Blower removal & boost gauge

[Pope1]

The time is rapidly approaching when I will have to tackle the jobs I have been dreading - changing the timing belt, the supercharger belt and the supercharger pulley. I also have a boost gauge that I would like to fit so this seems like the ideal time to deal with that. Two sets of questions come to mind:

1. Are there any special things to bear in mind when removing and refitting the VX blower? All I have is a diagram showing the sequence in which the nuts and bolts should be tightened when it is being attached to the manifold. No torque wrench settings or notes about special precautions. Is a gasket required between the blower and the manifold or will silicone gasket stuff suffice?

2. Has anyone else fitted a boost gauge? If so, do you have a picture or can you describe the point at which you drilled the inlet manifold to fit it? I'm rather anxious to avoid drilling into the water jacket.

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

Chris

[VX131R]

I have the same diagram, I'd like to know id=f anyone has any hints/tips as well in regard to torque settings etc.
Why are you removing the blower anyway? Are you going to rebuild/service it or? Just a thought ( if it ani't broke don't fix it scenario ), you might open up a can of worms, or am i just being a wimp? :roll:

[Pope1]

No it's a valid point. I must admit that I have not yet thought through everything, but I had assumed that I would need to get the inlet manifold off in order to drill the hole to connect the boost gauge. I had also assumed that I would need to get the blower out of the way first. It may be possible to remove manifold, blower and carb as one but I doubt it. There is also the matter of changing the pulley wheel on the blower as I would like to try fitting a slightly smaller one.

[chrisc]

Even if you could do it in situ, there is no way youd be able to prevent swarf from ending up in the engine, so yes, removal is the way forward.

[Fingers]

I can't see a problem with removing the inlet manifold and blower as an assembly, and it's a nice way around having to worry about torque and sequence. I can't find any info on the torque figure either sorry, It will be a bit fiddly with the support under the blower(with the belt tensioner on). As for the blower pulley, it would be easier to change it with the blower off the engine, I used a two legged puller to get mine off and had to drain the powersteering fluid resevoir and disconnect an adjacent hose to get the puller on, plus the nut was very tight, from memory it's 13/16ths. Oh yeah, I'm also thinking of putting a couple of threaded grease nipples on the back of my blower, it can't be good for those bearings to go for ages without a good lube.

[Pope1]

Fingers,

So it is possible to change the pulley in situ? Was wondering whether to try it that way and then take off the manifold afterwards to drill the hole. At least the blower itself is held fast while its attached to the engine, once it's off then there's the issue of how to hold the thing down. One thought I had was just to take it a garage or engineering shop and have them use their kit to undo the nut and swap the pulley over. What did you use to stop the shaft turning while you were trying to undo the nut?

Just had a quick look at the car again and I don't think that it is possible to remove the manifold with first removing the blower and maybe even the alternator.

Chris

[A1.6HPE]

Hello,
For the boost gauge you could tap in to the vaccum pipe that feeds the servo. A piece of copper pipe spliced in and fit a take of pipe to that. A plumber might have something suitable.

Leo

[Pope1]

Sorry Leo that won't work, the VX is different from the standard Beta. If I recall correctly the standard car just has the take off for the servo hose on the manifold as there is normally a vacuum in there. On the VX the manifold is being pressurised by the blower so the take off point is just underneath the carb on the input side to the supercharger.

In other words the VX setup is manifold, blower, carb. The blower sucks through the carb (hence vacuum between blower and carb) and blows into the manifold creating pressure there.

Nice idea that got me fired up for a minute wondering why I hadn't thought of it and then I looked at the engine and realised why.

[A1.6HPE]

Oh!
I see what you mean (after drawing a diagram). I have never owned a VX, only norm-asp Betas and Turbo charged Deltas. On the Delta the servo connection is on the manifold so the feed to the servo is pressurised when the boost is on - the one-way valve in the servo presumably protects it. Obviously the setup is different where the supercharger is turning all the time and so the pressurisation is always there. This all leaves me wondering if there is an amplification effect in that the vacuum is enhanced by the supercharger doing its thing when the throttle is closed. :?:

Leo

[Pope1]

Leo, I quickly figured out that you were used to the normal Beta setup and had probably never seen the VX arrangement.

The supercharger apparently produces almost no boost at idle and produces its maximum at about 3000 rpm or so I have been lead to believe. I would guess that the amount of vacuum created between the carb and the blower is directly proportional to the air flow through it so you'll get more vacuum with an open throttle rather than the other way round but I'm only guessing.

Chris

[VX131R]

think you might be confusing vacum with positive boost pressure. N/a engines produce more vacum at low throttle openings and less or no vacum at wide open throttle. forced induction, and particularly our vx engines produce vacum at small throttle openings and revert to positive boost at wide open throttle. No idea at what part of the throttle plate opening this occurs, but bascialy they behave like a N/a engine until you boot it.
As far as i understand ( in very basic terms, feel free to correct me anyone that can explain it better ) the vacum is created by the piston on the intake stroke drawing ( sucking ) air/fuel through the small throttle plate opening, as soon as you open the throttle wide up the vacum disappears due to the wide opening.
On the vx enigine I guess there will be vacum ( negative pressure )created in the carb as you are sucking through it, but the blower to head manifold will be subject to positive pressure.
This loss of vacum at wide open throttle is one reason we have vacum controlled pressure regs in injected engines, when there is no vacum the pressure will rise increasing the fuel pressure behing the seat of the injector to optimise atomisation. This compensates for the lack of vacum sucking the fuel from the injector nozzle.
I think will was really up with play on the vacum/boost scenario.

[Pope1]

I think we were perhaps just talking at cross purposes a little. Agree with what you saying, initial vacuum in the manifold, then boost as the revs rise. You certainly get vacuum at the carb take off point at idle too and I assumed that you'd get some there at higher revs due to the air flow but it's that last bit that I'm not sure about.

[Fingers]

Yes well you probably won't like this but I was a bit rough when I took the pulley off, it was pretty tight, first I tried a strap type filter wrench to hold it but it was way too tight for that. I ended up using a pair of large slip jaw pliers and a tea towel(dish cloth) so as not to damage either pulley, and it worked fine. But I would recommend getting a proper pulley lock even if you have to borrow one. I also had to change the power steering pump and crank pulley, not sure if you need to but just to let you know in case you do that the bolt on the crank is left hand thread.

[Pope1]

Thanks for the tip. I don't plan to touch either of those but with these cars you never know what might happen! I must also remember to investigate the blower belt tensioner first to see how much more adjustment is available otherwise I may get into trouble with that too. I'll start asking around about the pulley lock tomorrow but it's beginning to sound as if I may have to take the whole thing to an engineering shop. Some specialist tools are difficult to come by over here and often one finds that the only people that have them don't lend them or rent them.

[cstorry]

I have a Pininfarina Spidereuropa Volumex (Fiat spider with volumex engine). This is a limited edition version of the spider done together with Abarth and Lancia using basically the Lancia Beta volumex parts.

My car has a compressor guage (boost and vacuum) in the dash and I can post some pics of the tap location in the volumex to head manifold and the guage if you like.

This manifold is the same as the one used on the Beta volumex.

As for the compressor pulley. The one on my spider is 21 teeth where the Beta ones are 22 I believe. For some reason the engineers chose to change the angle of the cone shaped washer between the pulley and shaft meaning the pulley and the washer need to be changed together. I only mention this since I am not sure what you are replacing your Beta compressor pulley with and perhaps you will find the same problem. I happen to have some spare Beta pulleys and compressors but not spare Fiat ones so I can't show you comparison pics right now as the Spider volumex is assembled and on the car.

Let me know if some pics of any of this might prove useful.

regards
Chuck Storry

[Pope1]

Chuck,

I know exactly what type of car you are talking about (from the Fiat and Lancia Twin-Cams book) but have never seen one in real life. You have quite a rare and extremely desirable machine there (I guess you know that already) - I hope it leads a pampered existence and receives lots of TLC. It must be a wonderful car in the summer months.

I would be grateful for any photos that you can make available please. I am changing my 22 tooth standard pulley to a 21 tooth one from Evocars in the UK. They claim it was designed for this application so it should just fit in place of the standard item. The only other issue might be that the tensioner requires some sort of sleeve to get the belt to the correct tension with the new pulley.

Chris

[Fingers]

Interesting, wonder why they did that? There you go Chris problem solved, already done on the Spider, so there should be all the info you need out there somewhere. The belt tensioner isn't a problem, there's more than enough travel to allow for the new smaller pulley, might be a good time to fit a new one though if it's getting a bit tired. I'm interested in seeing the Spider pics.

Is your Spider red or black Chuck? They're beautiful either way.

[Pope1]

On the tensioner issue Evocars told me that some cars have plenty of adjustment left in the tensioner some don't. Now don't ask me why because that makes no sense to me but that's what they've found. It's just the luck of the draw. The supercharger belt tensioner is one of the things that I did not get a spare for so I'm hoping it is OK.

The Spider manifold photos will certainly help me to identify the best place to drill the hole for the stud.

As for getting the pulley off, I was not able to find a pulley lock when I was out today but all kinds of pullers are available locally. May have a go this week-end and see how far I get.

[VX131R]

Yes would love to see the spider pics!! :D :D

[andybeta]

the supercharger tensioner bearing is arguably just as important as it's bigger brother cam belt tensioner. Mine sounded and felt pretty rough when it was taken off. A new one is going on, I don't want to take the risk of it seizing........

Andybeta

[cstorry]

My Spider Volumex pics are up.

Have a look at Chuck Storry's Spider Volumex Album

http://www.lancisti.net/forum/modules.php?set_albumName=albuo61&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_album.php

You'll see the manifold with compressor off. You can clearly see the vacuum line take-off in more or less the center just to the left of the blow-off valve.

I also put a pic of the dash guage. There's a vacuum line between the engine through the firewall to the guage. Might want some sort of remote sender if you were doing this in a Montecarlo but should be OK in a Beta.

Thanks for the compliments on the car. Red car with black interior and roof. It is indeed great fun and used for summer special trips only. I'm working on building a replica so I can get that volumex feeling everyday.

I don't feel too guilty about this non-Lancia discussion since there's some Lancia technology inside.

Another Lancia first could have been a Lancia Inside logo :lol:

regards
Chuck

[chrisc]

Wow! That makes the stock vx look simple... And is it my imagination or is pininfarina the best styling house ever?

On your spider vx, is that throttle linkage is fiendish as it looks? how about the water flow to the auto choke? is that repositioned from the standard vx or has it just got hoses running between the cam covers?

Nice pics - spider looks fantastic.

[Tom McGaffigan]

Your boost gauge should be plumbed in the intake manifold (between the engine and supercharger) not the carb to supercharger manifold. The intake manifold will experience vacuum at small throttle openings, (like idle and crusing) and positive pressure (boost) at larger throttle openings. It is because of this that boost gauges usually have vacuum increments in one direction and boost readings in the other. There are 2 cast bosses in the manifold for a boost gauge line to be atteched. Drill and tap one and use it for your gauge. Be carefull when removing the pulley as you may upset the supercharger rotor phasing. See Guy Crofts web site for pictures of a Volumex rebuild to see what I am refering to. :twisted:
Good Luck,
Tom McGaffigan

[Fingers]

No if you look at this picture http://www.guy-croft.com/img7722.jpg you can see that there are rather large nuts locking the rotors in place, you will only loose the synchronisation if one of these is undone.

[Will]

Sorry I'm late to the discussion, been busy lately.
If your objective is to add a boost gauge WITHOUT pulling the manifold, one option would be to remove the pop-off valve and add a coupling beneath it that you can drill and tap for your boost line. The original motors had a tapping in the boss immediately in front of the pop-off valve.
Another option (and what I'd do) is simply to remove the "guts" of the pop-off valve (piston and spring) and add a hose to your shop vacuum or compressor. By blowing air into the manifold, you can make positive pressure inside, then you can drill and tap to your heart's content, with the caveat that any cutting fluid and chips will be spraying at you (meaning, wear goggles). Removing the manifold is a true PITA, the bolt sequence in the FIAT literature is not so much a critical torque sequence as necessary to get the parts into ALIGNMENT, you'll find there are a lot of parts and if you tighten them up in the wrong order, you will not be pulling mating surfaces flat against each other. If you don't need to do it, you might as well avoid the extra aggravation.
If you are really paranoid that something could have escaped your positive-pressure manifold technique and got inside, you can easily remove the tail housing of the blower and vac out the manifold. remember, you are already south of the blower, so a little squiggle of alum or small chip will most likely just get sucked through the motor and spit out into the exhaust anyway. Sounds worse than it is.
The one thing that you MUST MUST watch out for, is that the threaded holes for the manifolds go right through the blower housing. It is imperative that you don't end up substituting any longer fasteners, etc.- because the business end will end up sticking right in the rotor path. the possibility here is that you could go to staret the motor, and the rotors could whip around and get damaged by the bolt, possibly thrashing your belt and/or dephasing your rotors as well. That would truly suck.
On the rotor phasing issue, a much bigger deal has been made of this than it is. There is very little chance of it happening other than by the introduction of a foreign object, provided that the nuts have been tightened well enough- and that means pretty darn hard, I think they are supposed to be something like 300lbf. Those guys who built that thing weren't taking any chances!
So, don't fret that if you blow a belt, etc- that the unit will de-phase and all hell will break loose. Not likely to happen unless you drop a wrench (or possibly a carb jet) in there.
On lubrication of rear bearings: These are sealed units, and should not require lubrication. They are widely available and designed to be easily replaced, although you'll probably have to take the entire back plate of the blower off instead of just the little cover plate in order to drive them out from the inside- at least I did. Replacement bearings were available at a local transmission shop. While you are at it, you can take a little liquid parrafin and clean the schmutz off the rotors with a rag. You'll also find some varnish forms INSIDE the hollow rotors, you can clean this out as well.
Gaskets: The original units have thin paper gaskets. You can use silicone or dressing instead, but be sure to use it sparingly. The rotors come ALL the way to the corners, so you don't want to get anything inside the housing.
OK, sorry for the long response- hope this is helpful.
-Will

[Wallace]

The manifold's ally .. . any swarf will go straight through without hurting diddly. .. . the seats and valves are made of a lot harder stuff than that !!

[cstorry]

I've not played with the Beta volumex but the spider vx is not complicated.

The throttle cable comes to a bracket bolted to the top of the compressor and attaches via a short arm to a cam that changes the direction of throw. Probably a little too difficult to go cable all the way.

The water choke is inline between the compressor to head manifold and the carb intake manifold. I simplified things taking the carb manifold out of the path (no longer heated). I don't drive the car in the winter and there once was a switch to turn the water flow off once operating temperature was reached anyways.

I also removed the evacuation pump that sucks from the compressor ends when it died. I have just plugged the compressor vents.

There sure isn't much room for the carb between the compressor and the inner wheel fender and from the front the brake booster.

Fits nicely and along with the other performance changes which were engineered for this special model makes it a whole different car than "regular" fiat spiders.

Chuck

[Will]

Chuck:
What other performance changes? Is it the same changes as the Azzuras (i.e. bigger brake rotors, etc.) or is there more?
The reason I'm asking is I'm wondering whether the performance gear changes you mentioned were incorporated in all the later cars, and the Vx just adds the blower setup, or whether the Vx was completely fitted differently, and what other parts were used?

-Will
PS> You asked me a couple of years ago to let you know if I was thinking of selling something (you know what) and let you know first. I'm thinking about it, in order to finance a motor I'm building.
We can chat about it, call me or email me offlist <76lancia(at)optonline.net>. I'm letting you know first, see.

[Will]

Wallace;
Yeah, hopefully any shavings would just blow through, but the space around the piston crown and fire ring is like a magnet for shite, anyone that has tried to clean off the tops of the slugs with a soft bronze brush will attest to the fact that you spend nearly as long trying to swing the crank and tweeze out bits of bronze bristle.
Also, there is the faint possibility that a chip or squiggle of aluminum detritus could get mashed against a valve seat and end up sticking there, so I would personally take the five minutes to work a positive pressure in the manifold before drilling it. What I would not do is remove the whole works, it is a real bitch to reinstall it. I think you have probably been there and presumably would agree!

[Wallace]

My Monte once blew out a spark plug - it must have been loose as it went back in ok - but i was full of bad ideas like head off to fit a helicoil insert etc etc.

I talked to Barry Waterhouse over it and he said they didn't bother taking the head off - the ally is very soft compaired to the seats and valves and wouldn't last 1/2 second in the engine ! Which seems to make sense - the seats and valves get pretty hot as well - put it this way - it wouldn't bother me - but it is only by two penneth worth . . . !! :lol:

And we are only talking swarf here - not big lumps of ally ! If you use a small drill and work up to the right size tapping one, you shouldn't even get that "disc" of metal comimg off as the drill breaks through - just two nice strings of swarf coing up fromn the drilll (assuming it's sharp .. ) Grease the tap and the swarf will stick to that as well - any falling into the inlet tract will be negilgable - certainly not worth stripping off for.

[andybeta]

Why don't you remove the breather pipe so you can have access to the inlet manifold. Drill the hole using increasing bit size and then thread it to whatever size your male union is for the boost feed to gauge. Then before actually fitting the union for real get a tube which is attached to a vacuum cleaner and hoover out the inlet manifold. You might if you're enterprsing some how get a clean rag beneath the tapped hole which is very close to the breather, supercharger side as there are the blanks in the inlet manifiold.

And with a little care, skill and luck no swarf will make it to the bores. You could also suck out/clean out the hole every now and again and certainly before you break through the inner wall.

If this is too much for your heart, then take off the suoercharger, that way you'd be sure that no swarf would end up in the combustion area.

Good luck,

Andybeta

[cstorry]

Will,

I wil give you guys the abbreviated list since this is now a bit off Lancia topic. I am reverse engineering my car and working on filling all the details in on my web page for all who want to know (or reproduce).

Major mechanical differences from Fiat Spider:

rear end
- completely different diff (and final drive ratio). For some reason they kept the same (rumored) weak fiat spider gearbox

rear suspension
- different springs (primarily spring rate). I wish I knew how to measure that in order to reproduce or buy the right ones for my clone - any ideas ?
- different shocks (bilsteins)
- stiffer bushings (including panhard rod and forward and rearward control arms)

front suspension
- different springs
- different shocks
- stiffer bushings
- bigger anti-sway bar
- bigger hubs
- different offset hub mounting via spacers
- different camber/castor setup
- bigger and ventillated brake rotor (85 1/2 spider still had solid rotors but bigger than earlier spiders)
- piston each side brembo calipers
- 85 model year spider volumex got R&P steering (as did all 85 model year cars)
- 15 inch multipiece speedline alloy wheels

engine compartment
- larger brake booster (but shorter to accomodate vx and carb mounting)
- different cooling system (no rad cap but closed system as per Lancia models). 1st implementation on the spider vx appears to have been based on the Integrale system but offered insufficient holding capacity in presurized overflow tank and was subsequently changed. All 85 spiders including the volumex got a further upgraded system (volumex and the so called 85 1/2 "regular" spiders)
- 132 AR block, volumex head and compressor and ancilliaries.
I have yet to disassemble the block but I hear that the volumex blocks have bigger webs inside near the crankshaft journals. Anyboy know if this is true for the Lancia volumex blocks ? I can tell you for sure that the heads, valves, cams and pistons are different from non-volumex engines.

Oh and BTW the compressor differs from the Beta one as mentioned before in the drive being 21 teeth rather than 22. Also the compressor housing (cooling fins) is machined because the carb sits so close that it would otherwise have hit the compressor.

Not to mention the aestetic changes which were made some of which were indeed also adopted by the 85 1/2 spiders.

Does that wet your curiosity to drive a volumex spider ? There's one on ebay right now - too modified for my taste but seller claims can be retored to original if desired.

regards
Chuck

[Pope1]

Guys,

First, my apologies for being so quiet. I have been offline for a few days and a wealth of information has been posted. Many thanks to everyone for taking the time to contribute especially to Chuck for the pictures.

One of the reasons for my silence was that I changed the water pump on Saturday and, although it's fairly straightforward, access is not great and I must have ended up creasing the gasket when I put it back in. Result? Fluid gushed over the garage floor as I was busy filling up the system thinking to myself "it seems to be taking rather a lot of liquid!" Not a good day :evil: and I still have not had a chance to get back to rectify it.

In response to your comments:

Chrisc - on my car Guy Croft did away with all of that complicated plumbing that went to the old carb setup. It works fine with the climate over here. Please let me know if you are interested in pictures and I will organised a photo shoot.

Supercharger and boost gauge. I was only planning to remove the supercharger to deal with the pulley replacement and to provide access to the manifold. I am not going to open the blower at all and will leave well alone as it seems to be working fine. If I can do everything with it in situ I will, but in the event that it does have to come off it appears that there is considerable scope for collecting any bits of swarf via the hole that the SC blows through to pressurise the manifold.

Many thanks for the warnings about removing the manifold and the suggestions for other ways to tackle the drilling. Given your comments, I'm going to leave it right where it is now and use one of the alternatives (not sure which one yet).

I'll also have a look at the SC belt tensioner bearing in the process.

Chris

[Pope1]

Plan is to get the water pump sorted and then to try and fit the boost gauge without removing the blower. I'll postpone the pulley change for a week or two.

That will give me the opportunity to meet one of my goals - to collect some data about the actual boost level before and after the pulley change.

It must be the season for forced induction projects. I'm also planning to fit a boost gauge to my VW Golf this week-end which will ultimately be used to calibrate the digital boost gauge that a friend and I are planning to build. No wonder there never seems to be enough time.

Chris

[Fingers]

What a great idea, I'm very interested to know what the difference in boost is, because you can notice a difference in the performance of the car, but it's quite subtle, not a real kick in the back, it now feels like it should.

[Pope1]

What a great idea, I'm very interested to know what the difference in boost is, because you can notice a difference in the performance of the car, but it's quite subtle, not a real kick in the back, it now feels like it should.

My guess is about 1-2 psi but it really is only a guess. I'll let you know how it works out.

[andybeta]

A -1 to +1.5 bar gauge is sufficient. At idle the negative pressure in the chamber means the gauge indicates about -0.7bar which goes up toward and through zero as the revs climb meaning the s/c is generating a postive pressure. Flooring the throttle max pressure is about +0.7/0.8 to 1 bar I think, but depends on your s/c, pulley diameter and engine of course.

Andybeta

[Pope1]

That's more or less what I was banking on - I've got a -1 to +1 bar gauge which I figured would be good enough even with the smaller pulley. If I'm wrong, the Lancia will inherit the Golf's vacuum driven one as soon as I complete the electronic one.

[Pope1]

Well great progress today and I just want to say thanks again because without your input I'd probably still be fighting with the manifold instead of sitting in front of the PC.

Fixed the water pump gasket issue and avoided making the same mistake twice. Took the opportunity to drain what I could from the bottom of the rad. My goodness, I was shocked at how much sediment and gunk was in there.

Fitted the boost gauge. As Andy suggested, I removed the blow-off valve and used that hole to get a bit of metal covered in grease below where I was drilling. The metal was a surplus PC part shaped like a trough and it worked well as a swarf catcher. The vacuum cleaner with a mini-vac kit took care of the remainder (I hope). Pics of the swarf catcher and mini-vac kit can be provided if required.

For anyone else going the route of fitting a boost gauge to a VX, Will's suggestion is by far the best way to go IMO. Remove blow-off valve and source an extension piece that is the same diameter as the blow-off valve. The extension will need to be threaded at one end so that it can screw into the manifold, and threaded at the other end so the blow-off valve can screw into the extension. You can then tap into the extension piece while it is off the car - no swarf and no fiddling around. It you need to go back to the stock arrangement for any reason, you just remove the extension piece. Not the way that I did it, but it is the way that I would recommend.

Went for a quick spin afterwards and I'm getting maximum boost of 0.4-0.5 bar which is pretty much as specified by Lancia. Don't think there is much wrong with my blower then. Now have to find somewhere to fit the gauge. Was going to put it in the centre console down by the ciggy lighter but that is no good at all and I ought to have known better from when I had a Punto GT. That car would boost to 1.6 bar when it went supersonic and I rarely had time to look at the boost gauge given the way it accelerated. The VX is not so dramatic but even so the boost gauge needs to be near the other instuments to be of any use.

I'll tackle the VX pulley and change all the belts next week. After that I should be able to report on how much extra boost is produced by the smaller pulley.

Chris