Supercharged Bike Carbs on a 2.0 Pinto

[nigecapri]

Well, since the first bank holidays this year I've been busy trying to bolt a supercharger under those bike carbs on the black 2.0S
It started about a year and a half back when the M45 's were going for about a ton on ebay, I found them when googling superchargers late one night just out of curiosity and bought one from a guy in Hull a few weeks later (- abandoned project.)
The bike carbs had been sat on the back bedroom carpet for too long before I got them fitted so I was keen to get on with the charger project before something got in the way.
For me the exhaust manifold location was just too hot for a charger and with plenty of fresh air under the bike carbs I started planning what needed to be done.
Megajolt by Brent Picasso at http://www.autosportlabs.net went on to get rid of the dizzy, giving reliable sparks and the big bonus of being able to fiddle with the advance when the charger was fitted.
The pinto fuel pump worked the bike carbs fine but that went into the parts box to make more room and also to offer it's bolt holes for a support bracket which is made from one of the car's original engine mountings (off the old block in the garage with a scored no.3 bore) Electric pump fitted. This original engine helped alot with trial-fitting of bits in the garage, especially the poly-vee pulley arrangement.
An oil filter take-off plate was next along with a remote mount filter unit on the bulkhead. The 1/2" oil hose from Burton isn't 1/2" i/d and I spent a full weekend sourcing some tapered down 1/2" copper tube to fit then piping it all up in the dark one monday night. I decided the route backwards under the engine mount to above the starter didn't allow enough length of rubber hose to take up the engine movement so ditched that approach and started again from scratch the next weekend going out to the chassis rail below the old coil mounting area then backwards to the bulkhead. The new length of oil hose I got from the local hydraulic shop was 1/2" i/d and fitted the pipe ends a treat - all those hours of frustration in the garage
Poly-vee pulley system came next and by this time I had a box full of pulleys from various trips to the scrappers ( also numerous bits of old mucky pipe from vans I'd chopped up with jubilee clips & god knows what else)
The water pump had to be the fixed reference and the alternator was spaced out with washers, tubes & longer bolts. The crank pulley off a cvh lined up with them after adding a spacer each side, a filed out plate washer next to the toothed belt retaining washer ( blisters) and again, the car's original toothed crank-timing belt pulley - ground down and micro'd to give a flat spacer for the crank nut to tighten onto. This cvh pulley was one of the only jobs farmed out to an engineering shop because it needed concentric boring to match the pinto crank nose diameter. The other jobs were a 1/2" bsp thread in the dizzy plug which I didn't have the gear for and welding and extension on the replacement four-branch & a lambda boss into that because I'd run out of acetylene.
The cvh pulley already had the toothed cps wheel fitted but at the wrong angle. The cvh keyway is in a different place to a pinto and I had a custom cps bracket. The wheel was removed (Colin's two x C-spanner method) and fitted in a suitable way to allow fitting another custom cps bracket (another job) that wouldn't foul the charger mounting.
The new poly-vee belt to run the w/pump & alternator was measured, bought & fitted and it all ran smoothly on first turn of the key [jumps up & down around the driveway with excited satisfaction!] It could do with a dial-gauge job on #1 piston to find tdc and mark the crank pulley so it can be strobed but after the run to CCI Mild To Wild on saturday I don't think the timing is far out

Then I made a few brackets, mounted the charger, piped it up to a few bits of ally I'd fabbed and with a bit of rubber tubing to pressurise the float chambers it started a treat - those few jobs took longer than it took me to type it
She needs a bit of twiddling now - all three local rolling roaders on holiday at once

Thanks to the following for parts & inspiration:
red.top (Shaun or Matthew?) for the bike carbs & manifold.
Allan Wattam via Capri Mutha fu*£e8 for megajolly kit.
Andy C for the four branch at CoC or DicC last year.
Rob for a bucketful of inspiration
Nat-Supercharged for another bucketful of inspiration & the Air/Fuel gauge he gave me at CoC this year.
Colin for some very helpful advice & encouragement on the megajolly.
Various anonymous internet posters.

[Beakster]

Nice on Nige, it looked really good when I saw it at COC. Need to get some pics up here for everyone to see.

[the1theycallthe1]

Rob for a bucketful of inspiration

Awwww shucks! thanks for the thanks.

and like beak said, where are the pictures? we need pictures to go full circle and give others inspiration!

[nigecapri]

Well Rob, I'm not exactly sure where I got the idea from but afaik you were the first on here to stick a charger on a pinto.
I've put some photos and a write-up at the bottom of my Workshop jobs page linked from my sig-file photo below. It was easier for me to do that than trying to put them on here & format it all.
CLICK THE PHOTO OF THREE CAPRIS BELOW AND SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE FOR A FULL WRITE-UP:

[SmokeEm]

fooking hell nige well done mate

[Matty2148]

You kept that quiet Nige! Thats one nice project you have there, have you had it on the rollers yet??

[Supercharged Nat]

Nige any progress?

[nigecapri]

One or two photos for you and a bit of an update on what I've had to do and what I had to do after that etc. etc.

This was the second leccy fuel pump system which worked fine for the carbs but with the charger fitted up it was going lean at high revs so was changed for a hp pump fitted near the tank. Remote oil fiter fitted:



This was the first time the charger got spinning




All piped up direct from the charger with flexi rubber to allow for the carbs to move a bit.




After blowing the airbox out before xmas 2009 I had to make up a stronger all-metal plenum to get rid of the original plastic Mikuni airbox plate (see top photo)



Pre-heating the new plenum top cover ready for a bit of work to repair some distortion caused by tig welding.




Getting this plate bored and the seal grooves milled was farmed out to an engineer mate who could use his works cadcam lathe


I welded it up to the plenum base frame and the job was soon sorted



The top fitted a treat, it looks like it grew there



It's now blowing through a cooler fitted infront of the radiator. I've also swapped the rocker cover for one with a baffle plate in the filler neck to stop no1 cam lobes from flinging oil up and through the filter gauze in the cap at top revs but I still haven't had it flat out yet - the bonnet lifts and flaps a bit, it needs some pins!
For a full write-up description of this project with many more photos click on my sig. photo below and scroll to the bottom of the page:

[nigecapri]

This rolling road graph is from around ten years back when my 2.0 pinto engine was in it's original silver B-plate Laser. 32/36 Weber with K&N and 4-2-1 exhaust manifold + stainless pipe.
Figures on the graph need to be corrected to plus 10% to give actual output as per tuner's instructions.
108 bhp appears somewhere near expected for a 97,000 miler with K&N plus exhaust system:



This graph is from the same engine last month now in my black 2.0S with Mikuni 36mm bike carbs and Eaton supercharger, similar 4-2-1 manifold and the exact same stainless pipe but with around 159,000 miles of hard use showing age related wear on each cam lobe.
Two blue lines from one run, two red lines from another run. The two black lines are from a third run with the plenum inlet disconnected allowing only Naturally Aspirated inlet air for comparison but still turning the supercharger (negligible engine power use to spin it without restriction)
Readings at 5,100 rpm go a bit haywire, suggested by the operator to be possibly wheelspin although afr showed over rich mixture at peak revs?
Power about 140
Torque about 150



Any thoughts or interpretations welcome.

[STOCK...tm]

the peak power is quite low in the rev range...... a little head work would help

Good results though.....