Handbag Legerra Developments

[James Doulton]

After getting the Legerra home a few weeks ago, I have been using it as my daily commute. I have done a few things to it to 'improve' it:

1) I have removed the centre console because I could not take my foot off the clutch with it in place because I have to get my knee next to the steering wheel and my calf was hard against the edge of the console. I have still got to find a place for the dials and switches that were there. When removing the heater controls I found that the outer sheaths of the cables were not fixed, so moving the levers did nothing. I don't think that the heater control works at all. So that is another job on the to-do list before next winter.

2) I have moved the main instrument cluster up about 2 inches so that I can actually see the majority of the dial face of the speedo and the rev counter. The speedo is badly out of calibration - the mile-o-meter is currently registering about  3% low but the speedo is over 25% low. How can that be? It is a Czech dial, not the original Ford one so I guess that it must have always been wrong. I just have to remember that it is 900rpm per 20mph in fifth. Moving the instruments higher meant cutting the dashboard to clear the speedo drive. I now have a gap of about 2 inches below the instruments where I could site the dials and switches from the centre console.

3) I have removed the exhaust and welded up the holes where it seems to have leaked ever since it was fitted. I welded some patches made from bits of bike tube. It was quite difficult with my arc welder but I eventually managed to fill the holes that I made too. The exhaust is still loud and tiresome - it sounds really good when I rant it, but for the other 99% of the time it is an irritation. The local stainless exhaust place will make a bespoke system for £330.

4) I have replaced the original 13" cobra alloys that had 205/65 tyres with 15" wheels from a Ford Focus with 195/60 tyres. They only just fit in the rear arches and one touches the body occasionally over big bumps. The wheels were replaced because the old tyres had very poor grip in either the dry or the wet. The use of larger wheels increases the gearing about 11% and, more importantly, increases the ground clearance over local speed bumps - the exhaust used to touch before.

5) I have removed the radiator in order to cure a leak caused by the way that the electric fan was fitted using bolts through the radiator matrix. The fan had been moving up and down and wore a hole in the front of two of the cores. As a temporary bodge, I fixed it with Araldite. I'm going to weld up a frame to hold the fan in place and fix it on the radiator mounting bolts. I have bought a new in-line thermostatic switch for the top hose.

6) I had noticed that the car sometimes pulled to the left under breaking. I have now found the culprit - a leaking damper. It seems that the leaking fluid drips onto the disk when the car is parked and the brakes pull the first time that they are used. I will have to get the unit off the car to measure it to get a new pair. I don't know whether to change the springs too.

I still need to sort out the seat and I would like to move it back a couple of inches further but I think it is tight against the bodywork.

I also want to get or make a hard top or targa top - I can't be doing with struggling to get the soft top on and off all of the time, with all of those pesky poppers and the stiff locking pins at the front.

[James Doulton]

I expect that BV is right too. I chose a selection of mods that should increase the power without changing the character of the engine and without killing the engine by revving it to bits. If that ends up giving fewer horsepower than anticipated then so be it - it'll still be a nicer car, just not as fast as I would have liked. It currently pulls well from 1,200 rpm in fifth (~25mph) and I'd like that to continue. I might try to do the changes one by one and get a measurement for each one, just for the fun of it. That'll be camshaft, then exhaust, then bike carbs. I will probably take it to the rolling road at Thornbury to get the carbs sorted.

[Big Vern]

You're not realistically goin' to get 135bhp with an FR cam its not enough lift or duration. 35% power increase on a Pinto is not as easy as a lot of people will tell you. My old 2.1L ran injection head with stock size valves, RL21 'lightening rod' cam, 11:1CR, 38dgas, cast 4-2-1 exhaust with 2" straight through, forged pistons, steel rods and flywheel - that made 142bhp at 5900rpm but had loads of mid range grunt and took full throttle from 2000rpm.

Parts for Pinto's are relatively expensive now and there are cheaper options.

[James Doulton]

After missing taking the Legerra to Stoneleigh because of a suspected cylinder head gasket problem, it turned out that the clouds of steam coming out of the exhaust was due to the inlet manifold bolts being loose allowing water into the inlets. That was easily fixed.

When I went out for a little test drive along a local dual carriage way with frequent roundabouts, I was just checking that it was going properly and some tosser in a newish Renault Laguna decided to try to give me a race. He lost, of course, out accelerated - I wasn't pushing the car around the corners as I have still to get used to its limits. However, it wasn't as crushing a defeat as he deserved. Don't ask me what model he had because I didn't see the back of his car (I won, remember).

So I decided that evening that I ought to do something to raise the performance of my car, to save the honour of all Duttons. I already have a 4 branch exhaust waiting to be fitted (although it'll probably need altering to fit the bodywork), so I ordered a bike carb conversion kit from danST Endineering (they were at Stoneleigh) and a Kent FR30 high-lift cam - it is not a wild cam, just high lift, meant to be good for an extra 16bhp on its own. I am aiming to get about 135bhp instead of the standard 100. (Originally 98bhp, but 100bhp in the Escort without the mechanical fan like mine). I reckon that 135bhp should reduce my 0-60 time from 8.2 at present to a shade under 7 seconds.

In the interest of being scientific, I decided that I needed to get some reasonable 'before' power figures. I did this using my Racelogic VBox Sport GPS datalogger by finding a quite stretch of Motorway in the dead of night and doing an acceleration run in third gear, from about 25 mph up to 75mph. Then I dipped the clutch and let the car slow down naturally. The deceleration curve allowed me to calculate the total resistance at any speed and adding this to the data from the acceleration curve I calculated the engine power curve. This shows that I am getting 82bhp at the wheels, which is about as much as I could hope for with a nominal 100bhp Pinto with 38,000 miles on the clock.

Here is my 'before' graph.

Unfortunately, the pursuit of power will have to be postponed while I fix my cockpit floor first...

[James Doulton]

Well, the radiator now seems to be fixed and it is back in place with the electric fan mounted on a gantry - rather over-engineered. The radiator was a pig to get in and my gantry was tough to assemble in place. The wiring for the new thermostatic switch and relay was a remarkably easy and, even more shockingly, it all worked first time!

It was nice to see the sun too - just perfect weather to work on your Dutton, not too hot and not too cold.

[Paul Sheridan]

These are the people I have used before and had good service from, you can send them your unit along with the relative details they ask for.    http://www.speedycables.com/index.html

 

[Paul Sheridan]

You can have your speedo recalibrated to the size of wheels you intend to use, I will look up the details at work and let you know later.

[James Doulton]

As it was...

as it will be...