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]

Just filled up after Stoneleigh - I got 41mpg for the trip. I was very pleased with my Legerra as it ran perfectly all the way to Stoneleigh and back again - not a foregone conclusion. There was a smell of oil all the way as it is still leaking slightly from the rocker cover. It was 90 miles each way and the only hiccup was that one of the headlight surrounds came loose as I left the show and I had to stop for 30 seconds in a lay-by to refit it. I drove up the M5 and across country on the A46. I had the top down and I cruised at 3,000 rpm on both roads (63mph) but I did gun it out of the roundabouts to that speed in third, then straight into fifth. It is surprising how slow normal cars are, even though they all pass me on the dual carriageways. A thoroughly enjoyable drive.

[James Doulton]

After a bit of rummaging around in Excel, I have managed to find another 10 horsepower! Whilst that is good news, on one hand, it also means that I had got something very wrong in my calculations before. I never cease to amaze myself by my fallibility.

I discovered the mistake when I was thinking about my previous testing (last year) and remembered that I had done that test with the top up and this session was done with the top down, so I could now see how different the drag was. I found out that I had still used the old (top-up) drag instead of the new (top-down) drag in my calculations. The difference is considerable: 25% more drag at 80mph with the top down! It also knocks about 10mph off the top speed (except that my soft top comes off at 80).

So now I am happy. They said that the cam was worth about 16bhp, and it was - result! I had thought that it felt faster, and it is.

I still need to stop the top cover losing oil though.

[James Doulton]

I use a Racelogic VBOX Sport which is a small GPS data logger. It was fearfully expensive at £300 but it does a good job. It was the cheapest that I could find that logs data faster than one sample per second - it does 20 per second. You really need that level of precision if you want to do a 0-60 time. It has no display but will use an ipad/iPhone/android device but I mostly just use it blind and analyse the data later. The only disappointment is that it does get messed up by some bridges, as you can see with the blip in the middle of the run.

I got up to 97mph in mine and it starts to get quite hairy, I'm not sure what speed my vision would get blurred at but I remember that my speedo was showing about 80 mph! I also think that my rev counter was reading low, which is much more serious.

Looking at my engine's torque curve then the rear wheel torque in 5th (at 4500rpm) is almost exactly the same as the torque in 4th (at 5700rpm) so the curve would continue at much the same rate after the gear change. I would guess that it'd get to 105mph maybe.

[James Doulton]

Took my Legerra for an instrumented test run last night. I did a 3rd gear torque test (accelerating from 20mph to 75mph in third) and a resistance test (coasting from  75mph) then a top speed test which I had to abandon when the engine suddenly lost power at 97.6mph in fourth, just when I was about to try changing up to fifth because it didn't seem to have much left in fourth. It took me a while in the dark at the side of the motorway to realise that the throttle cable mechanism had become detached. I fixed it but it came off again 3 times before I got the cable adjusted so that it wasn't too tight with the accelerator to the floor.

When I had taken my brother-in-law for a spin in it earlier in the day, it had seemed that the car was quite a lot faster with the new cam but my torque test suggests that it wasn't as much as it felt like. The surge of torque that I felt at 4000rpm was partly due to a decrease in urge below that speed and partly due to a general top end increase. Max torque is virtually unchanged but occurs higher up the rev range at 4000rpm instead of 3500. Max power is up about 8% and is at 5400rpm instead of 5100rpm. Overall the figures are a little disappointing but I have still got a badly kinked exhaust system and I'm using the original carb and manifold.

The graph shows flywheel power and torque that is estimated from my rear wheel performance by assuming a transmission efficiency of 82%. In order to calculate the engine torque I eliminated the drag losses by using the data from my coast test, and lots of Excel calculations.

[James Doulton]

I have finally got the engine all back together with the new cam (FR30) in place on the injected Sierra head. It is running and pulling strongly throughout the rev range but 4,000 rpm seems to be particularly strong. I have fitted the original twin choke 32/36 Weber for now although the manifold tracts are quite a bit narrower than the ports on the head. I haven't fiddled with the carb at all apart from adjusting the tick-over. I have other options (twin 40 DCOEs, fuel injection, bike carbs) but if I try to do anything else then it won't be running properly in time for Stoneleigh.

I still have an oil leak from the engine top cover. The allen screws are supposed to be done up to 4 lbf but I don't have any way of measuring that. I noticed that after a short run they seem loosen so I have tightened them again but I don't seem to be able to stop it leaking. Any advice would be welcome.

[Dave Adams]

Glad to be of help.......for once ;-)

[Dave Adams]

On ford manifolds they are often tapered threads.....I have also seen BSP plumbers pipe used it may even have been factory fit.

[James Doulton]

I finally got the water connection out of the carburettor manifold. I heated the whole manifold in the oven to 270C then clamped the nut in my engineering vice and turned the manifold and then I felt it yield ... it broke off leaving the thread still in the manifold!

I used a junior hacksaw blade down the hole to cut two slots in the wall of the connector. Then with a screwdriver used as a chisel with a hammer I was able to break the remainder of the connector and get the fragments out of the hole.

Piecing it together I have measured the thread as being 14tpi and the inside diameter of the hole is 18.4mm and the outside of the thread is 21.5mm at the end of the thread which stayed out of the hole. I can't really be sure if it is tapered but it might be, I just can't be sure as I hold the pieces together. There was no sealant or caulking so I am not sure how it sealed if it wasn't.

By the way it did fill the whole downstairs of my house with some smoke and fuel fumes even though I had wire brushed the manifold before I put it in the oven. I had to have the windows open for an hour to clear it. She didn't make much fuss, which probably means that I'll pay for it at a later date!

[Ed Townend]

Here's the engine mount when I discovered one of the E type rubbers had let go of it's base plate - eek.

[Ed Townend]

Mine's on engine mounts of similar design to this, arms that sit on the main chassis rails between Jag E type rubbers, which you can see in the smaller pictures. I think they might be Caterham fitment parts.

http://www.raceline.co.uk/products/part_section.asp?SectionID=27&am...

The sump's of course also shortened and lengthened. While replacing the oil pump in an attempt to fix my low oil pressure recently, I discovered the actual reason was that the oil pickup pipe had simply been sawn off to shorten it and the diffuser bit that goes on the end hadn't been replaced, meaning it wasn't really reaching the oil that well. We made a new one from brass covered in steel mesh and plumbing soldered it on with a copper bend to get the angle right.