Here's a picture of Ray's engine, crank, pistons, rods, cam, lifters, and Rivergate 5 speed back plate installed.

Here’s a picture of the Rivergate 5 speed back plate, complete with their rear seal kit. Unlike the Mini Mania rear seal kit which eliminates the block rear scroll piece, this seal kit from Rivergate leaves the factory scroll alone, and the seal is just in addition to the scroll. The Mini Mania kits never worked for long on the race cars; we gave up on them years ago. I don't see how this one could be a problem, since it retains the rear scroll, and the seal is nothing more than a back up.

Here’s the Rollmaster vernier timing gear set to dial in the APT VP276 slot-drive camshaft; I also used APT's CF-04 chilled iron lifters.

Well, time to call it a day. Ray spent most of the day with me; we fit his tranny to the custom pilot bushing for the 210 5-speed, and then trial fit the tranny, so we knew he would not have any issues when this chore came along. I bolted the Goodson degree wheel and pointer on to the engine, so I'm ready to start degreeing the cam.

I will go over this in detail, as most folks overlook this step. It turns out that Ray's core had already been into and the crank was .010/.010. Whoever turned the crank did a crappy job of it, eliminating most of the journal's radiuses. I had a nice std./std. core and we decided to use that instead. I magnafluxed it, checked it for straightness, then taped up the journal up and bead blasted it. I then cleaned it again, polished the journal, and then balanced it. Since this was a new crankshaft to assemble, there was no guarantee the rod side clearances were where we wanted them to be. Sure enough, #4 rod had hardly any side clearance, so it had to come back out of the block, and the rod side thrust surfaces were belt sanded down until I got what was needed. We ended up with a range of .012-.014" on rod clearance, which is really good. Too little side clearance could lead too friction and heat building up there, which could cause a bearing failure; too much side clearance would let the oil bleed off too quickly compromising oil pressure. .014 is considered optimum, so we're right where we need to be.

The one rod I had to re-clearance the side thrust area on was rechecked against the others, this time of course with the piston installed. The amount removed on the side thrust area was not enough to change the balancing +/- a gram. A gram sounds like such a little amount of weight on a rod until you go to remove it, then you are astonished at how much material is really is.

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Ray’s "Project Spridget" build is basically a street racer. There are a lot of things going on on that car that are customary to racing Spridgets. Ray did a lot of research looking at race cars to get ideas. One of the things we talked about from the very beginning was external engine oiling. I'm not a big fan of BSP fittings, probably the worse all-time flared fitting for sealing known to man. When you look at the prices vendors get for BSP lines, fittings, and such, AN/Aeroquip fittings and lines start to look like a bargain, especially now with Ebay and lots of new Aeroquip surplus from NASCAR and other forms of pro racing. With the right hose and fittings you can make your own hose assemblies. So Ray is pretty much doing what most of us do with our Spridget race cars; where the oil exits the engine at the passenger rear of the engine, instead of going via hard line to the oil filter housing now it will go via AN braided hose to an oil cooler, then back to the block where the filter housing normally is. A specially made blocking fitting all the racers use replaces the OEM filter housing. Ray will use a remote oil filter housing that will be on an oil exit line, but before the oil cooler. The remote filter hosing also allows you to use larger and better oil filter, like the Fram HP-1, or KN oil filter. It's also a good place to plumb in oil pressure and oil temp probes.

Pictured here is the fitting that replaces the banjo fitting on the oil exit. This is a reworked fitting that started life as a 3/8 NPT to 10AN; it was rethreaded to straight threads like the MG has. There are different ways to do this, such as tapping the block for tapered NPT fittings.

Here's the intake side of external oil system. This is the specially made oil block fitting Ray got from Winner’s Circle; it replaces the OEM oil filter housing. You can get steel AN fittings in cad plating, however, red and blue are pretty much the industry standard on the aluminum race fittings regardless of what company you use, Aeroquip, Earls, Goodrich, etc. That’s no freeze plug in the hole, that's the water jackets in the block, which look a lot worse in the picture than real life. The block has been caustic washed, and a good coolant/water mixture will keep it from getting any worse.

Here's a shot of the front of the block, with timing cover, Romac harmonic balancer, and oversized APT water pump pulley installed. The APT water pump pulley is a inch bigger in diameter than the original pulley; this will slow the water pump down and help the engine cool better. I couldn't stand it, I took it over to the buffing wheel and buffed it to a gloss; you may need sunglasses to view this photo.

Here's a shot of the Fidanza flywheel installed. Ray's engine has the Rivergate Datsun 5 speed backing plate with the engine rear seal. As it turns out, the 4 bolts that hold the seal housing onto the backing plate interfere with the back of the Fidanza flywheel. I ended up losing the split lock washer on those four bolts, grinding the heads of the bolt down a bit, and using red Loctite, now everything clears fine. A word of caution on aluminum Flywheels (Fidanza is really the only vendor these days but this caution would also apply to the older Tilton units). On most bolts there is a small step under the head of the bolt and this compresses against the aluminum on the flywheel. Over time it can create spider cracks leading from the bolt holes. It's a real easy fix; all you need to do is use a chamfer bit in a drill, or drill press, and increase the chamfer around the bolt hole to not let the step under the head of the bolt compress the aluminum. I have tried for years to get Fidanza to correct this, but it has never happened. If you do this simple mod, you can rest assure you will not get spider cracks down the road with aluminum flywheels. I have seen more than my fair share of aluminum flywheels fail because of this, mostly just noticing the spider cracks during a race engine refresh. I have never seen a spider crack develop if this simple mod is done.

Here's a photo of Ray's Winner’s Circle stage 1 competition oil pan we'll be using on his engine. This pan has a squared bottom that allows more oil volume; it also has some competition baffling inside. I'll explain that in the following post with pictures.

An inverted look at the pan.

Here's a look inside. The front section of the pan is boxed off with trap door to keep oil around the oil pump pick up tube under hard braking. It will still let oil get to the front of the pan as it is not air tight around the edges; it just slows down the forward motion of the oil, so it doesn't all slosh that way under braking.

Pan bolts on A-series engines are 1/4". I see a few customers using studs; I’ve got them, I’m just not a nig fan of studs as small as 1/4". I’ve seen too many snap over the years.

Ray will be using a small billet aftermarket slave cylinder with the Datsun tranny, so hopefully clearance  won't be a problem. But, those are the types of things you run into when heading down new paths. Needless to say, I’ve never used one of these pans on a street engine, and in racing we don't use the Datsun gearbox; all the popular racing gearboxes are based off the rib cage tranny case. If we need to go back and modify it, we will, hopefully we won't. I always tell folks that modification is like lying, once you start, you have to keep doing it in order to make everything work out.

Here is a picture showing the area of contact on a modified Speedwell oil pan when using a Spridget slave cylinder. If Ray's Billet slave cylinder extended forward of the Rivergate adapter plate, which it appears to not do, there would have been contact.

I'll get Ray to get another Payen pan gasket set (Winner’s Circle has them in stock) and do a dry fit on the engine stand. If we have a interference I'll remove the pan, make the mod, and put it all back together. Ray and I will make a day out of it.

With regard to the above clearance issue; Ray pulled the transmission out of the shipping crate and did a trial fit of the billet slave cylinder on it (see photo). The cylinder, when in place, protrudes beyond the transmission housing between 1/8" and 1/4"; that's not including the nipple and hose. The aluminum adapter plate between engine back plate and transmission is, I believe, 3/4". So, it looks like the slave will fit without modification of the oil sump...assuming the 90 degree nipple can be rotated a bit so the hose will clear. BTW...the slave came from Rivergate (it's on their web page)...I don't know what the original application might have been, but it looks like the only mod that Rivergate did was to elongate the mounting bracket holes a bit.

 

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Ray's bottom end is basically done; I’ve just got a few minor things to do. Now its on to the head work; I will start porting today. Nothing like wearing goggles and dust mask and being covered in metal shavings; at least it's not a 100 degrees.

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Some 1275 engines have mechanical fuel pump blanking plate, Ray's engine is a late 72-73 block and it has a mechanical fuel pump blanking plate. On Rays motor I will be using the earlier pre smog head (12G940) so we keep the "earlier” feel to the entire 1962 "Spridget Project".

Also, some of the early 1275s were higher compression from the factory. That's no big deal if you are rebuilding; you can use the AE21253 piston with it's higher compression height and make it a higher compression engine for the cost of a set of pistons, cheap horsepower. With just the addition of the AE21253 pistons you can get a 1275's compression ratio to around 9.5 to 1 with a virgin block and head deck.

The great thing about a 1275 is you have so many choices in aftermarket goodies. You can go hog wild like we are doing with Ray's motor or you can pick and choose the best bang for the buck, and get good improvement rather cheaply.

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I do a certain portion of machine work in house, most of all the head work, and rod work. I out source boring, line boring, and crankshaft grinding. The crankshaft grinder I use, Spartan Crankshaft, is one of the best I ever seen. I've been using them for close to 20 years and all they do is crankshafts, and they know how to do them right. Crankshaft grinding is an art form as far as I'm concerned. I could let the same machinist that does my boring and line boring do my cranks, but the bottom line is the he maybe does 2-3 cranks a month, where Spartan does a dozen cranks weekly; you can figure out real quick who does the better job. I blueprint everything I build so I tell the crank grinder what number I want them to hit; I get the exact clearance I want. A good grinder will hit your numbers by +/- .0002"; my guys seldom are as much as .0002" off, normally within .0001. That in short is outstanding work. Another big deal about crank grinding putting the filet radius on the edge of the journal back, and this is where a lot of 'so called’ crank grinders suck, they square off the radius, or they don't want to dress their grinding wheels so they make a few steps at the end to sort of create a radius. When the radius is not put back properly this cause a stress riser; most all cracks in crankshafts happen at the radius on the journals, the better the radius,  the less chance a crank will crack there.

Ray sourced a 1275 engine core from a buddy of mine; none of us knew any history of Ray's core. When I got the core apart, the bores were still standard but someone had ground the crank .010/.010, and the radiuses looked terrible. I didn't want to take Ray's motor to a .020/.020 crank, so I had a nice std./std. crank in my stash and we used that. Well, I got my lathe repaired the other day, and was looking for something to do to try it out, so the crank that originally came out of Ray's core engine was used for a polish job to give the lathe a try out. Once I polished the journal up, I saw what I thought was a couple of scratches on the #4 rod journal. A closer inspection proved they were cracks not scratches, one coming from the radius, about 3/8", and the other from the same radius at a angle of about 3/4" (biggest crack I ever saw in a crank). The moral to all this, whoever ground this crankshaft originally was a lazy "you know what", he stepped the radius and for all practical purposes wiped it away, and this shoddy job caused this crankshaft to crack. It's a wonder it didn’t break in the block while the engine was still running.

The lesson in all this is to find out in your area who does good crank work; where do the racers take their cranks? That's who you want grinding your crank. Don't think just because a machinist has a crank grinder and does crank grinding he can actually do a good job of it. A good question for a machinist who grinds cranks is to ask them how they do their radiuses on the journal. If you get a bunch of hee-hawing, then run.

Side note; only twice have I ever sourced an already ground crankshaft from British parts vendors who used whatever shop near them to do the machine work. Both are big names in the business. I used neither of these cranks as they were sent to me (crappy radiuses, and journal sizes all over the place); both were re-done by my guys.

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I ported Ray’s head last week then dropped it off for some harden exhaust seats. I then went back and blended the seat edges in the ports. I shortened the guides , reshaped them (bulleted them), fitted the valves to the guides, cut three angles on the seat and two angles on the valves, and lapped the valves. The head is now sitting in fresh paint; it should be dry by the time I get to the shop this morning; I can now start weighting up the valve springs to set my seat pressure, and start final assembly of the cylinder head.

With regard to valve stem seals; I’m using Moss part# 297-635. They are labeled as ‘umbrella seals’ by Moss, but they are posi-seals, meaning they slip over the top of the guide and stay there, not ride up and down like a Chevy V8 umbrella seal. I also use ones from Honda from time to time, but the Moss part number works fine and is readily available from all the British part vendors. I get mine from Gordon at the B Hive; a lot of folks don't know that Gordon stocks a good bit of Spridget parts, and has some offerings others don't have.

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I just finished Ray's ported head, and put it on the flow bench to give it a whirl. It's getting a 20% increase in flow across the board; I'm pretty pleased. Now on to mounting on the bottom end, and dealing with getting all the Harland Sharp roller rockers line up. I've already test fitted them on another head and it looks like I'm going to have my work cut out for me. First thought is that the two end rocker arms will have to be milled on the side to center the roller tips on the valves tip; we have the Winner’s Circle solid spacers, and it looks like the mill will get some use thinning those up to fit. No two A-series head cast flow is exactly the same, so that means the rocker arm pedestal bosses are close, but never the same. Anytime you go with roller rockers arms and solid spacer you have a little chore on your hands. I imagine I spent a good 4-5 hours just making all this work. I think the Titan roller tip rocker arms that Mini Mania and Mini Spares sells is the better deal, but they still require some fitting, but I think maybe less the Harland Sharps do. Personally I think going to a roller rocker arm near the same ratio as the stock arm is little excessive for the return results you get. In other words when it comes down to what to buy to make horsepower put roller rocker (near the stock ratio) far down your list of wants.

Sorry no pictures, the camera batteries died.

Well we hit a bump in the road, I just figured out we got the wrong roller rocker arms. Sure as all get out they sent Ray the 948 units that were labeled as 1275 units but they are not, I just got off the phone with Rob at WC, and he's going to take care of us and get us the right ones. By the way, there was a thread here, and on the MG Experience a few weeks ago about a guys having trouble lining up his HS roller rocker arm, now I know why, he had the 948 units as well, turn to our buddy the Dr. who sells these on Ebay, needs to educate himself on the right part numbers, now mind you we did not get our form him, we were just the victim of a mislabeling. (see note in the final section regarding the roller rockers)

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E-mail Ray at ray@raysmg.com about MG interests you may share.