Lagonda Rapiers

5 minute(s) of a 484 minute read

I am still waiting for either the new pistons for the Lagonda, or some action on the Humber engine, despite everything else, many firms take their Annual Holidays (3 weeks) in conjunction with the Christmas/New Year Holidays (10 days). Now it seems that with the number of Asians making their home in Australia, we will soon have another holiday for "Chinese New Year". We are told this coming year is the year of the Rooster.

Australian businesses have to cope with more gazetted "Public Holidays" than anywhere else in the world. Added to this many "workers" have a long  (3 day) weekend every month just because they can. It is called a RDO, the "Rostered Day Off!"

Australia is the only country in the world where we have an Annual Holiday for a Horse Race. The first Tuesday in November is "Melbourne Cup Day". Because this is always a Tuesday it seems un-necessary to go to work on the preceeding Monday, making it into a four day weekend. Oh! I forgot about all the Muslim "Holy Days".  We are frequently told by Politicians, how wonderful it is that Australia is a "Multi-cultural Society".

Being retired, I work seven days most weeks, the others I try to work eight days......... Being over 80 years old I now have to work twice as hard as I may not have all that much time left!

Bj.

I should not complain I have a friend who has been waiting for over two years to get some tricky machining work done on a replacement oil pump for his Amilcar. 

Thank you Paul

I wear denim jeans most of the time so I hope that some of that rubs off on me too. I don't do Bowls but a game of Petanque every Monday morning has to be good. Keeping score helps with my mental capacity too.

We were at a VSCC BBQ last night and it is surprising how many members are 80 and over, perhaps that is because we all keep well lubricated, lots of bottles of good Australian Reds. Shiraz, Cabinet Sauvigion or Merlot for preferance. If you are not already drinking them you should try some, but in sensible quantities. A bottle shared with a good friend over a meal, a couple of nice rare steaks is ideal. Australian beef of course.

I don't know about matching it with the Humber it is 105 already but the Lagonda is only two years older than me so I hope that I can stick with it for a while yet.

Bj

1-21-2017

Talking to a number of people at my local VSCC’s BBQ on Friday night I seemed to have some difficulty in explaining why I needed to have special pistons made for my Rapier.Attached is a photograph of one of pistons fitted to the then new cylinder block in 1996. These are forged pistons supplied by Special Pistons in Dandenong.(Australia)The raised crown is not only offset but also “handed’ with cylinders 1 & 3 having the raised section biased towards the front and cylinders 2 & 4 biased towards the rear. In addition the crown has recesses machined into each side to give clearance for the valves. Given the camshaft timing and the amount of lift these are necessary to avoid the valves striking the top of the pistons. Valve timing and tappet clearance is critical as one or two degrees error in the timing could cause the valves to hit each other and or the top of the piston, This also applies to the tappet clearance with just two or three thou reduction resulting in the same result. All this is compounded by the size of the inlet valves (42.5mm Diam). The main detonation damage to the pistons was broken top piston rings. A piece of broken ring being caught between an exhaust valve and the valve seat was sufficient to cause the head of the valve to be distorted when it was struck by the piston. There was further damage to the pistons when escaping gas burnt through the ring lands on two pistons.The second photograph is of the under side of the cylinder head, this shows very faintly the out-line of the top of the cylinder block and the degree of offset for each cylinder.My engine has a new (in 1996) cylinder block, this is in effect "over-bored" 10mm taking the bore from 62.5mm to 73mm increasing the capacity from 1104cc to 1498cc The stroke remains "standard" at 90mm.  LMB Racing in Belgium have taken these blocks to an even larger bore and by making a new longer stroke crankshaft made them 1650 cc.