Scrapheap Challenge - Yet another Alfa

[misteralz]

Been there before with clearancing a splittie gearbox for a 12V flywheel! So I can sympathise. Coming on great guns. Love it.

[911hillclimber]

Helix clutches do special fitments based on set designs for all manner of applications.
Based near Bicester.

[knapmann]

Helix clutches do special fitments based on set designs for all manner of applications.
Based near Bicester.

This is good to know, as to date I have not got as far as sorting the clutch yet!

[911hillclimber]

It's the kind of place you can take your stripped engine and box with that adapter plate etc and they will work out the spacing of all the parts and deliver a package that will fit and last.

Have one now in my hillclimb Lola-Porsche, smooth as a babies bum.

https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=cde09f65 ... b20v&ntb=1

[knapmann]

Ok so I have an engine in place, of sorts, about 100 hurdles still to jump but even so, im eating one part of the elephant at a time, next up is engine mounts..

Fabricated these, very easy when you have a ceiling hoist to hold the engine in place!





The above and below photo also shows the clearancing I had to do the the head from the steering box. The box is a big headache with this swap...





Another thing I did was hack off adaptor plate flange for the starter on this side in order to route the exhaust through here, its impossible to fit the exhaust, starter and steering box on this same side.





this obviously necessitates moving the starter to the other side! now ive never seen this done before and I dont think Alfa ever made a Busso V6 with the starter on the other side, but it looked to me that they had accommodated the option in the casting from day one???? whether they did or didnt I was going to make it fit, just needs a lot of hacking! I have nothing to lose now... im all in... this is obviously distinctly not the Porsche way...more like the battered old Ford Escort way but you should expect this by now from me of course clearance the adapter plate. and aligning and threading the starter mounting bolts and the starter teeth to the ring gear and the depth clearance only took an absolute f'ing age

you can see why there are no RHD V6 swaps out there!











Back in the car, the starter is now on the other side allowing me to squeeze an exhaust through both sides, at least I hope so!

[sladey]

Wow that’s some serious brave pills there

[911hillclimber]

Propper stuff, well done.

Real hot rod actions, takes me back to the 70's.
Headers will be hard to fish through, but just needs patience and a lot of tweaking.

Going to be great!

[rhd racer]

That is all kinds of cool - well done for putting your big boy pants on and just doing it. Love it - can you imagine how much the conversion would cost if you took it to Alfaholics?


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[knapmann]

Its not that noticable on these old Alfas but the engine is not central in the engine bay, its off center towards the passenger side in LHD cars, i.e. the drivers side in RHD cars by around 40mm, so is the transmission tunnel! Great for for drivers in Italy, not so much for the UK! For this V6 swap Ive mounted it centrally in the engine bay, mainly for clearance from the damn steering box and for routing an exhaust on both sides, but also for looks, this means that the rear gearbox mount needs adjusting in order to keep the propshaft aligned with the central bearing mount in the tunnel as well as the diff. The gearbox now sits very close to the tunnel on the LHS but it does clear without me having to "massage" the tunnel with good old BFH

I chopped up the mount and moved it over, temporarily installing the front half of the propshaft to the gearbox to ensure it aligned with the center bearing mounting point in the tunnel.







With the engine in its final mounting position, I made sure it would clear the bonnet I used a straight edge as a basic test for now across the inner wings, it just cleared which was fine because the center of the bonnet sits an inch or two higher than these inner wing flanges





I rebuilt the front cross member between the ARB mounting points using a 50mm steel box section





Started fitting the front wings and panel back on the car

Clamped on at first, then tacked together before checking the doors and bonnet aligned ok, (ok being about the best I'm likely to achieve) before finally welding them on properly.

With the bonnet on properly I measured 70mm clearance between the top of the carbs and the bonnet which should be enough for an air filter of some kind.

[sladey]

Starting to look like a car!

Impressive work

[911hillclimber]

Looking very good!

Filter is easy, alum plate over the 3 carbs with a good 50mm land around the perimeter. Glue a wall of filter foam (off ebay for bikes) and height to ensure the underside of the bonnet closes down on the foam with some light compression to seal. This allows for engine rock too. Cheap and effective.

[knapmann]

Looking very good!

Filter is easy, alum plate over the 3 carbs with a good 50mm land around the perimeter. Glue a wall of filter foam (off ebay for bikes) and height to ensure the underside of the bonnet closes down on the foam with some light compression to seal. This allows for engine rock too. Cheap and effective.

good thinkinging, never thought of using the bonnet as part of the filter housing!

[knapmann]

Meanwhile I was also working on another challenge which was the exhaust manifolds. Initially I thought I would have to pay someone to make these for me, I have never attempted anything like manifolds before and they seemed far to complex for me to attempt. However the more I thought about it, and the more I looked at my empty bank account, I thought I would try it and see how they turn out. As previously discussed there is very little room to play with. I used a 3D printed kit to design the bends on each runner before making them from sections of matching diameter and radius stainless pipe. In the end these manifolds only cost me a coupe of hundred pounds so I'm very happy with that, I just hope they last!







Getting it all tacked together was the first major result


After this I had to take each runner one at a time and fully weld it together




This is one side done, although I had to so some further messing around to get it to clear the steering box


I then started on the other side, which had much less space to get the 3-1 collector to fit


Welding the runners one at a time again










So thats both manifolds all done! The only issue with them is that you cannot remove them from the engine bay or install them with the heads on the engine, access is impossible. You have to put the engine block in place, put the manifolds in place either side, then fit the heads to the engine, then fit the manifolds to the heads. In the future, once the heads are on, if I ever want to totally remove the manifolds from the car I would have to remove the heads from the engine, hopefully this wont be an issue, i dont see why it would be.


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[911hillclimber]

What memories that lot brings back!
I made my own (for the same reasons as you) but straight to U bends and a few straight lengths on my Porsche engine'd LOLA race car.

I tried hard to keep the primaries all equal length to the 3 pipe collector and back to the silencers.
Not easy by any means.
Once all MIG tacked i had a real TIG welder man run all the seams with argon pipe purging. He asked me to never bring him anything like it again...and charged me £100.

If you have managed to get all the manifold nuts accessible you have done very well, I failed on 2 of the 12 on mine, the 2 need a 'special spanner'.

This is all going really well, great progress!

[Ian Comerford]

I don’t know if this will help with your space constraints but you can get Co-axial starter motors (eg Brise) which are a lot smaller and don’t have the solenoid on the side. It would give you more space on that side