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Fill in my blanks

Aggudabbu

Senior Member
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While trying to regain my motivation I thought some shiny new parts might help with that. So if anyone would like you could help me to fill in the blanks on what and what not to get.

A little about the engine so far:
Re-bored to 1293cc, 276 kentcam & lifters, hepolite/nural pistons, weber 45 on long manifold, Peter May's rear oil seal kit fitted, cylinderhead (not yet fitted but) machined from what's in wizards book and rebuild with bigger rimflow valves and valvesprings that can take high revs with maximum lift of 0,500" (I think I might have gone a litte over the top with the head) The engine mates with a type 9 with hydraulic clutch concentric slave and machined flywheel to take a 7,5 inch ford clutch. A proper maniflow manifold is already on my wish list for Christmas.

I was about to fit the duplex chain and gear set to the engine but am not satisfied with not being able to fine tune the timing so

Blank 1: Adjustable duplex chain vs. Cam belt conversion or just fit the original duplex?

Feels like I'll want 1.5 Hi-lift rockers to go with that head

Blank 2: Minispares forged vs MiniSports roller tip and will I probably need new pushrods for this?

Due to the bigger clutch on the flywheel the stater doesn't quite fit.

Blank 3: Try and trim the starter to get it there or buy a new hi-torque starter that might have a closer fit?

And getting in to the very confusing world of dizzys. I've got a 45D and a 25D distributor (am going to negative ground the car and fit an alternator)

Blank 4: Should I convert any of these to electric with negative ground or just buy a new complete electronic distributor? Any reasonable priced kits and bits recommended?

Finally I want my engine to breath properly so..

Blank 5: Basically where should it breath? Should I connect the camcover breather to anything like carb, manifold or just put a small air filter on it? And I assume at least one additional breather is necessary so where to put it? Will I need a PVC, catchtank or anything like that?

Any input or feedback is much appreciated, thanks
//Alex
 
I can't answer all the blanks but I would go with the adjustable chain so you can get the cam timing correct and I would use the high torque starter because they are much better performing than stock.
 
The 45D distributor is for the 1500 engine, isn't it? If so, it won't fit. The 25D, in any case, is the right one for your engine. With a highly modified engine, you'll probably want to use a different advance curve, anyway. You don't need to do anything to the distributor for negative ground.

Are you familiar with the 123Ign distributors? They even have one you can tune yourself: https://www.123ignition.nl/products.php. I have a non-tunable one on my Porsche, and if I still had my Sprite, I'd put one on it, too.
 
The 45D came of a mini so I don't think so, I haven't really looked in to 123 distributors but have heard good things about them so i'll check it out.
 
Alex,

A couple things:

I don't know what shimming the starter will do. If your pressure plate is in the way, it's going to be in the way no matter what. The GR starter grabs the ring gear from the other side, so that seems like the simplest, most logical solution.

If you have Vizard's book, you should look up the section on timing the cam. You could go with and adjustable set of gears, but how often are you going to need to adjust them? Put that money into the starter instead.

Lastly (and we've talked about this before), the top half of your seal kit is going to pass a huge amount of oil onto the lip seal and it will almost certainly fail. I have redesigned that part with success.

Breather setup depends somewhat on the carbs you have. Later carbs have a vent just behind each butterfly location. These are branched together and run to a Smith's PCV and then to the timing chain cover oil separator. Early carb set up is the same thing, but get your vacuum off the manifold. It must be though a very small orifice. which, IIRC is 9/64".
 
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