Pipe dream

[mettisse]

I'm sure that most of us love our vehicles andwould love to buy a brand new vehicle of the same model, ( cash permitting) obviously not available, so the option is a rebuild, my pipe dream would be to have my engine 80 HDT totally remanufactured. Has anyone on this forum ever rebuilt an engine but incorporated such practices as polishing And balancing the con rods, matching the Pistons, and other old fashioned tuning mods, if so, with what effect? It was with a view of getting efficiency from the unit. When I was young I had an 1298 mini engine ( in a mini) with all the tuning mods and it ran like silk, just thought I'd ask. Best regards to all , Bill Westley

 

[Shayne]

I share your dream mate check out Gale Banks diesel

 

[Chas]

I'm sure that most of us love our vehicles andwould love to buy a brand new vehicle of the same model, ( cash permitting) obviously not available, so the option is a rebuild, my pipe dream would be to have my engine 80 HDT totally remanufactured. Has anyone on this forum ever rebuilt an engine but incorporated such practices as polishing And balancing the con rods, matching the Pistons, and other old fashioned tuning mods, if so, with what effect? It was with a view of getting efficiency from the unit. When I was young I had an 1298 mini engine ( in a mini) with all the tuning mods and it ran like silk, just thought I'd ask. Best regards to all , Bill Westley

That's top of my list Bill for when the Premium Bonds turn up trumps.

 

[clivehorridge]

It's a great dream Bill, I've thought about this a lot, a new 80 that is, and what a treasure it would be.

Engine wise, I understand the mini story, my mate at the time (sadly he passed away last November) and I had a 1071 in a 1962 mini shell, that we used to do small club rally's with.

That was 'stage 2' whatever that meant at the time (technically) but that was built by Jonspeed and was fully balanced, polished ports, high-lift cam and so forth. It was a beauty of an engine and would rev like I couldn't imagine with no ill effects, no vibrations, or anything untoward.

We ran it with two twin-choke Webbers, using 3 out of the 4 chokes, and with a straight-cut gearbox.

Noisy as f**k but such great fun. We even won some of the club 12-car events (which was Chequers, near Droitwich), but that wasn't the driving force of our passion.

Good memories indeed.

 

[Towpack]

Are we talking about Blueprinting here or actually tuning it? Two different things IMO.If money really was no object I'd just order a brand new engine in parts, or as many of the parts as can still be had new, and build it up to as close as perfect as possible but, back to reality, I wouldn't Blueprint an engine that was running OK as the results can vary massively. JMO

 

[mettisse]

Are we talking about Blueprinting here or actually tuning it? Two different things IMO.If money really was no object I'd just order a brand new engine in parts, or as many of the parts as can still be had new, and build it up to as close as perfect as possible but, back to reality, I wouldn't Blueprint an engine that was running OK as the results can vary massively. JMO

Hello, to be honest I don't know, if money were no object, I suppose it would be nice to have to polishing and balancing done to all new parts, I don't know of any improvements that could be done to the lubrication system or the cooling system, in my own case I had the engine ( 80 series) reconed by Buffalo Bill, in effect the engine was reconned and I was just conned, And if I knew then what I know now , I wouldn't have done. ( turbo grenaded and parts were ingested into engine, I was the wrong side of the Atlas Mountains at the time) point being it cost £ bundles and in retrospect I would have done better to spend a little more and do a proper job. Although to be fair it now runs like silk and I've put in excess of 150k miles on it albeit after a lot of remedial work. My error was I didn't know this forum for a start. And I was trusting ( still am I suppose) anyway, it's only a pipe dream
Recently at virtually a moments notice I drove it down to Milan and back, and really enjoyed the drive, went really well, so I can't complain im still having fun.

 

[SeaJay]

In no way do I claim to be a expert, but to my understanding with a Toyota diesel best thing is to use all genuine parts, bolts and gaskets included, forgo head porting and polishing as a high boost turbo will be boosting the charge in, get a new harmonic balancer and key. The big power increase will come when you tune your injection pump and fit a better turbo, and an intercooler will catch turbo parts if it lets go

 

[mettisse]

In no way do I claim to be a expert, but to my understanding with a Toyota diesel best thing is to use all genuine parts, bolts and gaskets included, forgo head porting and polishing as a high boost turbo will be boosting the charge in, get a new harmonic balancer and key. The big power increase will come when you tune your injection pump and fit a better turbo, and an intercooler will catch turbo parts if it lets go

Hi. Well, that's pretty much what I've done, and frankly I have enough get up go to cover my needs, and that includes towing my froader with an Ifor Williams, all up weight of loadsakilos , about max mass, never weighed it.
I was interested if anyone had bothered to do any polishing etc and with what results, my game plan is to continue with the rolling restoration, and eventually I may have to rebuild the lump, hope not, ( hope for the best, plan for the worst) thank you for your comment though, it's nice when someone else has the same thought lines. Best regards to all, Bill Westley

 

[Bert]

As far as pipe dreams go and unlimited cash, I'd strip my Prado down to the nuts and bolts and rebuild completely. The chassis would be galvanised, decent size underbody protection system, complete re wire with redundant systems in place, additional wiring to the rear of the vehicle, a little extra soundproofing, a decent stereo, massive fuel tank and water tank fitted......oooh the list would be endless....if I ever won the lottery, I'd be quite happy to waste the interest this way.....oh, and I'd buy one of these too:

 

[frank rabbets]

These engines are built to such tight tolerance I don't think you could improve by weight balancing and polishing. Weight balancing is to stop vibration at high RPM and polishing is just to stop oil drag and stop cracks developing under extra load and higher RPM. In competition tuning you are put into a class and there would be a different class for normal aspiration to turbo or super charging. With these Toyota engines increasing fuel and turbo boost is the best way for more power. However with metal fatigue everything fails in the end so any extra power is offset by a shortened engine life. Also tranny life is equally shortened.

 

[Shayne]

http://www.lewismarine.co.uk/t6280.html

I think i would just pay a few more quid for some detailed paintwork .

 

[mettisse]

These engines are built to such tight tolerance I don't think you could improve by weight balancing and polishing. Weight balancing is to stop vibration at high RPM and polishing is just to stop oil drag and stop cracks developing under extra load and higher RPM. In competition tuning you are put into a class and there would be a different class for normal aspiration to turbo or super charging. With these Toyota engines increasing fuel and turbo boost is the best way for more power. However with metal fatigue everything fails in the end so any extra power is offset by a shortened engine life. Also tranny life is equally shortened.[/QUOTE

So, I concur, no advantage to be had really, thanks for your input.
I have seen advertised in the French Toyota magazine " Toy" new engines for €10,000 but it says " exchange" so are these new or recon? And considering what frank rabbits said about material fatigue, new may eventually be the only option, it can be quite depressing eh?

 

[Towpack]

If you completely rebuilding an engine then you could argue that Blueprinting is worth the extra time and cost, especially if you intend to tune it for more output. The only 'problem' I can see doing a DIY rebuild on the 1H engines is the size and weight of the thing as I'm sure Frank will testify. The biggest motor I did was a Ford 2.9 V6 which was quite manageable even single handed. Even the biggest bike engines are lightweights by comparison.

 

[mettisse]

I share your dream mate check out Gale Banks diesel

Well worth a look, I enjoyed the videos, thanks

 

[frank rabbets]

Easiest engines I've worked on were the 3.5 Rover V8. You could pick up the block in one hand it's so light. You can strip an engine in less than an hour. I used one in the Range Rover I built from scratch and registered as a new vehicle. The standard RR engine had 8.3 CR but I managed to get some 10.5 CR pistons. I also fitted the first electronic device that did away with dizzy points. One morning I boiled the engine and warped the heads. I took them off, held them in the vice and used a large piece of wood wrapped in 40 grade paper to file the heads flat. It was like filing soap, so easy. The heads had gone trough shaped along their length so I just filed this at right angles. By 10 o'clock that evening the car was back on the road. ( Together with the proper belt driven fan lol). I did about 200,000 miles and sold it when I did my back in. In perfect condition with chassis and body panels waxoiled from new. REA 938W if she's still about.

 

[SafariTecPeter]

If You are seriously wanting BIG HP figures, look at the Toyo Six-pot as used by Yanmar.
They boot out up to 500HP in their marine versions....
Eversoslightly more than the NANNI version..........

 

[Dave2000]

I think 'Bert' has been looking in my head. I too would strip down to the last nut and bolt. I would rebuild and include some of the other options, the console fridge, cruise control and so forth. No to blueprinting but more oft used tuning ideas.

As per TP the results can vary with blueprinting, have you ever driven identical vehicles only to find that one has an engine that is smoother and seems to 'pull' better? And yet both have low mileage, the owners fastidious about servicing and maintenance? Tooling varies during production, specs start to drift, the result is an average engine, this will produce reasonable power and last a good amount of time but, a 'blueprinted' engine will perform above average and MTBF will be longer.

Tuning on the other hand was the in thing in my younger days, I would not blueprint, but would use accepted tricks to not only produce more power but increase the ability of the engine to sustain the higher revolutions needed as power was only being produced at higher revolutions, such was the limits of the then often used Ford Cross flow, recognising the limits of capacity and of course every time you increase the horsepower you reduced the expected life, I went to a Rover V8 escort, and then got stuck into tuning the Jaguar V12.

As is, the 80 engine is a pretty good all rounder, low end torque and so forth but, if you have plenty of money floating around then an engine change might be in my thoughts?

regards

Dave

 

[Towpack]

The Yanmar version of this engine would be no good in a LC IMO. Marine use requires different power characteristics to a road vehicle and the large outputs achieved when these engines are marinised with no loss in reliability & longevity is due mainly to the far superior cooling/intercooling available. JMO

 

[Towpack]

I went to a Rover V8 escort, and then got stuck into tuning the Jaguar V12.


regards

Dave

I had a XJ12 back in the early 80's which was the last of the carburettered models before they adopted FI. It had 4 Strombergs which were very restrictive. Just bolting on a set of Weber DCOE carbs was supposed to unleash another 50-60bhp but the price was not much less than I bought the car for so that killed it! Add in a cam swap and new headers and exhaust and 400+bhp was easily achievable. That Jag was the smoothest car I've ever driven.

 

[Dave2000]

The usage of marine versus road is completely different IMO, Yanmar will have an engine that is expected to be used for x amount of hours usage, the road version 500,000 miles.

regards

Dave