Alfashark

Not much help with regards to your questions, but that's a sweet project!

Where abouts in Putaruru are you? I lurk down in Tee Street.

When I had my Audi CGT I was forever being asked "How hard does your Quattro boost?" and "Is it a real one?" 

Best one ever was in a carpark and two young lads, all of about 8 years old stopped and pointed at and asked their dad what it was... "Oh wow, that's a DeLorean!"

When I had my first Alfa 33 and was living at The Mount, on the odd occasion I'd take it for a blast along Marine Parade and park along the waterfront. Usually a few flat-peakers would appear and ask if it was a turbo - 1.7s with IDF's made a high pitched sneezing sound through the airbox when you snapped the throttle shut for an upshift.

About two months ago would have been good... But yes, the sooner the better please Dave.

I'm hoping some of you who spend a bit of time at Pick-a-part/Zebra can be of help here...

Front passenger side window clamp/lifter rusted away to nothing recently, and on inspection the other three aren't looking too flash either.

I don't imagine there would be many second hand ones in the country, and I'd bet they're in a similar condition to mine.

So, can anyone think of a relatively common vehicle on our roads that uses something like this:

To clarify, this piece is bolted to the runner on the window regulator and the window is held captive by the pressure of the "jaws" and a thin strip of rubber.

VW heritage have the part available, but at $35 a pop plus shipping I'd rather try work something out locally first.

Rotary relevant... Old news though.

^ The old Power Recovery Turbine idea... As used in the Wright 3350 Turbo Compound radials from late 1945/early '46.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_R-3350_Duplex-Cyclone#Design_and_development

Wheel bearing suddenly called it quits?

Lower arm bush given up the ghost perhaps?

Is that wagon of yours fancy computer controlled spec or rotary pump style?

I plugged a VCDS scanner into the Skoda and disabled the EGR for exactly this reason.

Highway driving my Citroen will get Wellington to Auckland and back to Ngarawahia on 2/3 of a tank of diesel. In measurement terms is roughly 40litres for 750km (5.3 litres per 100Km)

 

It will do combination highway/commute Wellington to Auckland return plus a week and a half of my daily commuting on 2 tanks. roughly 120 litres for 1700Km (7.1 litres per 100Km)

 

One day I would like to do an economy run of sorts and see just how far I can stretch the frugalness of it.. Reckon I could crack 4 litres per 100Km.

Gimme a burn in your Citroen and I reckon I could get you down to very low 4s... When we first got the Skoda we did a trip from here to Auckland and then down to Wellington, a weeks worth of boosting around there and then back home again, via Napier 4-up with a boot-load of crap and it returned 4.6 - Dare I say it, but it's a blunter object than yours.

A quick and dirty Kirk-spec Coon

Got the pic to work for ya mate:

I remember having a quite detailed metal, 3-axled version as a toy when I was a kid.

Spotted in the Waharoa Transport yard today...

The Trump is the Matamata Triumph Hoarder's daily, super tidy and lowered on what look like ATS Cups but with more cut-outs.

Allegro looked tidy and well loved on Tridents, definitely needs some flares to finish the look off.

Righto... Around here we have an old German gent who gets around in his HQ Belmont - Owned since new with no dents, scratches or signs of anything other than true care about the old girl. He did repaint it about 10 years ago apparently, and it's the same pale green as his house... I had to ask if he used the same paint for both, but no he has just so pleased with the way the colour came out on the house, he took a sample up to the local panel/paint shop and got them to mix up the same in 2-pack for the car.

Now deceased, but there was an old duck that would come and buy bulk canary seed from me every month... Dark blue Mk.3 Zephyr in almost showroom nick, mechanically sweet as a nut too - You'd hear a faint click of the key and it'd be running. Not afraid to give it a bit of welly either, at the 100 sign on the way out of town you'd hear it kick down and she was off.

Also, we have/had (haven't seen him around in a while) the Bambina man - A large old fellow with difficulty walking, who as the name might suggest, had a red Bambina. Frequently parked next to the old station watching the trains pass through, he did have a carefully printed For Sale sign in the windows the last time I saw it though, maybe October last year.

He also had/has some obscure 3-wheeled 2-stroke powered thing - The name escapes me, but it did involve the word Invalid. You'd see/hear him thrashing it out to Arapuni leaving a trail of blue haze in his wake and the sound of a thousand angry bees.

Do you know John who owns DubShack in Henderson? I don't think he's used it on an air-cooled engine, but he fabbed one up for the Bora coupe he built up running a pretty large snail on a 3.2 VR6.

Look him up and see what pointers he has.

Gee Motors in Napier have/had a good supply of new parts - Barry is a legend.

Also, if thinking of chicken-cooker conversions, Lada had their own twin-rotor engines with the largest being a 2.0 NA as used in cop-spec Samaras...

^^ Dart's... Little screamers, like most first-gen turbines.

The Daimler-Benz DB-601/605 series... Inverted V-12, 48 valves, a single-stage blower and direct fuel injection - All the way back in 1937.

By 1944, the 605 was using a 50/50 water/methanol setup in the intake as well as a 3-stage liquid nitrous injection setup.

The Alfa Boxer, the little engine that could...

In keeping with the Lancia V4, there's also the VW VR6 - Taking it's name from the first letters of the German words for Vee and Inline or Straight:

15 degree separation between the banks, one head to cover the lot. Due to the different port length for intake and exhaust, they sound fucking sweet! Also, they take to forced induction extremely well.

VW TDi's have a vernier pulley, but not to compensate for belt wear or stretch... Believe me, the tensioner is more than enough to take care of that.

It's for setting the injector timing to a baseline that varies from engine to engine as they roll off the production line - They use unit injection - 4 injectors, each with it's own pump.

Case in point being the wifemobile. Did the cam belt at home last year without the factory locking gear, using stainless pins to lock the crank and cam... Job done, the car was a gutless sack below 2000rpm and smoked like a bastard, while never making anything that felt like full torque when it finally got there - Normally it's ramping it's way up through 26 pounds and close to it's torque peak by 1700.

Bit the bullet and flogged the locking tools and a VCDS unit to read the timing and took it back to a 0 degree setting to start again - 0 was better and less smokey, but still drinking 1L/hour at idle.

Wound it further around and I think from memory the setting that it settled on was -6.8 degrees - Google wasn't much help in this case as even sequential engines off the line can have vastly different 0 points.

All this means bugger all for a rotary pump diesel set up though, but some good thinking.

You can bump your effective octane rating up a notch by adding 10% meths to the tankful - I used this regularly in my first Alfa when we shifted over the hill, as there's nothing but 95 close by.

It also helped that I had a bulk source of meths.

You'd need to fatten your mixture up a bit though...

You're almost there!

Clutch master is tucked up above the pedal-box - Driver's seat all the way aft then prepare to spend some time swearing on your back.

Typical K-Jet issues - Lines perish over time, airleaks start and a lot of places would enrich them a bit to compensate without ever dealing with the real issue.

Sort yourself out with a new fuel and air filter, check the timing and see how it goes.

Without pulling the mountain of vacuum hoses off - I made the mistake of pulling a few of mine off before I had some hoses to make replacements, and after nearly 30 years of heat they disintegrated as they were being removed... get an assortment of rubber hose sizes and one by one replace the originals. I think the only one that gets funky is the idle stabiliser valve connection where it steps down in size and has a side branch coming off it.

Exhaust-wise, I had a 36" Coby running under the cabin and a small suitcase type muffler tucked up behind the rear bumper/skirt - 3" from the downpipe to the tip, not overly loud but very throaty with tons of bass. Used to set off car alarms when driving through carparks.