Volumex tuning

[Hamish]

Anyone fitted a sidedraught to a volumex? I'm going down this route soon - if I can get the carb I want - and could do with practical advice from anyone who has done it already.
I have also got an 'overdrive' pulley which i'll be fitting to my car. A couple of companies in the UK do offer these but they cost far too much, if you want one for your VX get in touch.
Hamish :wink:

[Be-All VX]

Hamish,

I am interested in the overdrive pully! Do you know how many teeth it has? I need to check mine to see if I already have one. I only get about 8 to 9 psi boost on the manifold. I would like to try about 12 psi of boost. My car has fuel injection, so I cant help you out with the carb setup. She runs great! 1977 Lancia Scorpion #1534.

[Will]

Stan Ramirez has a DCOE on his volumex via a GC apapter, and David Beale has made a much better adapter, which is a real work of art.
Pulleys: see "Volumex notes" on the FIAT_TC_Motors group on yahoo groups. (stock volumex drive ratio is 22:29)
The volumex uses a simple, unkeyed taper shaft, so it would be pretty darn easy to fabricate a new pulley.

-WIll
stock volumex
ABARTH volumetrico

[Hamish]

:lol: Hi all - I'm pretty sure the 'uprated pulley' has one less tooth than normal, I think it's 21 rather than 22 but I'll check tonight and let you know tomorrow. I've been advised against running any more boost than that on my VX without serious mods!
As Will says, this isn't a hard thing to manufacture and the price being charged by UK specialists is daft. If you have the facilities, the only thing I can see you'd have difficulty with in producing is the 'teeth' on the pulley and replicating the fine taper on the lobe shaft?
I wish I had the facilities to machine my own parts!!

[Wallace]

Beware though - you'll need a belt with one extra tooth - and they don't cone in one tooth increment sizes .. . . . . . I've fitted a toothed belt drive to the alternator and water pump on the Mrk 2 engine now in the car and it was a sod getting the whole lot to tension up correctly !!

You may have to make up a different size tensioner to get it all to work properly.

Toothed gears of that size are readily available (I've the adress of a supplier somewhere) for about 25 odd pounds. These won't have the correct taper machined in them, the manufacurers probably would do it (at a price) or find someone with a lathe fitted with a taper turning attatchment. It might even need to be ground to get the required finish/fit required.

I suppose ally. might be an alternative . . .

[Hamish]

8O Not so! Don't mean to quibble but you don't need a longer pulley as theres enough adjustment in the supercharger belt tensioner to take up the slack. Alternatively a slightly different belt tensioner can be fitted, I'm told it's from a Thema but I'm not 100% sure... yet. Watch this space.
My 'chum' who has offered to produce the pulleys says the stock item costs about a tenner and it would take around 2 hrs (but probably less) for him (semi-proffesional) to produce the finished item ready for fitting.
Will check all when I eventually get out of the office.......
Hamish

[Wallace]

Quibble as much as you please !!

I havn't dealt with a VX engine, only the toothed belt drive on my "thing". And as I said, that was a sod, but then it may have been just me !!

[Will]

If an overdrive pulley (smaller one) is made for the Volumex, then the belt would theoretically want to be shorter, or the tensioner larger.
One tooth won't make a hell of a difference, but if it is several teeth you're talking about, then the simple solution would be to sleeve the tensioner bearing to the correct diameter. You have probably noticed that's what Lancia did to the standard tensioner on the NA 2L, but I would probably elect to make mine of aluminum rather than cast iron, and fit with epoxy.
-WIll

[Wallace]

You'd be surprised - it doesn't take a lot to get it wither way to tight or too lose - I know -I've done it .. . .

However - how's this for a JAZZ idea - one tooth LESS on the blower and one tooth MORE on the power steering pump ??

[rossocorsa]

interesting idea to increase the ps pulley by one tooth as in my humble opinion the power steering is far too light in any case so making it run a bit slowerwill maybe make the steering firmer or are there other side effects...don't understand all this hydraulic stuff! Always thought it odd that lancia made the steering so light as other ps lancias don't suffer from this affliction but it's still better than the standard set up wow! is that HEAVY (and with far too many turns lock to lock)

[Wallace]

I don't know how many teeth there are on the ps pump - but it's a lot more than the blower. So one less tooth wouldn't make much difference.

The gear manufacturer in the UK is HPC gears. (they do have a website) The ones I brought were around 30 notes, these were unflanged ally ones. Steel ones are cheeper.

[rossocorsa]

yes take your point on that one although even a small difference in assistance could make all the difference I just find it a bit too vague when high speed cruising although once the car has new dampers and so on it might be a little better

[Will]

FWIW, I have a PS pump out right now, and it has 32 teeth. I think I recall the VX drive of the Crank pulley has 29.
-Will

[Hamish]

Hi All,
Have finally :oops: put the uprated (one tooth less) blower pulley on during my lengthy engine rebuild. Required no adjustment to the tensioner :lol: - I fitted a new one as a precaution - and all tightened up OK. I've run the engine and seems fine, considerably more ooomph :twisted: (can't remember the technical term right now) over standard item. Still don't have a piccie of the sidedraught conversion as fitted to a beta and NOT to a Monte/Scorpion - anyone able to help?

[rossocorsa]

glad to see you are progressing with the blower! I will be interested to see what your fuel consumption is as that really puts me off the idea of the pulley a bit.......

[Hamish]

Fuel consumption :!: :!: It worries me but for Gods sake don't tell the wife.... she'll kill me :roll: "That bl###y Lancia, all you ever do is spend time/money on it" :wink:
As soon as I've got it on the road (this weekend with a bit of luck) I'll let you know about the MPGs; can't be worse than my old range Rover used to be..... :lol:

[Be-All VX]

Hamish, how muchboost are you running on this engine? What compression are you running also?

Thanks,
Ken

[Hamish]

Ken,
Other than the uprated pulley :twisted: the engine is pretty much to standard spec, I've skimmed the head a fraction but apart from that it's as it left the factory :D
Compression is lower than a standard beta, but can't remember exact figures off the top of my head - sorry :oops:

[Hamish]

glad to see you are progressing with the blower! I will be interested to see what your fuel consumption is as that really puts me off the idea of the pulley a bit.......
:twisted: First run on the car suggests (note suggests!!) that fuel consumption has not suffered as much as I thought. Fair enough, if you boot it :lol: it guzzles :roll: but 'cruising' at a steady 70ish :wink: MPGs appear to be in the mid twenties, so not much difference.
The pulley has made a big 'grunt' difference, where there used to be a wall of torque there's now a cliff....... 8O

[Fingers]

I've got an 84 VX coupe and would be very interested in the cost and availability of the new blower wheel, I'm about to fit a 45 dcoe on a Guy Croft manifold, and at a later date either a Beta IE inlet cam or one of Guys stage 3a cams. I'm going to have to move the radiator as there's going to be very little room for the carb, I think I'll try moving it about 5 inches to the left and a little aft, and make up some shrouds to make sure it gets proper airflow. I'm really looking forward to getting this underway.

[Fingers]

Oh yes, I had a closer look at the car today and moving the radiator forward looks like a much better option, once I've got all the bits I'm going to see if I can fit the carb and move the raditor in one weekend, can't have it off the road for too long, I'm going to use all standard jetting as a start with the 45 dcoe but with 32 chokes. Let you know how it goes, have to start somewhere eh!

[Fingers]

Well I just received a tooth less supercharger pulley from Evolution Engineering and tried to fit it today after bring a few tools home from work, and no good at least not without a diferent belt, the teeth on the belt are at a different pitch to those on the new pulley, only about every fifth tooth on the belt would actually engage on the pulley. So to get this thing to work I'll need a new belt with a different TPI but that'll through out the pulleys on the crank and alternator so what am I supposed to do? I can't imagine there are different TPI blower belts around.

Hamish how did you get on when you fitted yours?

I really want to get this thing fitted! I don't want to be left with a £100 paper weight. If no body here can help I'll be e-mailing Evolution pretty quickly.

[rossocorsa]

you could have got caught out here as a small number of vx engines used a different belt and pulleys what i cannot tell you is how they differed but presumably this could explain your problem, i could probably look it up on the parts microfiche later

[Fingers]

That'd be great thanks, I'd appreciate it. The new pulley's teeth are actually a little wider than the originals too, more like the cam pulleys.

It must be nice to have access to that information, I've searched and searched for any kind of manuals for the volumex and/or coupe and could only find the haynes for the older coupes and that manual in Italian in another post. I've managed to get an original sales brochure but that's all. I'd love to be able to find even an original owners manual.

[andybeta]

Would you be uprating the bottom end, fitting a baffled sump or fitting an uprated clutch? If not then your either of these might not last very long. The 45 dcoe won't run at all well on standard cams as the lift isn't high enough.

Andybeta

[Hamish]

Fingers,
Sorry to be so long in replying - been 'out of action' with food poisoning :cry:
Sounds as though Rossocorsa has hit iton the head - quite a few early VX engines (typically in the Trevi) had different types of pulley.... which is a pain :? However, Evo Engineering are an approachable lot and I'm sure if you explain they'll help you out with a different pulley :lol:
The alternate is to get your hands on the 'correct' pulleys from a scrap engine. BTW - did you buy the tensioner with it :?: It's not necessary to buy a different tensioner, a replacement standard tensioner does the job fine 8)
Also, as Andy says - don't contemplate doing anything until you've a baffled sump in place. Cams are down to choice, but I seem to remember you were going the GC3a route :?: Again Andy is right, a 45 will 'kill' the engine without more 'cam'.

[Fingers]

Hey thanks for the help guys, yeah I'm planning on the GC 3A cam, but £200 is a lot of NZ dollars and we're saving for a trip back to my wife's homeland so I would be in serious trouble if I spend any more at the moment. I've saved as many photos of the baffled sump as possible and plan to fabricate it myself, there's a pretty good wreckers yard near by that should have a beta sump lying around somewhere. This is turning into a real long term project now as I'm working and studying, but at least I've got another car to drive when the VX is in bits now. There's not much chance of finding an old VX engine lying around down here, I've only seen 3 in my city and the only wrecker that deals with them had one but sold the engine in no time. Oh yeah didn't buy a new tensioner, I read earlier that you had no trouble with the original one Hamish. And hiope you're better now, had a touch myself last night, maybe that had something to do with our performance in the World Cup though. :cry:

Thanks

[Hamish]

Fingers.
If you get truly stuck I might be able to lay my hands on the correct pulleys for you - if I'm right you'll need the crank pulley and cam wheel pulleys. Don't hold me to it, but I'm pretty sure any Fiat/Lancia 2 litre cam wheels of the right vintage will do the job (OK - I'm prepared to be shot down in flames here :!: ) which would be nice for you if you only need the crank pulley :wink:
Cams - have a look around for 'go fast' Fiat Strada cams - invariably cheaper and turn up more often than bespoke items (in the UK anyway :wink: ).
Ebay always worth a look :P

Hamish

PS - Never mind, they played well for the rest of the tournament :lol:

[Fingers]

Thanks Hamish I'll keep an eye on ebay, it's a great place to waste money. I'll have a chat to the local Fiat Lancia specialist, it will be interesting to hear if he's taken any notice of this pulley configuration, he had a VX coupe for a while. As long as a replacement crank pulley has the same number of teeth as the current I'll be happy, maybe a cam pulley has a similar number to the power steering pump, so that would do the job, and the quest begins, nothing's ever easy is it!!

[Will]

.....have posted some pics of different pulleys over in photo albums:

http://www.lancisti.net/forum/modules.php?set_albumName=albuo04&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_album.php

I'm going to have to get some larger crank pulleys made up, so those who need one should get in touch via email- I'm looking at +2 teeth. Integrated will be a ~ 20 % underdrive pulley for WP/Alt, and a bolt circle for affixing ancillary pulleys and/or timing wheels.
-Will

[Pope1]

Will,

That's an impressive lot of engineering you've got going on there. Pardon my ignorance, but which pulleys are you going to have made and why? I am somewhat confused.

I may get an HPX ignition system when funds allow and I was planning to fit the Evocars smaller supercharger wheel, hence, my interest in what you're doing.

Chris

[andybeta]

See my question on Betaboyz site re max s'sharger boost pressure and gearing of pulleys.

andybeta

[Pope1]

Andrew,

This is my understanding of the situation (which does NOT mean that it is correct)!

The VX runs with about 6-7 psi boost. That is about 0.4-0.5 bar ABOVE atmospheric. Hence the figure of 1.4 bar while being correct in an absolute sense is misleading IMO. By some quirk of fate I got a boost gauge today so I will let you know the story with my car once I find out.

The cheap and easy solution for getting more boost is to have one less tooth on the small pulley at the supercharger end. I have been advised that this is not good engineering practice and could cause problems because that pulley is already fairly small. My view is that you can probably get away with one less tooth judging by the experience of Hamsh and others but that is it.

It is supposed to be a better idea to make a pulley with more teeth at the crank end. That is a more difficult and more expensive proposition but there is no reason why it cannot be done. However, what concerns me about that approach is: (1) the possibility that it may cause problems with the power steering pump; (2) it involves more hassle to remove if for any reason you want to revert to the standard arrangement.

My plan is to see what boost I have now and to fit the little wheel when I change the belts. Then see what boost I have afterwards. As I see it, the main problem with running higher boost will be to avoid detonation in the absence of a knock sensor and an ECU as in modern turbo-charged cars. I'm planning to have a careful look at the boost and the mixture settings to make sure that the mixture does not become too weak. In addition, I will probably to go the HPX ignition system to ensure that there is better control over the ignition timing. A small increase in boost should be OK, I suspect that anything more is asking for trouble without other modifications.

Chris

[Maigret]

Has anyone tried the Balance plate offered by Guy Croft. I can't see it on his site now but it was there last time I looked and should give a more even flow to each cylinder.

Increasing boost is not an option as I can only use (legally) 96 unleaded and that seems about the limit on current boost. :?:

[Pope1]

A couple of points. When I embarked on my VX project (found one in the UK, had work done on it and then brought it back here) GC asked me about the local fuel. The oil company said that they would guarantee 95 octane I think. I bought my octane booster by the box load and added some with every refill. That was between 1995 and 1997.

Since then I have had two turbo cars running way more boost than my VX. Yes they have knock sensors and other gimmicks but essentially all they seem to do is to retard the ignition. They're running Golf turbos in the US on 91 octane with 15-20psi of boost. My VX is producing about 7 psi at the moment with no problems as far as I can tell and I reckon the smaller pulley may increase this to perhaps 9 psi.

Are you sure you can't run more boost on 96 octane and, expense apart, why can't you add an octane booster or maybe retard the ignition if that's the case?

Chris

[Fingers]

You need to check what octane numbering system you use, there are 2 MON and RON, and they're slightly different, RON usually looks higher.

[wellingtonvx]

Don't they sell 98 Octane in the South Island? BP sells it in Wellington for about 5 cents a litre more than 96.

[Maigret]

The quality of 96 is variable from tank to tank. The 96 we get in NZ is low grade by world standardsand has 3 times the USA legal max of benzine. See NZ classic car magazine for the saga.

I keep a bottle of the new Wynns octane booster in the car. It seems the best one I have come across.

However the US octane ratings are better than they appear compared to ours. Been through this on Esprit forums.

[Pope1]

Had no idea the fuel was that bad and so variable. Does the booster make a significant difference?

There's a buddy of mine here who's from NZ and he's into cars and motor sport in a major way. He doesn't consider a car with anything less than a 500hp V8 as a real performance car. I'll ask him if he has any suggestions next time I see him.

[Fingers]

Chris I can bet that your friend is either a Holden or Ford man too then, the V8 racing and rivalry between these two marques is huge down here, I don't really understand it.

No 98 down in the deep south yet, I do get avgas from a friend at work from time to time, the 100 octane really makes a difference in the VX, usually only run about half and half with 96.

I've heard before that our fuel isn't as good as it could be, shame really there are so many people here that are into cars, and motorsport in general. And I've also heard that's the reason we don't get all the new European diesel cars here either, it's just not up to scratch.

[Pope1]

He has a 30 year old Mustang that he's re-building for the second time! It still has the orginal paint in a number of places too. Reckons he'll send the engine to the US at the appropriate time and only bring it back when it's producing 500hp or more. He also holds an island bike quarter mile record of some sort. His terminal velocity was a 189mph on a nitrous injected machine that's on display at the body shop that he runs. Really nice guy who's passionate about cars and has lots of interesting stories to tell.

[Maigret]

It does work in preventing pinking. However this doesn't change the energy in the fuel. You don't get any more power out of 96 compared to 91.

[Pope1]

Yes, very true. Just wondered whether it might let you run more boost to compensate. BTW, please ignore some of my earlier comments. Just found that my car's timing has been very retarded so I might get into trouble myself by increasing the boost with the combination of high temperature and variable fuel quality that we get here sometimes. No wonder the performance was off and there seemed to be no danger of detonation.

[Vx124]

Surely the slight increase in boost will be fine on New Zealand fuel. We're not talking a significant increase here. I have friends running very high boost on their Croma turbos, unos etc running on local fuel with no octane booster. All without knock sensors (ok they have fuel injection... but thats in the pipeline for my vx).

I ran my volumex for three years without adding a drop of octane booster, although I used '98 in the latter two years. Never had a problem.

[Maigret]

The Volumex in NZ are to British spec and so are designed for 4 star 97 octane so 96 is starting to get more marginal especially as the unleaded goes off more quickly.

I noticed for example last weekend when towing a car on transporter from Chistchurch to Dunedin that the car pinked very slightly under hard acceleration but after filling up in Oamaru ran smoothly over the Dunedin hills. For those that know it, the car still managed over 80kmh up the Kilmog hill. Not bad considering it had 1 & 1/2 tonnes on the drawbar. Keeping the speed up helps with cooling as the fan only kicked in when I dropped to 70kmh for a short section on the Northern motorway.

I don't use the Octane booster with the 96 unless I get a dodgy fill of fuel or fill with 91. 91 + booster is about the same price as 96.

[Fingers]

I haven't had any trouble with mine since I've fitted the smaller supercharger pulley, no pinking or anything. It actually idles a lot better.

[Maigret]

It is possible my car is running a bit lean. The 96 ulp is slightly thicker. My Esprit benefitted from a session on a rolling road and rejetting but the RR is in Dunedin so I should really make the effort to get it down there.