't do that - I liked the way the cage looked and the tube angles so just pressed on.














And the inevitable





Yep need to create a couple of dents in the dash.

[Darkspeed]

After tidying up I had a play with the pedal box.







Needed a fair bit of trimming to the bias bar length to miss the wheel well but its all coming together nicely - Next job is to weld a pivot point onto the bias bush and then adjust the length of the Ginetta connecting "rods".

[Darkspeed]

The gearbox guru has been at it again rebuilding Imp Transaxles using up all the old stock parts he assembled when he did the last few. When he stripped this one down he was pretty impressed with how good a condition it was in and after he had hand selected some better diff parts to go along with the new bearings and seals deemed it about as good as they get so it was offered up to next in line of local Ginetta crew and molebert didn't need to think about it for very long.













Another one to collect when I drop down for a quick visit once this LD-2.0 is completed. There will be an exchange of parts 2 Transaxles and big bore combined manifold coming back with me and a V6 Type 9 staying with him to rebuild, with a long first and other little Type 9 box tuning tricks, and drop onto the back of his Zetec in his G27. No doubt there are other things for me to collect I have forgotten about.

May need to sort out a price for Mr molebert for the single 40 manifold and Carb I have .....Hmmmmm. letting go priceless artifacts like that .... He's going to be feeling the pinch soon with all this expense 38CDS - Steel strip 25mm Alumin' was dropped off at my place this week that he'd already coughed up for earlier.

Have to see how cold and damp it is this weekend for getting some more of that work done.

Itchy also dropped bay and did a kerbside collection of his rebuilt hubs which are already in place on the G32 - Probably spring time now before he finds out out how smooth the car now rolls.

That's it for this Friday's check in - Time for a Cappuccino and Netflix.

[Darkspeed]

Actually before we close off for the evening I couple of shots of the big bore tall block special.








This is at Maynard's at the moment having the liners fitted - they protrude out the block at there is cast spacer plate that is machined and sits between the stock block height and the top of the liners. This is a Sunbeam B1 block Special long stroke Imp Crank machined for the rear crank seal of the B1 - the bespoke rods as shown previously - Forged JE pistons - UBV Chesman head etc. etc.

My block and molebert s block are also hiding in the same workshop after having the machining completed for the block strengthening plates, the rear oil seals and other stuff for making sure that things stay together when the tacho needle is rocketing past High Beam and Gen to start its second lap of the dial!

[Darkspeed]

Mr B has completed his works and here we have molebert s transaxle all buttoned up and ready for collection.





Imp block modified for a rear oil seal.





Mr B's big bore long stroke special with liners fitted and the spacer plate in place





Very little to report on the cage front as it has been a busy week work wise running about so no time in the evenings for anything much apart from a bit of de-stress dog walking. See if I can get a bit more active tomorrow. Although at the moment it looks bloody cold out there.

[biturbo228]

Just catching up on progress. The cage is looking excellent, and that engine looks like a work of art! What's the final displacement going to be, or is it more for improved rod/stroke ratio?

[Darkspeed]

Dec 7, 2020 13:38:15 GMT biturbo228 said:

Just catching up on progress. The cage is looking excellent, and that engine looks like a work of art! What's the final displacement going to be, or is it more for improved rod/stroke ratio?

Cheers. I should be further on than I am at present but other things are taking up my time unfortunately.

The engine work is for capacity and torque - Bore is taken out from 68mm to 75mm hence why the existing liners have to be fully machined out and new ones pressed in - cannot remember what they are from - you then take a brand new un-ground crank - and have it ground to a 65mm stroke from the stock 60.37 - Typically you would use standard rods as well but Mr B had special stronger straight split rods made with a small change of rod ratio. You cannot get straight splits down the std 68mm bore - Pistons and rods both forged.

Takes it out to 1150cc - You can go to 75.5 and now I type that this may be a 75.5 engine which is 1164 known as the 1200 - and about as far as you can go - if you look at the pictures above you will see that where the two liners meet there is very little land for the gasket for each bore. This will run a Wills ring but it all gets rather tight.

Its also a problem with compression ratio - because squeezing 1200 cc into a chamber designed for 875 gets a bit tight and even with the thick chamber 180 head you cannot take much out of the chamber before it starts getting a bit flexible - You will see some of the details on the really modified heads in this thread where long grub screws are inserted into the head to support the chamber to stop it moving.

The only way left to control the compression ratio is to sacrifice even more squish and lower the piston height in the bore.

So he gets the best chance of this engine lasting its all being built up around a new old stock Sunbeam B1 block which was the last and strongest iteration of the Imp engine. Its a special engine.

[molebert]

I have to say Mr B does keep a very clean work station - which is nice to see!

[jasperclan]

I'll be interested to see how your big bore comes out as I have a similar project on the go. In my case I have kept the bore to 74.1mm so I can use readily available liners but have a 70mm stroke crank. Some slight modification of the pistons is necessary to enable Imp rods to be used. The liners are set proud of the block and a spacer plate used. The resultant capacity will be 1207cc. Not decided on which head to use but the favourite, if used, will be a surprise.

Pete Richards

[Darkspeed]

Dec 11, 2020 15:42:19 GMT jasperclan said:

I'll be interested to see how your big bore comes out as I have a similar project on the go. In my case I have kept the bore to 74.1mm so I can use readily available liners but have a 70mm stroke crank. Some slight modification of the pistons is necessary to enable Imp rods to be used. The liners are set proud of the block and a spacer plate used. The resultant capacity will be 1207cc. Not decided on which head to use but the favourite, if used, will be a surprise.

Pete Richards

Big bore isn't mine - belongs to a mate with another G15 - he builds a decent engine and gearbox.

Other shot with a bit more work done



I was up early this morning - cleaning the gutters out and putting up some Xmas lights that Mrs DS had bought. A few more brownie points netted. Once that task was done I set to work on changing a N/S suspension bush on the '07 Polo winter hack. As it's very likely to need another on the O/S before I sell it on, I bought a removal tool which did make the job far easier than I have seen in some YT vids.
Changed a couple of bulbs that had blown and welded up the back box to add another year of so's life to it. Probably change the air filter and plugs tomorrow as well. Oil and filter can wait until after the MOT.

The bush was totally Cream Crackered allowing the wheel to move about 3" back and 3" forward !





After a sweep and tidy up I started on the N/S cage tube on the G15



Bit of shuffling around in the garage required tomorrow to get the access required to progress this. Plus hole saw has arrived for putting notches in the tubes so that will also be on the work list.

[Darkspeed]

Full day in the garage today as the rain was in all day - the only thing that varied with it was the intensity - thankfully there was a small break in it around the 18:00 - 18:30 for the dog walking half hour but other than that rain. No work on the Polo air filter and plugs that can wait for another day.


It was not exactly cold in the garage but the air was damp with a capital H2O whilst working on the N/S front cage leg - Not an easy task but it got done and the bar across the top of the screen left to complete next time...










... together with the two extra legs for the rear cage that will tie to the door bar work.





For from an easy day getting that done.

[Darkspeed]

The Polo got a clean bill of health and a 12 month ticket with no advisories so we now have the winter runabout on the go. One of its first jobs will be a run to Telford to pick up a new bottle of welding gas as the Argosheild is sitting at 20 bar - although having typed that.

20x20 =400 / 10 = 40 minutes welding time left - and there is a few hours left in the Argon so maybe an after Xmas run.

G15 work amounted to chopping up some 38mm CDS steel for the door bars - and trimming front upper bar to about the right length prior to final shaping and tacking into place.

And that's about all there is to report.

[g15]

Merry Christmas

I got an early christmas gift a few weeks ago. Thanks for the help with finding new doors for my G15. Do you know if the windowframes are bolted or riveted to the door?

Some paint and adjustments an we are ready to go...

[Darkspeed]

Dec 22, 2020 22:35:32 GMT g15 said:

Merry Christmas

I got an early christmas gift a few weeks ago. Thanks for the help with finding new doors for my G15. Do you know if the windowframes are bolted or riveted to the door?

Some paint and adjustments an we are ready to go...

It’s about time we had some news that would put a smile on our faces and that will do nicely.

The window frames bolt on - I think they fit with countersunk setscrews. Size could be 1/4 - don’t think they are as big as 5/16. bizzo did you mount yours on closed cell neoprene?

[bizzo]

As per the photo I lifted my new stainless steel frames on Aluminium spacers to give a better fit of the frames in the door aperture, then sealed the gap with black RTV silicone. So neoprene foam never really figured as an option... No idea what the factory did, but there was only a gunky sealant between the old frames and the top of the door, no sign of any foam or runbber seal. Was worth the effort to get the fit right as the doors now shut properly onto the seals and there isn't daylight visible in the gap :-) Recall I used M6 bolts to attach the frames, and used the angle grinder to thin the heads down to allow the furry slider seals to sit flush in the bottom of the frames. I re-used my old perspex windows but predictably they needed fettling and carefully filing to make them slide easily. The navigator gets cross if he can't quickly and easily open the windows at controls so it was important to at least get the nearside one spot on!

[Darkspeed]

After a few miles walking the dogs round a very quite town and then spending an hour or so soaking up some winter sun cutting back a couple of hedges in the front garden I warmed up enough to open up the garage doors and get stuck into the G15.

Made a bit of space by cutting up some 1.5" CDS for molebert cage for KBW



2 x Back stays
1 x Diagonal
2 x Door bars
2 x Mid cage sections

Then started on the above screen bar in BOY - Just a bit of tube profiling and measuring then welding the bolt in joints on.












Still plenty to do - now looking like a lot of cage in a very small car. Mid feet and door bar mounts to do then I need to remove the cage assemble outside of the car and complete the welding. May not be the easiest things to do given the forecast over the next few days.