I thought I had better start a build thread/info about my stanza.

here it is how I got it minus the engine





I bought it in December 2012 as a rolling shell with the intention of building a club registered autocross car. The shell was pretty tidy and has minimal rust and had a lot of the things I was going to do already done, When I bought it it had already been used for autocross and had the following specs:


Interior:

Stripped interior, 6 point roll cage, after market bucket seats, added tacho.

Suspension:

King springs full height heavy duty F & R springs
KYB rear and Munroe front struts (both almost new)
all suspension bushed replaced with poly bushes

Diff:

Welded H190 - unknown ratio yet

Wheels/Tyres

TRX rims + Kumho rally tyres

Other Mechanical:

Mitsubishi radiator with twin thermos, aluminum front bash plate

The car was in great condition and was a perfect base for me to start with. In the process of the build so far I have gotten a little carried away and have decided to go a bit further than I originally planned. Since the car arrived in December I have made the following changes.

L18 with A87 head 11:1 compression rev limit 7500 rpm
Bored and decked block
flat top L28 ITM oversize pistons
ACL bearings
ARP bolts
full timing/gasket kit
Head ported, reshaped bowls and ports, replaced all seals
Wade 733A cam
4-2-1 extractors
Yamaha/Mikuni R1 bike carbs with Yoshimura jets/needles
custom manifold
bluebird elec dizzy
4.2kg flywheel + HD organic HD clutch

The engine is built and running in the car and has a stock 4 speed behind it. there is quite a bit of tuning work to be done, the whole process took a few months of waiting for parts and weekend build time. I am really happy with how the engine turned out and it should make good power.

some pics of the build



















Also need to fabricate a strut tower brace, tailshaft loop and scatter shield for the flywheel.

The next step is the get the car ready for rego. currently there are a few things that need doing, electrics, horn, lights. All pretty minor things but still a couple of weekends work I dont want to take any shortcuts! Once the car is on the road I will put some K's on it, tune it and do a bit of a shakedown by competing in a few events.

Later on in the year the plan is to replace the dented front guards, replace the late model front and rear lights and late model bumpers with early model gear, strip the car and paint it.

paint wise I am going to do something along the lines of this:



I know... Its not a 1600 and BRE never built rally stanzas but I just love the scheme and I think it will suit the stanza well.

Nice build but square lights, kill it kill it.

can you take a pic of the radiator and do you know what model its from, cheers ps stanza rally car what they are for!!

I have no idea what model magna the radiator is from, I went to pick a part to try and identify it but could not match it up. It has twin thermo fans and fits in the engine bay perfectly. also dead near fits the stock radiator hoses!

I will try and get a better photo of it for you.

I did a bit more work on the weekend and now all the lights work, horn works, heater, wipers, seat belts, doors, windows everything except for the tacho!

Next step is club rego. hopefully in a few weeks I can legally drive it

How did you get horn working, seeing we have same horn.

I threw it in the bin and bought a new one

but I did trace all the wires and know where they all go and how they work so I can point them out to you.

Wow! So clean!! Nice work!

I spent a bit of time stuffng around with a wideband 02 sensor today and have the car running properly. it starts and idles perfecty once warm with an AFR of 14:1 any leaner and it pops slightly.

here are the AFR's for rev range

hard pull in socond gear
2000 - 13.5:1
3000 - 13.2:1
4000 - 13.8:1
5000 - 14.2:1
6000 - 13.7:1

(have not taken it to 7,000 yet) seems to taper off quite quickly from about 5,700rpm

Here is the jetting and carb settings for the engine (wont really help anyone as the needles are MJN yoshimura needles and will be different to standard R1 needles.

1.75 main jets
17.5 pilots
air mixture screws 3.75 turns out
needles in the RICHEST setting I may have to step up to a richer main jet and lower the needles target AFR should be no leaner than 13.5:1

This was all done with a static timing of 15 BTDC using 98 ron fuel. there is no pinging but as soon as I connect the vacuum advance it detonates like hell!

I thught about the idea of using a restrictor in line with the dizzy vacuum line to reduce the amount of vacuum seen by the dizzy in effect reducing the rate of advance. This is easily done. I have used restrictors in all sorts of applications in turbo cars before. You can use a MIG welding torch tip inline. I will play with this if I do end up putting it on the dyno.

The car pulls pertty hard for a 1.8 NA engine and sounds pretty mean! using my mobile and racechrono, punching in the cars weight as an estimated 950 kg's with me in it and doing 0 - 100 takes 8.4 seconds... I thought it would be faster than this! I guess its got to loosen up a bit. it also estimates the horse power at 166hp. minus 20% for drive train loss and its a pretty respectable 132hp or almost exactly 100 rwkw! sounds a bit high to me, perhaps my guess on the cars weght is wrong or the software is nt that accurate.

puncing the nubers into olline calculators give very close results so its possible!

Will not know till I put it on the dyno in a few weeks.

You would want a bit richer to allow for variations in ambient temps etc too.

The 733a is good to 6000rpm. I found I could get to that easily on Lpg. Id guess its, the mixture leaning out.

Bit weird about the vac advance, oh well just don't use it

Isn't stoich 14.7:1 step it up to 1.8 or 1.85 on the drill bit.

for outright power i to would want it abit richer. mine runs about the 13:1 - 12.5:1 and that seems to be a nice mix for my l18. wouldn't bother with vac advance just set it at 32deg @ 4000rpm.

looks good should be pretty fast when your done

The usual trick with webers an a hot L series is to have the mechanical advance come in quickly and forget vacuum advance.

It may be possible for you to use vacuum advance, but the first thing I'd check is that it's connected to "ported" vacuum, not just a source on the inlet manifold. The vacuum has to come from the carby body (maybe bodies). The "ported" vacuum signal originates from a hole in the throat of the carb immediately behind the throttle plate. When the throttle is shut, there's no vacuum. When it's wide open the vacuum signal is negligible. When the throttle is open slightly (ie; cruise conditions) there is a strong vacuum signal. This is what you want so it pulls on the vacuum advance, advancing ignition timing to improve combustion of lean cruise mixtures (and throttle response when cruising). You don't want it advancing the timing under other conditions (like full load, idle or cranking). If R1s have no provision for vacuum advance in their ignition system your carbs probably won't either. While it's possible to modify them I doubt it'd be worth the effort. Hope this helps.

Please keep the updates coming!

fantastic explination guy thanks! I am just going to disconect vac advance as suggested and run mechanical advance exactly as avised. I got my pipercross filter today and a jet cut flange to fit to the carbs. Will post up some pics when its been installed.

"More carburettors than engine please Sir"

Looks great....
Keep the updates coming

Awesome work!!!!