Weslake or Arden 8 port

[Astro]

Good Morning,

we are just back from Vuillafans. This was the last hill climb of the French championship. These “trumpets” are working really well and may be the solution to run Weber’s on a group 2 mini (no modified bonnet) with an Arden head.

[Vegard]

Hi Astro,
Looking at your photo, not sure how that would go as you really have ( 2 ) Trumpet type orifices.

You can read about it here:

http://www.med-engineering.co.uk/catalo ... ake-system

[Astro]

Hi,

I am a bit experienced with supersonic and hypersonic Research (not for cars) and there this is a common way to get a laminar flow. That's just what I tried. There is not enough place even for standard 20mm trumped under the bonnet to have a proper flow and I did not want to fight with those Amals. OK, it seems to work and two of three Alpine 1300S were slower. And the FIA had no problems with.

[vegar]

That is really good. I dont like the idea of running without and proper trumpets

[Astro]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJhYyV36 ... 77HiTnC09w

last Weekend.

[sandman]

So what sort of power (bhp and torque) do you get out of setup like this?

Is it really worth the £25-3000 extra over a good 5-port setup?

[lisian_1275]

Its not necessarily the Hp you will see, its the torque that a crossflow produces that makes all the difference.

Ian

[Astro]

we really tried it. On a flat circuit there may be no difference. Doing hill climbs with a four speed gearbox (FIA rules) it means more than a second each kilometre and it is the pleasure to have something very special. Is there anyone today running a historic 8-port group 2 with Weber carbs?

[850man]

So what is the latest news with the Weslake 8 port heads, can I buy a cast iron or a alloy reproduction yet? I cannot seem to find any up to date information on either of the repo heads and I keen to purchase one.

Second, if the repos are still not available, does anyone have an original for sale?

[Astro]

Hi,

Weslake Heritage seems still involved in this stuff but there are no results jet. I am still waiting for my head or a refund. With the old early ones one may have cooling problems and it's not easy to hide them under the bonnet without an injection. Arden is the easier way to have an 8 port.

[In the shed]

I studied fluid flow back in the day and it's a very very complicated subject....

Needless to say, those mesh things are abominable. For god's sake, get some hoses on there and pipe them into proper air filters.

Oddly enough, I was doing some metallurgy work at a mineral processing place and did a lot of work with various sized particles. One thing that was common was how dulled the new stainless screens got with quite little use. It's not the size of the particle which is a problem, it's what it's made of. If you have quartz, tourmaline and other hard minerals in the makeup of your dust, your engine will get heavily raped.

[Spider]

we really tried it. On a flat circuit there may be no difference.

Yeah, it's not the number of ports, it's the number of valves (or rather an increase in valve area) that will make a difference, although some small gains will be made by merely having the Inlet away from the heat of the exhaust.

Yes, I know, Weslake nor Arden don't make / have 16 vv heads,,,,,,,

[69k1100]

The area around the valves have the biggest potential for gains, Vizard did an immense amount of r&m into this.

Oddly enough big air filters right in the airflow don't necessarily make more power, pod filters tend to make less power than a factory box. This is due to the function of the Alair box as a resonator. Air acts like a fluid spring, if you tune an air box to a specific engine profile you can force more air in.

For a practical experiment drive your car on the highway and roll down a windo slowly until you can hear fluttering, this is the compression and expansion of the air as it enters the car, and then springs back.

[Astro]

Good Morning,
let me explain what we may have learned within the last years. We just do hill climb in France. That means not only hills, these are mountains. When starting with a five port, it was difficult to have more than 100hp. This was a question of the cam and when we got the same times with a SW5 as with a 286SP, you can imagine what I try to explain. Starting at perhaps 8%, a lot of hairpins and just a four speed gearbox is suboptimal. That was why I wanted to try an eight port. They were used in 68, 69 for group 5 and homologated in 1970 for group 2. This is what even the FIA will accept. Beside some problems to get a Weslake head there was at once good success with the Arden. Together with a SW23 we got power up from 3800 RPM. The first trial was a standard 1293 with the standard valves and forged 1.5 rockers. The problem we got, we may not use roller rockers and therefore the valve guides are suffering from the side load within only a few races. OK, now with standard rockers, bigger inlet valves and a short stroke engine with a bigger bore, it works as well. It does not really sound like a mini anymore but it accelerates like a good one and for my surprise, the short stroke does not push the RPMs up to the top, as it would happen with a five port. Some Alfa GTs, Porsches and Alpines 1300S may tell you. The inlet is another problem and still not solved as it should be done.

[vegar]

Astro: Is this the 8-port from Minispares?? I must say a 8-port is tempting, but I dont like the idea of amals

[Astro]

It’s an old reconditioned one made from pure, quite soft aluminium with two Weber 40 DCOEs. There is a picture some posts earlier.

[mk1]

So what is the latest news with the Weslake 8 port heads, can I buy a cast iron reproduction yet?

In short NO!

I was (much to my embarrasment) involved with Weslake Heritage who were claiming to be working on the reproduction of the Weslake 8 port iron head. The guy running it Dean Daniels took a lot of money off people & although he did do some preliminary work the project pretty much came to nothing, although I believe that there are 1 or probably 2 prototypes floating around.

Most of the people I got into this project did get their money back, some had to take Dean to the small claims court to obtain judgement against him, which they did successfully.

I know that a poster on here was or maybe is to some extent involved with Dean, but to what extent I don't really now, or for that matter want to.

Having dealt with Dean, I would MOST STRONGLY suggest that no one give him any money or get involved with him in any way, I did & lived to regret it. Please learn by my mistake. He is a very credible salesman, but his delivery on the promises he makes is non existant.

The last thing I heard about this project was that it was being hawked around to third parties in the hope of raising some more funds to try & get it finished. This was about 3 years after I was originally promised a working prototype.

[251 ENG]

So were any new patterns for the heads ever made or were heads just made off old tooling ?

[Dean]

i like to say that i am not the person Mark is talking about.

same first name different last name. haha

[mk1]

New patterns were made, at least one lot, maybe 2, there was certainly at least one revision of the first new ones but as far as I am aware they are not working correctly.

Might be an idea to PM me.