APT Saxo- The end is....... now!

[Danny@APT]

Did you end the vid before it expired again?

Yee of little faith! Once it's mapped I'll get one of it on the dyno @ full throttle. Might test it with a noise meter to show how noisy it is.

...And get yourself a gopro !!! ...

With who's money? I'd love one, but can barely afford the cash for fuelling the 1.2L daily driver (poxy bills). Gary's got a funky one for the Evo that links to the MoTeC and displays ECU info on screen, but the Saxo can make do with the

[Danny@APT]

Episode 6- "Return of the Saxo"

After a few more mapping runs, Ben's pessimism won through and the Saxo decided it didn't like the coolant being in the radiator and promptly wet itself over the dyno. To be honest, the power figures weren't looking promising, so it was a sure sign something was not right. So off came the head again!

10 minutes later (getting used to this now), we had our answer. The head was still ok, the gasket was ok... the one thing we overlooked and assumed would be fine, the cast iron block, wasn't. Checking with a straight-edge showed up a substantial dip between the centre of all 4 cylinders and out to a waterway, effectively rendering the block a lost cause... arse.

As it happens, one of Gary's contacts had picked up a VTS to have as a spare shell for his 1.6 8v VTR race car. Therefore he would have no use for the 16v engine. So he dropped the car off in the yard, and once we were done he picked it back up again-



Quite comical really.

The spare lump was stripped and the block and pistons were sent to our machinist to be checked and refreshed. We also formulated a plan for him to allow extra clearance for the increased valve lift the cams were giving by cutting deeper pockets into the thick piston crowns. No pics unfortunately as we got carried away and Gary rebuilt the lump before photos were taken, but they're quite spangly, honest.

With the Haywards off to Holland for their Summer break, one of my tasks was the engine swap-over. Old block and gearbox out, new block with original head, original clutch and other gearbox in (everyone keeping up?). After some swearing when finding out the engine mount needed to go on before the throttle bodies, the engine was in. After filling the coolant I was presented with a slow drip from the back of the block where a plastic water outlet was bolted to the block. Deciding it must be a knackered "O" ring, I drained the coolant again, removed the water pipe and added some sealer. Bolted it back up, left to dry and refilled... to be greeted by dripping again.

Deciding now it must be a distorted housing, I removed it again and swapped for the one from the other block, refilled AGAIN... waited.... waited some more.... another leak.

Ripping it off for the final time, I closely studied where the water appeared to be getting though- a thin hairline crack at the base of both housings, which I could only presume was caused by the plastic being brittle and fracturing when removing the water hoses. As it turned out, a new one was dirt-cheap from the local Dealer, and the next day it was nailed on and we were leak-free at last.

Time to fire her up!

A flick of the key and a prod of the throttle and the Paxo was running again. After bleeding the cooling system, I was tempted by a hoon around the yard, but the tinny rattle of detonation due to the now sky-high compression put that idea to bed, so the little Citroen was retired to its place outside until Gary could get round to tweaking the map and some fresh fuel.

Dyno graph to follow.

[Stuart]

Good work Dan-oh Cars like this are great when they are cheap and reliable. As this one has been neither, how big has the temptation been to torch it

[Danny@APT]

Good work Dan-oh Cars like this are great when they are cheap and reliable. As this one has been neither, how big has the temptation been to torch it

It probably would've helped if Gary had resisted the urge to tune it.

Nevermind, we'll see how it fares on Saturday/Sunday.

[Daniel]

Can't wait to see it this coming weekend going to be mental

[Danny@APT]

Before-



and after -



Unfortunately can't overlay the two due to the idiosyncrasies of the Dyno software (second run was using the injector wiring for rpm instead of the ignition pick-up), but you can see the power is up from 4k onwards, and torque is increased from 3.5k, with a "Vtec Yo!" rev limit of nearly 8.5k.

However, with the throttle bodies being at the rear of the bay, heat-soak is an issue. Gary has some chav-tastic ideas for directing cold air back there.

[Daniel]

Impressive stuff Dan, really is such an improvement!

oh and here they are overlayed to scale

[Stuart]

Bloody good gains

[gary@apt]

daniel torque scaling is dotted line and is on the right, bhp is on left

[Danny@APT]

daniel torque scaling is dotted line and is on the right, bhp is on left

Good effort though Dan (basically just move the end of the old torque line up to about 100 lbft- same as the newer one).