Most liked posts in thread: Sprite Race Motor Rebuild

Actually, these custom race pistons are 70 thou over - you can go bigger, but then you have to offset bore. You can sleeve them back to the stock bore, but you can't really overbore the sleeves once they're in place - you're stuck with stock bore - which is fine of course. 120 thou over (offset) give a 1380cc engine. I'll post up some pics of these pistons with their Teflon coated skirts....

 

Yep, pretty much what I figured too.....but don't forget it's 70 thou over, and also the .3CC down to the rings from the top of the piston.....

 

Close enough!

 

Replacement rings still haven't arrived from California. I guess "Priority Mail" doesn't mean the same thing to me and the post office. Sent last Thursday.....

 

I had the rings sent that way last Thursday and they only showed up today!

In the meantime I got a few things done in preparation - I made sure the crank end float was correct (3 thou on the dial indicator)



I also glued in the cork gaskets in the oil pan, these are a royal PITA as they fit in a slot. but they come straight and you have to bend them to fit, then trim off the ends. If you don't have them completely down in the slot and you cut the ends off flush - it will leak.

So I came up with a way to hold it in place while the glue set.....

 

And it runs!

I wasn't too sure how this one was going to turn out when I saw how terrible the head was, but it looks like it's going to live!

In this video I only started it up and ran it up to 140*, then shut it down and retorqued the head and rechecked the valves. Since this one doesn't have an alternator I had to keep my battery charger on it while it ran to power the ignition and cooling fan.

It made really nice oil pressure on the starter alone, and when running it bumps up to about 80, then back down to 60 at idle as it warms up.

After retorquing the head I fired it up again and ran it for about 20 min - I didn't have to worry about bedding in the cam again as we reused it and the lifters. This was originally a MiniMania engine and it's running 1.5 roller rockers too.

I'll retorque the head again in the morning after its cooled off all night, then I'll run it some more and try to bed the rings in a bit. Clancy is coming down Wed to see/hear it run, then he'll haul it off and I hope he has a car to put it in so they can fine tune it, preferably on Jess's dyno.

 

Yep, Moss bought them and promptly shut down the local warehouse sometime in late Dec.

He's bringing it over tomorrow morning, I'll pop the head off and see what I can learn.....