www.Amphicars.com

New 1296 engine, build and development.

Amphicar needs more power - but it also need to be reliable. I really don't trust any engine I haven't built myself so it's out with the toolkits, all my old tuning books and time to be very picky with putting it together. Base block is a nicely run in GE small crank, endfloat only needed a single 0.5 thrust. Standard late 1296 cam (don't want a peaky Spitfire power curve, torque is critical). Quality OEM chain and tensioner (new ones are made of cheese).  Balanced carefully as I want a really low idle (about 500) for water crawling. I also don't want any oil leaks so need to get it running up to temp on my test rig as even with the best Payen stuff you never know..

March 2011. All running and looking good except for distributor advance curve. Can't quite get that right, new Lucas units are cwap so I've rebuilt another old one - however weights occasionally stick which is no good as it will need a lot of advance as to get 75MPH which is the aim it needs to run at almost 6000 RPM. Of course danger with not enough advance at high RPM is a melted piston so I'm also going to use vac advance (which you wouldn't normally connect on a 28/36 Weber DCD) to ensure I'm on the safe side.

The Pierce manifold under the Weber I brought back from California, the Spitfire racers there use them - it'll work well in Amphicar and looks to have a good flow pattern to maximise vaporisation. Not sure if I'll connect the heater pipe to it, I recon the proximity of the silencer means it'll be warm enough.

Pictures below show significant steps in build.

 Endfloat check

New big valve head for extra breathing, flowed, new seats, balanced

Block cleaned, bored 40 thou then 1000 miles, run-in. Honed and tested,

Bench Testing

Thermostat and temp sender testing.

Debugging misfire with more distributor testing, Sun diag box is showing something wrong with spark on number 1.