Cylinder head

[Peter de Wit]

Hey, Paul,
I use cams that open very early and I like that typical feeling: torque grows when you make more revs. When I broke my 740 gearbox this May, I replaced it with a wider ratio 630 box. Same diff, but I do not like the match of the gears at all. I need to rev it to enjoy it.

One big disadvantage that I find with these cams is that they are so much noisier at the inlet than the standard ones. The induction sound is louder than the straight through exhaust. Apart from needing plugs in my ears, I was 'black flagged' at our national circuit for it. Below is a picture of the inlet. Do you have any experience in damping that noise whilst keeping the long length of the trumpets (10cm+ for low down torque). I thought of using a pressure meter to find a high pressure spot at the front of the car for building a cold airbox. I fear that that will be quite low though and not so suitable for rallye use.

Cheers, Peter

[Peter de Wit]

Orlando, the tools can be found in most shops for car parts. The meter is for instance normally used for measuring play in gearboxes or break discs. The holder that holds it is magnetic in the base and is quite solid.

Peter

[Paul de Raymond Leclercq]

Very impressive Peter.

We favour an air box here and not just for reasons of noise. The problem is that the carbs are exposed to the hot air from the back of the radiator.

We use the original box, cutting all the guts out of the cover, welding on a new inlet pipe and with flexible hose, attach a free-flow air filter that locates behind the righthand headlamps.

Last one we did was on a modified car and the result was a large flat spot at about 3000rpm which we corrected by re-jetting. Obviously it works and there is not so much noise.

Fulvias are very noisy both in terms of inlet and exhaust and thus a pain to silence effectively.

Paul

[George]

Paul,
With your LANCIA experience, could you tell me the year of manufacture and the original displacement of engine #818.140?
Thank you, George

[Pietro delBianco]

Ahh, that's why you skipped the inner head lights. That is quite some area for getting air in. Do you know of other places where I could get some air from? I do not use an oil cooler, maybe that could be a spot. Some plumbing would be needed then. I really like long air horns to get some rallying torque. I even have 15cm trumpets that I sometimes use. I thought of building a square box around these, using the bonnet as top lid (just for the optics...).

I thought of using an air displacement meter from a 90's injection system for measuring pressure at different spots at the front of the car. When I do this, I'll post an update of this silly experiment.

Thanks for all the info, Paul!

[Paul de R. Leclercq]

Well I'll let you into a secret.

I loathe the standard Fulvia radiator: it is poor quality, heavy and a bastard to remove. Als it takes up far too much valuable space, making the routing of air from the front very difficult: you could cut air intakes into the sloping portion of the bonnet of course...

I originally planned to use the outer headlamp apertures to provide air to a pair of motorcycle radiators. This scheme foundered when I discovered that the original front panel, like most of the rest of the car, was rotten. So we made a new panel rom scratch, trying to retain elements of the correct Fulvia appearance, and behind, there is an Alfa-Sud radiator fitted with a fan from a Volumex I think. there is also a Delta HF oil cooler - again, better and lighter than the Fulvia one.

The air intake is in the top of the right-hand wing. email me and I'll try to find some pictures for you.

Paul

[Paul de R. Leclercq]

Hello George.

The part number 818-140 originally referred to the 1200HF. 88 examples were made, I think in 1965-6. I actually saw one for the first time at Fulvia 40 in Turin last year.

The 818-140 number became the standard head casting for the 818-302 engines fitted from late 1966 to 1970 and was also used on early SII sedans. Inlet valve size 36mm exhaust 32mm. It was superceded by the 818-302 head casting used on all subsequent 1300 engines. N.B. there was never an 818-303 head casting; it was just a matter of valve sizes, pistons, camshafts and carburettors.

Paul

[Peter]

Interesting secrets indeed....
1) existing radiator is a pain. Agree. Next time I will have to take it out, I will make some arrangement to make that easier.
2) same for oil cooler. Agree as well. Never fitted it for that reason...
3) if you have a pic of the inlet configuration, please mail it to: peter@dewit.info.
Thanks, Peter!

[Paul de Raymond Leclercq]

I'll try to get some snaps to you later. There are some pictures on this site on the Fulvia register (No 30).

I use a cross-flow radiator with a header tank mounted on one of the flitches. The radiator fits well forward underneath the slam panel giving more room and reducing weight forward of the front wheels.

Paul