zetec engine development

[wildman0609]

i'm doing a final year project at university on developing an 1800 silvertop zetec engine.
we have low budget of £400.
we have emerald management so that is not included in budget.
we're building it for track racing so are not worried about torque low in the rev range.
we plan on getting the cams re-profiled, we are currently designing them.
we also plan on using bike throttle bodies (we currently haven't calculated the bore sizes so do not know which ones yet.)
this will take up our whole budget. what we don't know yet is how good the exhaust manifold is. will it restrict us lots if we leave it standard or will we need to design a new one.
is this the best way to go about this project or is their other areas we should be looking into.
any help/ guidance will be greatly appreciated thanks

[The Black Flash]

I'm far from an expert, but it seems to me that throttle bodies tend to be seen as the magic bullet of tuning these days, yet may actually have little effect in many cases - and tend to be rather expensive. You may well be better addressing the exhaust, fitting bigger valves, etc.

Depends where the restrictions are, all I'm saying is that it sounds as if you've already decided on TBs, whereas you may be better off spending your money on something else.

Hopefully someone who knows the engine will be along soon

[mikeg15]

I'm also trying to prepare a Zetec on a budget ( though I have started with an ST17O engine) I read somewhere that TOCA rules do not allow ITBs so a single body is used, despite which they are getting over 300bhp from 2 litre engines. I was able to buy a large TB on Ebay for £35 and an ST170 exhaust manifold - which is an excellent piece of kit - for £45. A fabricated alloy plenum will cost whatever your ingenuity can manage, so inlet and exhaust to a good level is possible for under £200

[Zad]

Throttle bodies can be a real pain. If you don't know what you are doing, you can get all sorts of flow problems due to resonances (good and bad) turbulence in the wrong place, and mysterious effects that you can't put your finger on. Engineering head flow is more akin to voodoo than it is to science.

Is it possible to lighten the flywheel? Idle will be higher (not a problem in a racing engine)but response will be faster.

[GavinPearson]

wildman0609 said:

i'm doing a final year project at university on developing an 1800 silvertop zetec engine.
we have low budget of £400.
we have emerald management so that is not included in budget.
we're building it for track racing so are not worried about torque low in the rev range.
we plan on getting the cams re-profiled, we are currently designing them.
we also plan on using bike throttle bodies (we currently haven't calculated the bore sizes so do not know which ones yet.)
this will take up our whole budget. what we don't know yet is how good the exhaust manifold is. will it restrict us lots if we leave it standard or will we need to design a new one.
is this the best way to go about this project or is their other areas we should be looking into.
any help/ guidance will be greatly appreciated thanks

Let me tell you the way to do it that will get you a job at an engine consultancy...

1) Benchmark the engine and show what is delivering in terms of torque, power, bmep & bsfc across the rev range at various throttle angles. Measure pressures in the exhaust and inlets.

2) Model airflow. Determine how the engine has been optimised.

3) Set targets for the modified engine's performance, overcoming issues you have seen in (1) & (2).

4) Make the modifications and then verify that what you did achieved the goal.

I might consider limiting the project to one item such as the exhaust. What would happen to the torque curve & emissions (HC, NOx etc) if you made the runners very long or very short? Could you then optimise the system to make an improvement? You could alternatively do the same for the inlet system.

This is not necessarily glamorous by many people's standards but it is what an employer wants to see. This is what engine development is all about. Power is easy to do. It's the emissions & driveability that are difficult.

[Pumaracing]

I agree with Gavin. Your main aim is to show you understood the power generation principles regardless of what your budget allows you to actually change. This is similar to a final year university project I helped one of my students on some years ago which was to develop an 8bhp Briggs and Stratton mower engine for kart racing.

We flowtested the standard head, I developed a big valve ported head using Mini valves, bigger seat inserts and some guides made on the lathe, flowtested that, he found a bigger carb and a decent exhaust from somewhere and I made an aluminium inlet stub to bolt the carb on with. The budget didn't allow for a special cam to be made so I advised him to just plot out the cam profile and indicate in general terms how more lift and duration would potentially alter the power and torque curves if we could have done that.

Anyway it came to a nice looking report with flow curves, cam profile graphs, bhp and torque curves etc and I think we got the power up from 8bhp to 14 which was pretty healthy. We got an A anyway

[wildman0609]

thanks for the replies.

we have carried out an extensive literature review (13000 words). and now we just want to start work. benchmarking will be the first task then stripping the engine. we have plans to get the cam shafts reground because it will only cost £130 so will be the most bang for the buck.
we will also concentrate on blue printing and balancing of components. we'll raise compression ratio by as much as we can by skimming the head, (think valve to piston clearance will be an issue). we will also port the head.
I'll know more once the engine is stripped and we can see what we have to work with.

keep sending ideas and advice. it's much appreciated

[stevieturbo]

Just turbocharge it, instead of all that mucking about to make little power for a lot of effort and cost.

No need to waste money on cams, throttle bodies or anything.

Edited by stevieturbo on Wednesday 16th December 23:42

[Zad]

Depending on the racing specification, adding a turbo usually takes it to a todally different formula, or else you have to multiply the engine capacity bay 1.7 (or whatever) which would put a 1.8 into the 3 litre class. As this is a university project, they aren't looking for the blunt instrument approach, they are looking for a careful analytic approach, and a sign that the student has actually understood how the engine works and where it's shortcomings are.

[GavinPearson]

wildman0609 said:

thanks for the replies.

we have carried out an extensive literature review (13000 words). and now we just want to start work. benchmarking will be the first task then stripping the engine. we have plans to get the cam shafts reground because it will only cost £130 so will be the most bang for the buck.
we will also concentrate on blue printing and balancing of components. we'll raise compression ratio by as much as we can by skimming the head, (think valve to piston clearance will be an issue). we will also port the head.
I'll know more once the engine is stripped and we can see what we have to work with.

keep sending ideas and advice. it's much appreciated

You've missed the point.

If you want to get power out of the engine, go ahead, raise the CR, fit a high lift, high duration cam, pocket the pistons, fit new manifolds, maybe the engine will make some extra power.

I do not recommend that approach.

I work in engine development for a large vehicle manufacturer. My last role was in the project management team for an externally manufactured engine where we were to spend literally billions of dollars a year with the manufacturer). You have to understand that people such as me are critiquing plans by graduate Engineers with a great deal of experience (and potentially Mastors degrees or PhDs) to improve their areas of the engine one way or another. A development plan, timing plan and cost analysis is used for each, with an explanation of what the change would do in terms of emissions, reliability, performance, et cetera.

So let's say you get a degree and want a job. You will end up being interviewed by somebody like me. I am not impressed with the idea of buying some parts off the shelf and fitting them, frankly any good technician can do that. Telling me how you can improve the engine based on calculations (including maybe CFD), a designed experiment and backing it up with tangible results would be infinitely better and would mark you out from the crowd and is what is expected of the title "Engineer".

[Pumaracing]

GavinPearson said:

You've missed the point.

If you want to get power out of the engine, go ahead, raise the CR, fit a high lift, high duration cam, pocket the pistons, fit new manifolds, maybe the engine will make some extra power.

I do not recommend that approach.

The OP's engine project is for racing so getting more power out of it is a primary aim. This is not an OE production road car engine where emissions and NVH need to be at the top of the list so I'm afraid that having agreed with the excellent advice in your previous post I now have to disagree.

The OP wants to organise his project and report to prove he understands the principles behind each of the modifications he performs. It might start with an analysis of the engine, its strengths and weaknesses, areas that limit modifications such as valve spring coil clearance, valve train rpm limit, strength of conrods, pistons, rod bolts etc.

Next could come an appraisal of potential modifications within the budget, their expected effect on power and torque and a cost benefit conclusion. Ideally each mod would be tested separately but time and cost might prevent this. One key thing is to show the examiner you understand the engine is an air pump, that maximising the amount of air processed per unit time will maximise power output and quantifying how your mods influence this. It's not hard to build a simple flow bench from a vacuum cleaner, an orifice plate and a couple of manometer tubes. You might want to go to the (now somewhat defunct) Gofastnews.com website and look at David Vizard's DIY flowbench threads plus read through the additional articles from someone who used to post under the name Flowspecialist if you can guess who that was!

I suggest you also study C.F.Taylor's Z theory where he integrates cam profile against valve flow curve to get what I call a camflow curve, the area under which can be used to see how more cam lift and duration affect total flow potential.

Then you could bring in compression ratio, discuss its upsides on power and downsides on detonation and fuel octane requirement. Really the list is endless even for a simple project like this so you have to pick which topics give you the most kudos per page.

[Pumaracing]

wildman0609 said:

thanks for the replies.

we have carried out an extensive literature review (13000 words). and now we just want to start work. benchmarking will be the first task then stripping the engine. we have plans to get the cam shafts reground because it will only cost £130 so will be the most bang for the buck.
we will also concentrate on blue printing and balancing of components.

You'll be wasting a lot of time and effort on that then

[quote] we'll raise compression ratio by as much as we can by skimming the head, (think valve to piston clearance will be an issue).

Not on a Zetec it won't.

[quote] we will also port the head.
I'll know more once the engine is stripped and we can see what we have to work with.

keep sending ideas and advice. it's much appreciated

[stevieturbo]

blunt instrument or not.

I still say turbocharge it lol.

People can blab all they like about tuning n/a engines.....forced inductions ones will always be faster.

[GavinPearson]

Pumaracing said:

Some valid points.

I think he can alter his project brief to help him get a job, rather than achieve his goal and be very limited as to who he can apply to for a job, let alone get the job even if he does a fantastic job of the project.

[rev-erend]

Sounds like he is more interested in building a race engine than getting a degree ..

[phumy]

rev-erend said:

Sounds like he is more interested in building a race engine than getting a degree ..

But maybe the remit of the project is to build a race engine, he hasnt made that known....

[Pumaracing]

The line that read "we're building it for track racing so are not worried about torque low in the rev range. " struck me as a clue.

[Pumaracing]

GavinPearson said:

Pumaracing said:

Some valid points.

I think he can alter his project brief to help him get a job, rather than achieve his goal and be very limited as to who he can apply to for a job, let alone get the job even if he does a fantastic job of the project.

Firstly we have no idea what line of engine or engineering work the OP wants to go into or if he has even made that decision. However any employer who was only interested in candidates who had done university projects in their own company's exact line of expertise (emissions or whatever) would absolutely NOT be an employer I would recommend anyone to work for.

Uni should be fun for god's sake, as in fact should work. A race engine project is an ideal one for a final year student with plenty of areas of interest to study. The thought that a 21 y/o should already be turning into a prospective corporate drone and restricting himself to studying the effect of one component on something as dull as emissions just because he thinks he wants a job with Ford working on emissions horrifies me. As a potential employer I'd quite probably reject someone like that as being too dull and unadventurous for me to want to work with.

If you think that a race engine project could in any way limit who the OP might apply to a job for then you have lost sight of what employers actually want from candidates - the ability to bring new ideas and perspectives to their work, think out of the box, challenge and stimulate those around them and not least have fun in what they do.

Anyway, I suggest we stick to answering the questions the OP wants answering and not trying to tell him what we think he ought to do for the rest of his life. He can make those decisions himself.

[wildman0609]

just to clarify i am doing a degree in motorsport engineering, and my project title is to develop a race engine on a budget. So yes i am trying to head along the lines of a motorsport application.

I understand that emission and economy are more important nowadays, however like the last guy said, i dont want a job working for a car manufacturer doing slide show presentations on how a vehicle can get an extra 1mpg if they inflate their tyres up by 1 psi. i do still appreciate you comment.

Due uni constraints it is going to be on a budget, but i think that reflect most motorsport applications anyway. everyone is trying to get more power for their money, and we are trying to do the same.

we are going along the line of reducing friction loses, blue printing, porting etc. hopefully we will achieve good gains from this. We can pretty much do only what we can do with the uni facilities, so most machine jobs can be done. that way it cuts costs dramatically. We have use of a dyno and a flow bench, so we are going to use these to our advantage.

Thank you to everyone for you comments and keep them coming.

Cheers

[Pumaracing]

If you already have a flowbench to use then well and good. If you're still interested in how to make your own (might bring you many brownie points as well as teach you a lot about fluid mechanics) here's the article I mentioned to which I've added a brief addendum today.

http://www.gofastnews.com/board/engine-technology/...

I've already said you'll be wasting your time on blueprinting and balancing. When you understand more about production engine tolerances and design you'll realise why. Your gains will come from airflow improvements, CR, cam profile and exhaust system.

You might want to read the articles on my website.

Pumaracing.co.uk

One day I'll get round to writing one on the Zetec, an engine I've done considerable work with and actually have one in my own Ford Focus.

I also suggest you use the later solid lifter engine from 1998 onwards than the silver top hydraulic one. It has larger valves and a higher rpm limit.