The next modification is changing the pinto for something with a bit more oomph which is also lighter and a bit more modern!
I have decided to go for fitting a Duratec engine as found in the new Mondeo, Focus, Fiesta ST150 and some Mazdas (some have VVT).
It is an all aluminium engine, so is very lightweight (about the same as a k-
'So what's the downside?' I hear you ask! Well cost basically. They are expensive to buy, you'll be lucky if you can find a good one for under £400 for a bare engine. That coupled with the fact they wont bolt straight up to a Ford gearbox (because they are a Mazda engine really!) means you need an expensive bellhousing (another £200) and then you need a rear wheel drive sump (another £300).
That however assumes you cant make anything yourself, and want to buy everything new. Bellhousings sometimes come up on ebay. And making a new sump is not beyond the wit of anyone with a welder and some patience -
My aim is to do a budget Duratec install to find out what it is realistically possible to achieve on a tight budget! I'll try to keep a tally of the costs at the bottom of this page for those who are interested.
The Engine
The engine is an almost new 2.0 Duratec HE I4 (catchy huh?!). The way to tell the capacity is to look on the exhaust side of the block towards the bottom, cast into the block will either be '1.8L' or '2.0L' I think thats pretty self explanatory! The reason I tell you is that someone tried to sell me a 1.8 as a 2.0.....
Bought for £400 from a gent on Locostbuilders who had it sitting in his shed. Very grateful I am too!
The engine is an ex-
* Blocking off the EGR ports
* Making a water rail to move the outlet on the back of the head to the front of the engine -
* Making or modifying a sump for RWD and also giving me some more ground clearance.
* Modifying the existing pinto exhaust manifold to suit.
* Fitting heavy duty big end bearings -
* Changing the standard electronic thermostat for a mechanical one as fitted to the new transit (about £30 from Ford)
* Fitting a different flywheel and clutch if required -
* Fitting a new bellhousing to point the engine in the right direction and allow it to bolt straight up to my type 9 gearbox.
Flywheel and Clutch
First money saving tip coming up....
Some variants of the Duratec were fitted with a standard solid cast flywheel which takes a 220mm clutch. These were the Fiesta ST and the 2.0 Focus. The flywheels are cheap enough to get hold of (luckily I got one with my engine). The std clutch however has the wrong splines to fit a type 9. However the clutch plate from an early zetec engined Mondeo will fit (Quinton Hazell number QKT1084AF) the std clutch cover and allow you to fit a type 9.
Its also worth noting that this clutch kit comes with a suitable hydraulic slave cylinder which should fit in the ali bellhousings with a spacer.
To give you an idea of the saving, I paid £20 (+P&P) for a brand new clutch kit including slave cylinder and the flywheels are available for under £30 on ebay when they are about, or from a scrappy for less probably! Total cost £50! Bit of a saving over the £350+ for a steel flywheel and AP clutch....
The combo above should take the power. If not then there are other options including higher pressure AP Racing clutch covers which are made for the RS Turbo Escort, which will take over 300bhp. See supercharger page.
Bellhousing
This is the one bit where you just have to shell out your hard earned. Unless you can fabricate an adaptor plate or something to use the standard T9 bellhousing you are pretty stuck. New they are around £180+VAT, they do crop up on ebay every few months though and usually sell for around £150. I managed to pick one up for £120 from ebay which looks like its brand new.
You can see in the pics how the cut away on the side of the bell housing allows it to be positioned quite a long way back in the chassis. This will help weight distribution by getting the engine closer to the middle of the car. To the back face of the block is approx 110mm from the chassis rail.
In order to use the Type 9 box with a hydraulic clutch slave cylinder you need to cut off the original release bearing guide otherwise the slave will not fit. This is only a 5 min job. Remove the nose by undoing the 4 bolts which hold it on, cut the old guide off with a hacksaw and file to remove sharp edges. Wash to remove all traces of swarf and refit. The result is shown below.
Sump
I did buy a RWD sump and pick up from a 2.3, bit this requires a lot of work to fit as it will also need shortening (and will also mean the oil capacity is reduced) as well as baffling to suit.
Those doing Zetec installs use the standard FWD sump, many with no additional baffling and those are OK on the road. For track days and racing though you need something to stop the oil sloshing around. So I don't see a problem with doing this with the Duratec either if ground clearance allows.
I planned to originally use the std FWD sump with additional baffles, and this is indeed a possibility for those fitting the Duratec in an Escort rally car or similar, with additional baffling the sump could easily be made to work. However they do hang slightly below the aftermarket bellhousings by around 27mm. In the locost application the more ground clearance you can get the better (especially as I only have 70mm with the pinto fitted!) so I have decided to fabricate a steel sump.
The sump design is now complete, and I will be getting all of the parts laser cut and then TIG welded together. Kits of parts and the complete sumps will hopefully be available through 3GE Components for anyone else considering a Duratec install. At the moment a few things are still being finalised, I will post updates here as usual.
The design has tried to take into account the issues which have allegedly been experienced with the Raceline sump where a few people have still suffered oil starvation. The baffles in my design incorporate one way flap valve to encourage the oil pickup arear to always be full of oil regardless of the amount of lateral or logitudinal force experienced by the car. The windage tray is also designed to prevent holding up the oil being returned from higher up the block whilst also preventing oil climbing the sides of the sump under hard cornering. The sump is also designed to utilize the standard mondeo pick up pipe, albeit in a shortened form. The final details are the position of the drain plug and dipstick tube.
The laser cut sump parts arrived and I couldn't wait to start trial fitting them and getting everything tacked together. Thankfully all the flanges fitted beautifully and no modifications were required. The first step was to weld up all the flaps and hinge plates for the one way valves in the baffles. This took most of an afternoon to do as it was more fiddly than anything. The next step was to weld the two 5mm thick flanges together which form the two sealing faces of the sump, making sure they remained perfectly square was quite tricky, but the effort paid off!
Next the side of the sump needed bending to fit. I couldnt wait to take the parts to work and use the folder, so I did it on the edge of the bench with a couple of bits of wood and some clamps. They turned out pretty well I think. Once bent they were tacked into position along with the back of the sump.
The next step was to fit all the baffles to the sump, tack them together and trial fit the whole assembly on the engine. This was a nice easy job as I designed the baffles so they all simply slot together, thus they hold themselves in position while being welded up.
While being test fitted the pick up pipe was marked out and cut off to be 5mm clear of the bottom of the sump when fitted. This should be enough to avoid sucking up sludge from the bottom of the sump yet low enough to always be submerged. The max oil level is 10mm below the top face of the sump, so there is 65mm of oil covering the pickup pipe when the sump is full. The next step was to weld in the nut for the cump plug to screw in to. This was an M12 nut drilled out to take the standard M14 sump plug found on most engines these days. After that the bottom of the sump was bent and tack welded into position.
The sump is now complete, and is away being welded up. More pics will follow once it is returned!
Thermostat
The standard stat is partly electronically controlled to allow the engine to reach operating temperature quickly and hold it even in very cold weather. This isn't much use in a kit car as you will be ditching the OE ECU so are unlikely to be able to control it. However the standard stat from a Transit 2.3 is an old fashioned wax stat and is a direct replacement and are pretty cheap from Ford (around £30). Again I was lucky in that one came with my engine. So another problem solved for minimal cost. The alternative is a cosworth racing one which is rated at 82deg and are about £40 from Burton Power.
EGR Ports
On the back of the Duratec head are the ports which are used for EGR (Exhuast Gas Recirculation). This is a common feature on the most modern engines designed to meet the most stringent emissions requirements. As this is not needed or required for a kit car install these ports need blanking off. The port leads from the back end of the exhuast manifold through to the back of the head, through the EGR valve then into the inlet manifold. There is also a coolant port at the EGR valve. The easiest way to blank it all off is to blank the ports on the rear of the head and the outlet into the inlet manifold leaving the exhaust side open.
In true locost style I went for the home made option made from a piece of 1/4" (6mm) aluminium plate. Cut to the shape of the OE gasket.
Injectors and Fuel Rail
The standard injectors are rated at around 220cc/min, this isn't really enough for 200bhp or more which I am expecting to see from the Duratec so I decided to fit an uprated set. The lower cost option is to run the standard injectors alongside the injectors fitted in the bike throttle bodies. You could then even run staged injection if you wanted to and your ecu supported it. I decided to go for the other option which was to fit a set of Ford Racing duratec injectors. These are rated at 39lb/hr which equates to 410cc/min which is enough for close on to 350bhp. The downside here is that I may struggle to get a lean idle with such large injectors, time will tell though. The reason I went for the injectors is that they future proof me for any future mods. Plus I think the injectors mounted on the head look much neater than out on the throttle bodies, there are probably also benefits of having them closer to the valves and spraying direct into the combustion chamber. I decided to import the injectors from the US as they were about half the price than in the UK. After all the import duties and VAT the total price was £130.
The standard fuel rail doesn't have a return fitted, which will be required to run in most aftermarket applications. I will be making a new fuel rail from a piece of billet fuel rail I have left from the injection conversion on the pinto.
The fuel rail has been milled and test fitted on the engine to determine the position of the brackets. The final thing to do is to make some spacers for the brackets from some aluminium bar. Once complete I will update the pics.
Throttle Bodies and Manifold
The throttle bodies I have chosen to use are from a GSXR750. These are tapered from 50mm to 42mm at the butterfly. 42mm should be adequate to flow the air for 200bhp, while retaining driveability at lower RPM. With the future holding forced induction the size of the throttle bodies are quite unimportant. They are shown in the pic above. All of the extra holes have been blocked off with turned aluminium plug which have been stuck in with Loctite 628, so they arent going anywhere in a hurry! The throttle bodies have been respaced to suit the inlet port spacing of the Duratec to allow the inlet tracts to be as straight as possible.
The inlet manifold consists of a laser cut 5mm plate and 4 short pieces of tube. 3 of the the inlet tracts are straight, whilst cylinder 1 had to have a slight angle due to the position of the auxiliary belt tensioner. The ports on the head are a perfect match to the inlet manifold and the pipes have been trimmed to ensure they are totally smooth inside (pics above are before they were trimmed). The manifold will be surface ground flat on the mating face to ensure a perfect fit. I also will be adding a boss for the air temp sensor to fit in.
Ignition and Fuelling Control
The ignition and fuelling will be controlled by my Megasquirt ECU which is currently powering my pinto quite happily. The ignition will be directly driven by the built in coil drivers fitted to the ECU (uprated to the new Bosch BIP373 ICs) this will drive the standard coil pack mounted on the rear of the head and used the standard 36-
The maximum advance generally accepted on a 16v DOHC engine is 28deg which seems low compared to the old SOHC engines which usually ran with 36-
Exhaust
The pinto exhaust will be retained and modified to suit the Duratec install. The standard exhaust manifold plate from the Duratec will be cut from the tubular manifold as will the plate from my pinto manifold.
Engine Mounts
These will be fabricated from plate and tube to suit the engine position once it is dropped into the chassis. The engine will end up considerably further back in the chassis than the pinto so may require the plates on the chassis to be moved backwards as well. Once the engine is in all will become clear no doubt!
Alternator
The standard alternator is bolted direct to the block on the drivers side. This is in the way of the steering column if retained in a locost type car so I need to move it to the passenger side. I also opted for a smaller, more compact Denso type unit as often fitted to kit cars. Other options are available but generally very expensive. The complexity here is added by the fact that the standard water pump is driven from the back of the aux belt. To keep things simple the alternator will be rigidly mounted to the block, low down on the passenger side. A standard Ford tensioner will then be used to tension the belt and provide the correct route. The tensioner is used on the latest 1.8 Duratec engined Ford Focus (2006 onwards) and the part number is 3M5Q-
Pics show the alternator finally mounted on the engine. Mounts were fabricated from 5mm steel plate and are very simple. The most difficult part was ensuring the pulleys all lined up correctly. This was achieved by holding a piece of 20mm box section (but anything stiff and straight will do [lols]) against the front of the crank pulley and then aligning the pulley on the alternator with that and taking the brackets together. The alignment is within 0.25mm which is accurate enough. I would also point out that if using this method, check that the distance from the front of the pulleys to the root of the first vee is the same on both pulleys!
After considering my options I decided to make a new 6 groove pulley for the alternator. This will allow me to run a 6 groove belt for the supercharger too, which will reduce the likelyhood of the belt slipping hopefully.
The next job is to measure up for the belt -
Water pump pulley
I decided to make myself an underdrive water pump pulley because I had some aluminium bar laying about which was the right size and it was an excuse to make a lot of swarf in the workshop! It is less than half the weight of the original and approx 5% larger. The idea of this is that the water pump saps less power as its being driven slower and that there is less rotational mass. OK its not going to make much difference, but it didn't cost anything other than about 3 hours of machining. Fitted to the engine it looks quite snazzy.
Pinto out
The old pinto is now out (as of 22/8) meaning I can get in the engine bay to get everything else sorted. Such as fitting the clutch master cylinder, and redoing a couple of the brake pipes which were poorly planned the first time around. I also have rather a lot of tidying up to do, including rewiring the whole front end, as you can see its got a bit messy what with all the addons that the car has had over the past 2 years. I will wait to do the rewiring until the engine is installed though as then it can be sorted exactly as required.
The next step
The next step is continued on this page Supercharger!
Costs
The overall cost of the naturally aspirated Duratec install was around £500 once the pinto and surplus parts had been sold.
Resources
I'll list in this section any links or files which are useful resources for anyone contemplating a duratec install.
Duratec assembly manual -
Links
There are a lot of companies selling duratec install parts and upgrades. Heres a few to get you started....
SB Dev -
Duratec Performance -
Raceline -
Dunnell -