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Revvable redblock of choice for itb's with an aggresive cam symfonie

Slowly starting to get there. The quest for rods ended thanks to J2 who sold me his set of used 13mm rods. Yesterday after some slight delay i went to take a look at the offered b230f. Was low at expectations since the guy selling it didn't know how many miles were on it, only that the previous owner replaced it recently. Removed the number 4 sparkplug and it showed that it had been running rich for a while. Expectations went even further down. Took the endoscope out of the case to look in there and to my surprise it seemed to be in a very good condition so i took this badboy home including an extra old style flat flywheel, Score!:-D. Unfortunately the trunk off my nice bmw touring with beige interior will never be the same again:oops:
 
What do you guys think of this cam. It's made by Catcams from Belgium. It requires solid buckets and stronger valve springs but that is something i could live with. How would it compare to say something like the kg7?

Catcams%20rally%20cam.PNG

You sure that is safe with the 35mm buckets??? That's a lot of lift.
 
Thanks for your reply. With the current setup i'll end up with close to 12:1 static, Which i thought would be in the ballpark for this cam. would you agree?
 
What do you guys think of this cam. It's made by Catcams from Belgium. It requires solid buckets and stronger valve springs but that is something i could live with. How would it compare to say something like the kg7?

Catcams%20rally%20cam.PNG
Just curious..
Do you have to smog test your car each year?
Do u really think that such a big cam will be really street friendly?
 
Just curious..
Do you have to smog test your car each year?
Do u really think that such a big cam will be really street friendly?

I've built dozens and dozens and dozens of carburated engines for "fun daily driver" use with cams very similar if not a smidge hotter on engines from 1,5 to roughly 2,0..
They went fine...

The key thing is to get the dynamic compression...the compression the engine makes AFTER the intake valve closes, which is the REAL compression the motor makes up into the mid to high 9s...or low 10s if you have aluminum head..

Then they start, pull away from a stop and act nicely..
And in the case of Redblocks the engines are substantially large so they "tolerate" a 'warmer' cam better than a little 1,5 or 1,7...

Its long established (40+ years) normal rally motor spec and rally motors emphasise broad, torque spread (because coming out of so many corners with closed throttle going in revs drop, so spread and "punchiness" are quicker out of thoe 10,000 corners..And quick is what counts...remember we're not making an autobahn rocket or something for Mulsanne.)
 
We do have some sort of smog test, But with low standards for older cars there has to be something seriously wrong to fail it. As john says it's a rallysports cam so it's supposed to deliver usable performance over quite a wide rpm band. Apart from that it won't be daily driven but just be used as a toy.

Disarmed the engine somewhat and got it down to the bear bottomend. As expected bores are great and have only a slight bit of wear on them so i can get away with just freshening the bores, new rings, bearings & seals. Thicker 13mm rods from 2J also arrived, I'll have them measured to see if there within spec. Images will follow soon.
 
Time to get some images added.
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Suspected that the engine wouldn't be fresh enough for my liking and since the drive was two and a haf hours decided to take my nice beige interior bmw without trailer. Told myself never to do this sort of stuff to this car. Damn, failed again. :oops: Guys selling the engine strip down 2 series, sell the parts and derby the chassis to death.
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Engine out, And thanks to god only ruined the rubber boot protector. Had a few stains in the cloth but nothing a good cleaner couldn't fix. Bit of a dirty engine, On tear down it showed a failed valve cover gasket and leaking water pump. Biggest surprise was the timing belt dough.
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Guess it would have been fine for another couple of miles, But definitely the worst seen by me, Strange it also moved forward on the gears. Can't understand how you'd decide to maintain the waterpump, Do frequent oil changes, replace plugs but ignore the timing belt.:wtf:

Did some finishing on the head also, In a nutshell:
Welded extended taps to the throttle bodies
Ported intake to head and intake runners
Machined some space round the valves, Wich also helps me reduce the cr to roughly 12:1
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There is supposed to be guide washers on the crank pulley. Probably missing the front one would be my guess. The things people do or don't do to old engines. lol.
 
Looks like failed timing belt tensioner bearing putting the roller off of square and making the belt walk forward, based on the view in your 3rd photo. Doubt it would have gone much further.
 
Both washers are on the crank pulley, Haven't checked the tensioner dough. The engine appears to be a B230F with the smaller diameter crank bearings, I can't think of it being a problem would you guys agree?

Life is a bit bussy at the moment but progress wil follow. Will try to take the bottom apart this evening to see what the bearings and bores measure. Really hoping to get away with freshening the bores and throw some fresh bearings at it. There was a guy posting something about a cheap dry sump thought and to be honest he kind of got in my head. What if you'd just take 3 sets of oem gears and machine a housing for them. 2 scavenge pumps and one pressure pump should get 100% more flow to tank than out of it, So that'll be fine. And the machining of 3 houses and a pair of axles shouldn't be that hard.
 
Nothing wrong with the smaller crank bearing size, as it's still pretty large. I used that on the 2.5L NA 16v engine that was in the rally car. If you are worried about the center thrust bearing only being 180deg, the bearing cap can easily be machined for another set of thrust bearings.

 
I'm with Ronald Culberbone. The center thrust blocks tend to make a bit more power everything else being equal, and there is little to worry about regarding the longevity of the block itself.
 
Any update on this?

Your camshaft choice seems too extreme for me. The duration at 1mm of lift is greater than likely the ENEM C2 and also the R33-264-14 AGAP camshaft that also measures around 264? duration at .050". We are running what is supposedly a copy of a C2 camshaft in our race car and it idles fine even on LH2.4 at the recommended 1200rpm minimum(even idles fine under 1000!) and a calculated static compression ratio of somewhere between 11.3-11.7:1(Erland Cox recommended running more than a full point higher than that!). It is not going to pass any emissions tests and isn't extremely happy under 3000rpm as to be expected, but it is very drivable under there. We are using our 92 octane fuel here, though, which is similar to 95 RON fuel in Europe.

http://www.agap.se/AGAP_Volvo_B230_Eng_7.pdf
 
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