Finally joined the forum.
Yes, stock head gasket. I had to add dowel pins to the head and block to make sure everything lined up properly. In stock form the head is only located by the bolts and can move around a lot. Same with the gasket so they make it bigger than the stock bore. When located properly the 2mm overbore can still use a stock gasket.
I think there is a guy at LB swap meet that makes custom copper head gaskets.......if you end up needing one....
and what size did you grind the rod journals to fit the Mini rods ?
thanks
In reply to GIRTHQUAKE:
Hudsons are awesome, the step-down models in particular. I’ve always loved those. Would be rad to see a Hudson project here on GRM, especially a turbocharged hopped-up flathead six! TWIN H POWER – maybe TRIPLE H??
The Buick 8 thing is totally believable. The old school of engine design had nothing to do with revs, and everything to do with low end torque and durability. The Mini pistons & rods upgrade saved 2 whole pounds of reciprocating mass on this tiny Opel engine vs. the stock stuff, so I can only imagine how one of those Buicks would respond to some modern internals.
In reply to AngryCorvair:
Alex has many (dozens? tens of dozens?) of miles on the new Brazilian rebuild now with no signs of trouble. I wouldn't say we have it completely under control, but all signs are pointing towards YES.
In reply to alex_vendler:
Congrats on your recent joining. Welcome to the time-suck that is the GRM forums. I think this is a great place for Kadett documentation, since there’s such a huge variety of different wacky projects going on at once here. Plus, they loved the Viccup. So here we are.
I have some short updates for this morning. First one is an old topic but I haven’t shared yet. Back in late November I received the email that I thought would be the least likely message for me to ever see in my inbox… the auto-generated alert from LKQ Pick Your Part junkyards stating that a 1967 Opel Kadett had just entered the yard at our local Wilmington location. The gods of Opile have smiled on us!
The odds were long, but here it was. Another 1967 Kadett “L” Kiemencoupe; same exact spec as the race car and my red street car. This one had been rammed hard in the rear many years ago and repaired poorly. Someone used what looked like Datsun taillights and gallons of Bondo to bodge it back together. But somehow the interior looked amazingly OK.
Alex went over first to check it out. He bought some hubcaps for me, and a few other bits for himself I think. Then my wife and I went back about a week later and snagged the door cards and some dash bits for my red car. The seats looked ok but were moldy and gross. Too bad we couldn’t really justify buying more – lots of this stuff we already have duplicate or triplicate of in our loft in the shop, like glass, doors, steering racks, wheels, lights, etc. This one went to the great fastback-shaped doghouse in the sky I’m afraid.
Skipping to yesterday, I spent some time on the sad old Rallye out in front of our shop. In comparison to the junkyard car this one doesn’t look so bad anymore, but it’s still pretty spanked. I have some big ideas for this one, but it’s too early to share them. For now it’s just a parts car. So I started pulling parts finally.
The Rallye has been relieved of its baby ATE front brake calipers, master cylinder, booster, and brackets. All of this stuff looks usable. The master still had some juice in it and the calipers aren’t totally frozen. Now I’m working on pulling it all apart for rebuilding, and it’ll go onto the red L as an upgrade from the non-functional 4 wheel drums it has now.
So after a bit of this and a bit of that it's looking like the jetting is close. I've put 2 tanks of gas (30 gals) through the car in a wide variety of L.A. traffic situations and it's running very well indeed. The jetting for the Ducati 900 that the carbs came from was way too rich on the slow jet and too lean on the main. Once I leaned out the slow circuit, the throttle response became really nice. The lighter flywheel and lighter rods and pistons make it a bit of PITA when starting out on a steep hill but otherwise it's very street friendly. HERE is a video of the car being very friendly on the street indeed (Location undisclosed. Professional driver. Closed course.)
Sounds great , did you wake up all the "campers" ?
Maybe we can embed this one?
Edit: apparently not. The Vimeo player loaded in my window but then didn't show at all once posted.
For future reference, I found this place today, which may be a good source for some rebuild kits or upgrade parts:
https://www.altopelhilfe.de/?cat=c156_Brake-156-Brake.html
And I may need this, but need to check through our parts stash first to see if the old MC rebuild kit we have is suitable.
In reply to Duder :I tried to embed the video on the forum post but no go. A link is the best I can offer.
alex_vendler said:In reply to Duder :I tried to embed the video on the forum post but no go. A link is the best I can offer.
This board is a bit weird - they use their own proprietary platform and certain features don't work sometimes. I was able to get YouTube videos to embed fine recently, but a few months ago there was no way to make it work.
One nice thing about this forum though is you can drag n' drop photos right into the compose box without needing to host them somehwere and link!
I've read through this thread from beginning to end about three times since it's started and it has always amused me. Never commented because I have nothing to add, but thought it was time to give you a virtual high five for all your shenanigans.
mazdeuce - Seth said:I've read through this thread from beginning to end about three times since it's started and it has always amused me. Never commented because I have nothing to add, but thought it was time to give you a virtual high five for all your shenanigans.
These cars are nothing if not amusing! Thanks for the e-five. Glad it's been entertaining to watch too. The other guys on our Lemons team gave Alex and I some real strange looks when we got all excited about the 54hp race car early last year, but at least one of them recognizes its coolness now.
I not-so-secretly thought it was insane to field two cars of such vast disparity in our last race but it worked out surprisingly well. Somehow I think we were better prepared because logistics were given more scrutiny before the race. And it was actually really weird and fun and instructive to do 4 hours in a tiny little Class C car, and then jump in the 300+ hp E36 and tear ass. I learned that I need to work on adapting to the car much more quickly, but that should help me acheive faster laptimes overall.
We'll see how the street car turns out with the silly turbo Brazilian engine, but the process is gonna be fun regardless.
Someone please buy this 1970 wagon so we don't have to!
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/475720473085851/
$2500 asking, some rust in the rear but has a dual carb engine that was allegedly rebuilt but never run. 1968 and up has a fully padded dash that I actually prefer a bit to the '67 and earlier steel dash with thin pads. Dig the roofrack, tan interior, and sporty red hatch...
In reply to Duder :
I saw that on Marketplace, the price doesn't seem quite crackpipe but definitely high.
Edit: clicked on the link, I forgot it didn't have a title. Definitely crackpipe price.
I wonder if you could throw a Straight six at one of those...
It would have to be a pretty tiny straight six, the engine compartment on a Kadette is really small.
You'd have to move the firewall back or make a doghouse in it to fit any normally sized inline six in this car, that and/or relocate the radiator to the trunk...
Meanwhile, I'm rebuilding brake calipers for the red Kadett. Since that's boring and not finished yet, please enjoy this 12 year old YouTube video of a Finnish guy hooning around in his turbocharged 1.2L Kadett caravan (wagon). I think a 1.2 can be built using parts from the Vauxhall Viva, but it's essentially the same engine as our 1.1L.
Edit: the 1.2L used a 79mm bore and was available in the Kadett, from 1971 up through the late '80s. GM also used this in the Astra, Ascona, Manta, and Corsa - the latter all the way up through 1993, in a transverse FWD setup. Curiouser and curiouser. The 1.1L was also available in the Olympia and GT.
https://www.opelkadettc.net/en/kadett-c-technical/engine's/12.aspx
Enough about the 1.2; back to the 1.1.
The 1.1L came in three flavors, but now I know what they were called officially: 11N, 11S, 11SR. I'll update the points below as I find the exact values for things.
Hey Duder-
I'm not 100% sure that there are two different cams. By my crude measurements the original Opile "1.1S" cam seemed to have the same lift as the "1.1SR" in the Rallye. We'll know for sure soon enough though.
In reply to alex_vendler :
Word to your mother. I'm procrastinating but will call Isky soon to get the specs on the grind they can do. I'll compare the dimensions and costs to the stuff sold by that German cam supplier we found, then pull the trigger on one of them.
Do you have one of these ?
Picked it up at Pomona
In reply to californiamilleghia :
We have the 1967 factory service manual for the Kadett, and it's indispensable. Very well detailed and thoroughly illustrated. They made some big changes to the drivetrain and suspension around 1968-69 so it would be interesting to compare the two!
Well I got it for you anyway ,
so PM me your address and I will drop it off when I am over that way.......
In reply to californiamilleghia :
Ah, thanks very much! Will do. We will take all the help we can get (mentally and physically). If you would like to check out the car(s) too we could meet up at our workshop.
Sounds cool ,
PM me the contact info....
I will see if I can round up a German flag or two......
Yesterday Alex took the Opile back to our friend Mark's shop MD Automotive in Westminster, CA to run it on his Dynojet for the first time since the Brazilian upgrade/rebuild (Mini pistons, rods, higher compression, lighter flywheel). This shop used to be the Jackson Racing location back in Sport Compact days of yore. We had a contest going via text to guess the wheel hp dyno results, and I thought I had won but looking back I think our buddy Karl wins by Price is Right rules. He guessed 75whp.
I wasn't able to be there but got the lowdown. They made a few runs with the handbrake on (doh) followed by a successful power run and then some tweaking of main jet needles to lean out the carbs under full load in the midrange, and advancing ignition timing. The final big number was 76.5 hp at the rear wheels at 6630 rpm. Assuming 10 - 15% driveline losses it's making somewhere between 90 to 95 bhp at the flywheel now. That's a win! Torque was 67.7 lb-ft @ 5290 rpm and it has a nice flat curve.
Here's the dyno video, with Dave Coleman behind the wheel, because why not. Dave is our "in" for the dyno time so I guess he gets the hot seat action.
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