So just how does modern technology improve old engine BHP

[Mike Bell]

Nice post heightswitch, very well observed! Your type 3 racer is commonly to be found in Pre War, HGPCA of Formula Junior grids. Many many really nice but extremely well healed folks to be found just out to enjoy their racing- and many of them fettlers as well!

[zefarelly]

I know all about the crap bits. I've got a Ford Cortina

There is nothing more satisfying for me than achieving some class or race recognition in a fully self prepared car, especially when you beat the well funded drivers with 'prefessional' preparation and often paid/ex pro drivers. although to be honest I tend to battle most with people like me because I don't many rip-off races.


BOT slightly, the engine cost analogy . . .1500cc (std geometry period correct wet sump etc ) prexflow in period was 120 BHP, you can build that reliably for about 3-4k now . . .most people seem to achieve 130-135 now . . . about 6k . . . I've hit 145 BHP, but its knocking on 10k . . . .you need all the best bits to make it stay together and the head needs to be the best. I'm sure Robyn would confirm an HRSR Anglia DD 1500 is probably closer to 15k to get the screaming 160 BHP they want/claim. ( bugger all torque though !)

equally twin cams . . . a basic fast road engine rebuild is £4-5k if its all done properly and needs overhauling, that'll get you 120-145 BHP ish, which is about what was available in period ! Its not difficult to tot up 20k + now if you build a new one and want 170 +

another considerable reason for budgets spiralling is the fact non period correct engines over strain running gear and chassis . . . . so lots of money gets spent developing and manufacturing bespoke drive train, gearbox parts, trick diffs, halfshafts, carbon fibre propshafts, Inconel exhausts.

asides a quaife gear kit my car remains completely standard underneath and will continue to do so. It is afterall a 1963 Ford Cortina GT, nothing more, nothing less.

[FastDB2s]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

I have to disagree on the fuels as my memory stretches back to when you could buy genuine full leaded five star at the pumps I think 105 Octane so I doubt the green mixes today are up to that. The oils will make no difference as you have to run an Ash based old technology oil in a flat tappet old style engine with ball rockers you cannot run a thin synthetic unless you run roller cams and rockers or you will wipe those components out.

I sort of agree with you about the 5 star fuel, be wonderful if we had that now, you can still buy it at circuits & off Sunoco, however if you are using pump fuels then we no know how to make best use of it, our road car DB5 & 6 engines run about 10.5:1 compression ratio & use Super Plus with clockwork ignition systems, they run cool & dont need 5 star fuels but even 15 years ago we would never have tried that.

We use the fuel much better than we did 40 years ago, we tried 12.5:1 on a DB2 2.9ltr engine & it fell apart because we didnt know enough, if we tried it now it would almost certainly work, the power would go up massively but the engine would be peakier & more difficult to drive, really good driver may cope, I would go a bit greyer with worry all the time.
You wouldnt want to let the rpm drop as it may pink its brains out.

Ref the oil, by using better quality oils (not necesarily synthetic but semi synthetic) you can run tighter clearances on some parts, valve guides for instance, if these dont suck oil through the guides you dont need such high octane for the engine or you can make better use of that octane a power producer as it was intended.
If oil is sucked through a loose guide it will dilute the fuel & you need a higher octane fuel to compensate.

Accurate setting up of an engine nets bigger power aswell, it also reduces the chance of any failures by running weak mixtures.

We used 50 ltrs of fuel in the Woodcote Trophy race on Sunday, thats 7.27 mpg, 40 years ago we reckoned a DB2 did 8 to 10 mpg for what would possibly be a 3.30 second lap of this circuit with possibly 180bhp max, it would have used or leaks 2 or 3 pints of oil out of the engine, leaked a cupful out of the gearbox & another cupful out of the axle, overheated after 15 minutes & because of that plenty of water.
Our car on Sunday used no oil, water, etc, ran at 65°c water temp.

[FastDB2s]

Similarly to the guides if the engine uses oil from the rings or pistons it will lose hp because of fuel dilution aswell as blow-buy.

[zefarelly]

I think you can use the same analogies for most old engines racing now.

back in 09/2010 pinking etc was a killer, but now I will offer 2 types of race tune, 'pump fluid' or racing petrol.

Personally I've used nothing but Sunoco since 2011 and I've not suffered any head gasket or pinking problems since.

[FastDB2s]

Just saying how knowledge gained over years has bumped hp on any engine over what was done 40 years ago.

[zefarelly]

Agreed, I could probably build an engine exactly as in the homologation papers and it would produce a little more than then.

[Al Weyman]

A little more I can understand, 450bhp from a performance spec engine that originally produced 275 I can't sorry.

[zefarelly]

but Al . .5% may be gained by shall we say, modern materials and better tolerances etc, but the engines in many instances, weren't bad to start with ( Willment up from a std 78 to 120 for the Cortina GT lump)

however increased compression, better head flow and cam redesign ( on top of modern material efficiencies ) means bigger hikes . . .lets say 145, so we're up 85% on standard and 20% on period tuned.

The US engines were (still are!) agricultural and inneficcient by comparison to most, but tough, so maintaining reliability is relatively easy . . . 450 is a 63% increase. . . that's not rocket science.

Time consuming and expensive maybe.

It gets silly from my point of view when there is no original engine, and all the new engine parts are redesigned/improved etc to cope with said increases, this just opens the door for further 'improvements and that's not cricket. Twin cams are a case in point, I doubt there are any front running LC's out there which don't have brand new engines, I'd wager the LAranca BMW's with BMW backing have all new engines, and Swiftune are making new heads apparently . . . . If you can treat 'historic' racing as a disposable business then perhaps its time for replica racing? There will be an ever decreasing number of us prepared to ruin original cars, or will the wealthy continue to push the market until the dinosaur factor kicks in and there are none left?

[Paul D]

Joe - I think you've partly answered your own question there!

The likes of you or me, or many of the other genuine enthusiasts on here may well think twice about ruining an original car to build a racecar, but is it really something that concerns those with big budgets and a 'win at all costs' mentality?

And anyway, as you so rightly said, so many of the previously hard to find parts are now available again brand new, if you can stomach the prices! It's possible to build an effectively brand new E-type, for example, even including the body, and more or less the same applies to Lotus Cortinas (except for the shell), Cobras, Minis, whatever - if you have the budget, then there's a way.

So, if you accept that (and you may not!), then you've got to wonder how many of the cars racing in these big budget series' actually required an original car to be sacrificed for their build in the first place? How many of them were simply built up from a shell and a pile of new bits? I don't know, I'm no expert on such matters, but I'd wager that a high percentage of (for example) 'Lotus Cortinas' in U2TC never began life as Lotus Cortinas!

Am I wrong? I'm sure someone will be along shortly to correct me if so!

[zefarelly]

OK, I'll stick my neck out. There are no genuine/original Lotus Cortinas racing competitively in U2TC. As an occaisional visitor to this forum and prominent racer/restorer said to me, why would you ruin an original and rare car. particularly a pre airflow.

luckily mine cost me £635 so I can afford to sacrifice it to racing ( and I have a few spare ones!)

good original components are more valuable than repro . . .and repro varies from quality race components to dangerous show tat, with everything in between

[James Murray]

Joe do they need a Lotus Cortina identity or can one be built up from any 2 door shell and provided it has an HTP your good to go?

[morninggents]

That is correct, James. Mine is not a genuine Lotus but has been built up to exact Lotus spec as per FIA App K papers, and has HTP papers.
Remember that all Mk 1 Lotus Cortinas were built at the Lotus factory in North London from white deluxe Cortinas supplied by Ford and all the trick bits were added by Lotus. If an FIA car is built today in the same way used by Lotus 50 years ago I see no problem there. The trouble is that the App K rules have been stretched far beyond the written word. Somebody said earlier that it's not what you can't do it's doing what you can do but this then allows for interpretations that I think should be questioned at MSA level. However, there is too much money involved now to allow that to happen.

[simon drabble]

it would be fascinating to put a "new" Lotus Cortina and a period one side by side and go through where the changes have been made, I know in the case of Jaguars history stopped in 1963 when the Galaxies and L-C's arrived and as they have only been raced by enthusiasts since development has stopped. Ironic given E Types are subject to extensive investment!

[Normal Bloke]

My Mini is also not-an-S but is an S as far as it's FIA AppK HTP is concerned.
It's a little closer than some though, having been developed from my dad's old 1961 850 racer....and it had a famous previous owner too, although no notoriety as a far as winning was concerned.

[GORDON STREETER]

Originally Posted by simon drabble

it would be fascinating to put a "new" Lotus Cortina and a period one side by side and go through where the changes have been made,

A very famous LC racer in period that lives very close to me in the UK still had his original car up to a few years ago in his garage that hadn't turned a wheel in decades, I said to him "how competitive would it be today" and he said "totally outclassed" and the best thing to do is sell it as it is with known period history and have a new one built from scratch. He did sell it and made a lot of money, more than having a new one built as it turned out !

[GORDON STREETER]

Al, Joe is quite right in what he's saying, the engines that you are on about were very under powered for the cc all those years ago when the humble Anglia engine was capable of producing 100 bhp (or more)per litre.
What you should be looking at is how much BHP the same "tank" engine was producing say twenty years ago when sorted by a decent builder.

[simon drabble]

interesting to compare the lap times from the Classic:
of GT and Saloons from 60's (with Minshaw/Keen Lister at 2.248 as a comp) all on Dunlops

E Type in Gent Drivers 2.26
Falcon in mustang race 2.29
Lotus Cortina in U2TC 2.319
250 SWB in pre 63GT 2.325
Elan 26r in Gent Drivers 2.348

wonder what the order would have been in 65 (accepting that the 250SWB woudl have been an "old" car by then)

[zefarelly]

When the old FiA TC series ran 14 odd years ago a competitive lap time in a cortina at spa was 3:10, top ten was 3:15

granted the tracks been slowed down a bit with the stupid F1 chicane, but never the less front runners are now under 3minutes

somethings not quite right.

I'm finally taking my car to the body shop tomorrow. maybe it'll just end up as a period show car and I'll flog it off as a pension fund sometime as an ancient relic of days gone by!