Lola SL142/20 Restoration

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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby 911hillclimber » Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:31 am

The headers are great!
I made my own for the Porsche engine into my Lola where space was very restricted as the system had to be all under the engine.
Rather than work under the car I took the engine out, turned it upside down and with the
gearbox in place fabricated it with a hacksaw and a file in stainless.
What a pig of a job. I too used a pro tig welder to weld it all up as I don't have a tig, but he was not as neat as yours!
Exactly as you said, if I did this again I would invest in cutting tools to cut square.....and a tig.

Car is fabulous, look forward to the shake-down and race report!

Image
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Sun Feb 26, 2012 1:39 pm

I thought fabricating the headers without previous experience is a rather crazy thing to do. But what you did is insane :lol: Doing this without the help of the system I have used, must have been a real pain - wow, hats off to that!
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Sun Apr 01, 2012 5:49 pm

I think I mentioned the "Wheel Project" before. Original Lola wheels are difficult to find - and many times the ones found are not good enough to be used. But recently, finally, I was able to acquire the correct rear wheels - and in very good condition too. The fronts I had already, so I had a complete set to fit to the car and restore. I decided not to paint or coat them in any other way, just put them on a big lathe and scotch-brighted the outer rim a bit and took care not to take away much material. Magnesium can corrode pretty quickly, so I soaked the rims with "Gibbs". Time will tell whether this really works. But it does look great, and this way I can still apply a different finish if I want.

To continue the period style and look, I bought Dunlop CR82 "Post Historic" tires. I have never driven these, just AVON slicks, and I have no idea how they will behave :roll: I would assume that they have much less grip, but I wonder how such really wide ones (the rears are 15 inch wide) perform. Does anyone have experience with these tires, and such big ones in particular?

Anyway, we adjusted the ride height to these Dunlops and will try them in Hockenheim in two weeks. But we will also take along the AVON slicks on the replica rims.

Image
Last edited by Reto Kuprecht on Fri Jun 01, 2012 7:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Sun Apr 22, 2012 12:59 pm

Finally got around to post some pictures of the roll-out at Hockenheim last weekend. In a nutshell: Everything went well, better than anticipated. This event was of course not an ideal situation for a roll-out, lots of spectators, lots of traffic on the track, and not much quiet time to sort out problems in a concentrated manner. On the other hand, I got much good advice from friends, drivers and mechanics and many helping hands around. Among the few issues are the engine, which doesn't run correctly mid-range - probably too lean. The pedals need adjustment, for travel/heel&toe, one bearing retaining clip left its seat on a lower A-arm, and the fuel gauge didn`t work. But the suspension, steering, braking and tires were surprisingly good - nothing scary happened :roll:

First consequence is to put the car on a roller dyno to adjust the carburettors - and the rest is (nearly) peanuts :D

Unloading the Lola at Hockenheim:
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In good company with the McLaren (which will be for sale ...):
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In the pit lane:
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With my father, who helped me A-Z through the whole project:
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And here is a link to another photo of the car on the track:
http://www.zwischengas.com/de/VC/verans ... gallery=on
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby 911hillclimber » Sun Apr 22, 2012 6:52 pm

Fantastic!
Certainly looks good and very few probs too.
Testimony to all involved and their skills.

Good luck with the carbs, mine are killing me at the moment but might have cracked the problem.

Hope you continue the thread with some of your racing adventures!

Graham.
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Mon Apr 23, 2012 7:55 am

Thanks Graham. Well, I'll sure continue reporting until all problems have been solved. Tomorrow, we'll put the car on the dyno and see. I really hope it's the carbs and not an overly aggressive camshaft for examble :shock: We'll see.
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:57 pm

OK - we went to put the car on a dyno. There's a highly reputable company near us, http://www.bemani.ch, who have a very good Superflow chassis dyno, which they have improved considerably. I was correct with my initial diagnosis of a lean situation in mid-range, which would involve the main and air corrector jet, and possibly the emulsion tube too. But how much change it would need I had no clue. I was therefore surprised to see that my friend Beni, with decades of experience, made the right change right away and now the engine sounds happy from idle to high rpm. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_hcB5UY7cI

There will be further experimentation, with longer air stacks and so on, but the basis for a good engine is put down.

An excellent side effect of this exercise was to see the drive train work at full speed. And we actually did discover one little issue which could have developed in a disaster: One retaining ring of an outer drive shaft joint was gone and the bearing cap was starting to move out. This out-of-round situation produced quite some vibration already, but which I did not discover during my first runs on the track :shock: This was clearly the result of my own negligence: Instead of the correct retaining ring which should have been 1.2 mm thick, I used an 1.5 mm ring and "made it fit" - an absolute no-go! Learned something again :roll:
Last edited by Reto Kuprecht on Sun Apr 29, 2012 8:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Sun Apr 29, 2012 8:53 pm

Photos of the dyno session:

Securing the car. This is better done right...
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Hooking up the sensors:
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Ready for action:
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby kremerracing » Tue May 01, 2012 4:31 pm

Hello Reto,

Wow...........!....The Lola looks fantastic......the vintage livery is awesome.
The dyno pictures were fascinating.......and the dyno shop is impeccable.........!
It was great to see a picture of your Dad and you......a "Family Affair" restoration.........Nice...!
Congratulations on a job well done....!

Lothar Kremer
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Wed May 02, 2012 7:55 am

Thank you Lothar for your comments. And at this point I should mention that there were many people like yourself, who helped realize this project. The information I got from you - I remember well, the photos showing the positioning and dimensions of the steering rack and details of the lower gearbox support, was actually instrumental in getting basic things right. Besides the people I had already mentioned in the blog, there were many others, helping in the background, such as:
Gregg Hekimian at http://www.hekimianracingengines.com
Dusting Singer at http://www.xrp.com
Spud Lane at http://www.fuelinjectionenterprises.com
Pat Mason at http://www.masonracingignitions.com
Peter Bayer at http://www.nisonger.com
Tony at http://www.twmouldings.co.uk
Alasdair Lecky at http://www.raceparts.co.uk
Phil at http://www.performancesiliconehoses.co.uk
Jakob at www.speckertcar.ch
The team at http://www.pegasusautoracing.com

and of course Chris Fox at http://web.me.com/foxmotorsport/Fox_Rac ... _page.html

To all of these and the ones which I forgot to mention here, go my thanks - and I look forward to the next project :roll: :?:
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Fri Jun 15, 2012 9:43 am

Didn't do too much on the car as there simply is not much to do at this point :roll: Everything seems to be tight, so not much cleaning action there. After the dyno run, I installed slightly larger idle jets which we didn't have at hand then. I also concluded that longer air stacks should be beneficial to midrange torque. I installed the ones I already had and had used for testing the McLaren motor (made by http://www.mactrumpet.de). They are about twice as high as the original ones. I'll test them as soon as possible:

Image
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Sat Nov 10, 2012 9:21 pm

I tried the longer air stacks - but with these I think the engine quits above 6000, too much air mass to move it appears. So next time (in spring) I'll try smaller ones again. Besides that, and the quicker I am driving, the little issues start to show. One is with the shifting - probably a sticky selector finger, we'll adjust that during the winter. Another issue was the throttle actuation. I started out with a lever as you know, but that created the opposite of what it should be, i.e., slow throttle response at the beginning of pedal travel and, progressively faster towards the end. To correct my situation (hard pull and quick response at the beginning) I could only imagine to replace the lever with a cam. But that meant I needed to switch from the push-pull cable to a normal pull-type cable. I started with cardboard mock ups again, fabricated a cam and purchased a good cable. The cam consists of three aluminum pieces, of which the middle one has the cam shape (easy to shape on the belt grinder). I took great care this time in making everything adjustable and did a first test today. Seems to work nicely - smooth pull, and progressively faster towards the end. Here's how the thing looks at this point:

Image

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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby cooljack » Sat Mar 30, 2013 2:03 pm

Reto,

I have a T140 that is in line for restoration. You have done a great job on your car and will continue to follow your build, thanks.

Jack
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby cooljack » Wed Apr 03, 2013 12:40 am

Reto,

My car is missing the engine cover and since you said you did not have body panels you must have found one ,would you mind giving me the source?

Thank you,
Jack
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Re: Lola SL142/20 Restoration

Postby Reto Kuprecht » Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:13 am

Hi Jack

Yes, I got all my body panels from www.tw-mouldings.co.uk. I also had McLaren panels from them and their service was always great. I do know however, that they only have the early type 140 cover (the one I have) and not the later 142 one with the "duck tail".

The car is now actually finished. Now I do adjustments and certain changes such as the throttle actuation, and continue getting the carbs right. To help with that I installed an air/fuel sensor with an analog gauge. A first engine run with this last weekend showed a very steady needle around AFR 12 at a high idle - not so bad. I wonder what it will be under load.
If I can be of help - just ask. Which car are you restoring?

Regards, Reto
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