Ren's 18R-G Rebuild

[Steve M]

Those wade cams that are similar to the tighes have extremely fast lift, so make sure that you've got some cood valve relieving in your pistons. They run a huge overlap too.

[Ren_RG28]

Thanks for the insight Steve. Good points you raised there. What carbs are you running on your RA28? Weber 45's?

Hopefully the combo my mech has come up with will still have a strong mid-range around the 3,000 - 4,000 mark. Like I've said, Tighe reckons these cams will work from 3,000 - 7,500 which sounds pretty promising. If they said 4,500 - 8,000 I'd be a little worried... I guess there's only one way to find out and when I do I'll be sure to let you know all about it!

Roscos: Weber 45's come with fairly long ram tubes which probably won't fit in my engine bay thanks to my master cylinder. Would switching them to short ones have much of an effect on the powerband?

[Roscos]

The long ram tubes do fit, it is the back one that you have the problem with.
You have to cut the thread on the bottom bolt of the brake boster right back to the nut and maybe like l did was just a small cut on the tube to side past that nut.

Depending what you are doing with car, street or track. Long ones work better if you want high speed highway, small ones for high revving track use.


Roscos

[Steve M]

Ren, My brother's RA28 is running Solex PHH2 44mm carbs.

Have you been given a price for the cams?

[Steve M]

There was recently (in the last two weeks) a set of 0.050" OS 9.7:1 18Rg pistons on ebay in the states.

[Ren_RG28]

I haven't been given a price for the cams yet, but I will be getting more details in the near future. I'll keep you posted.

Remember everyone, my Solex PHH 40's will be up for grabs on Ebay soon. I'll be taking them off the engine this week so I can take better photos of them.

Ren.

[Sagluren]

are they the standard solex that comes with most rg's

sam.

[Turdinator]

I have a similar setup on my 3/2TG. About 10:1 compressinon, 284^ cams with .433" lift, ported head, and 40dcoe webers with 36mm chokes. I find this still very drivable and the car will idle happily at 1000rpm. The extra capacity of the RG i would have thought would make your proposed setup quite streetable.

[ta22gt]

I hope for that price the pistons are forged items if not you are getting screwed.
I had a set of custom forged pistons made by Special Piston Services in Melbourne a few years ago and it cost me $1000 for pistons, rings, gudgeon pins and circlips.
These were copied off a set of TRD items i had and they run about 11.5:1- 12:1 comp.

As for the running of big chokes i disagree a little. I am running a 2.2L 18rg with shitloads of good gear in it inc. twin 48mm Dellortos with 44mm chokes and a set of 400" lift cams and it will idle at 800rpm and cruise in 5th gear round town at 60kmh with no probs. Plant your foot and it gets into it straight away.
The running of twin sidedraughts is down to how good you tuner is. Everyone says they can tune webbers but it really is a FINE ART. I personally reccomend CnJ motorsport @ Underwood 32903966 as they built their bussiness years ago on this sort of thing although nowdays they do more late model stuff like GTRs and WRXs etc.Kelvin is the man to talk to and he will help you with any Qs you have.
Nev

[Ren_RG28]

Sagluren: Yes they are the standard solex's that came factory on the early 18R-GU (88251). 40mm, Mikuni/Solex, made in Japan.

Turdinator: Sounds pretty mean! Reassuring to hear it's very drivable. Any idea how much power that things putting out?

ta22gt: Yeah they are forged pistons. Regarding the choke size, do you think running 38mm Chokes on my planned setup would be too big? The cams are 450" lift with 270 duration. Would you recommend sticking with the 36mm Chokes and jetting it from there?

Tuning sidedraughts is very much a fine art. I couldn't agree with you more. Over the last year I've been tuning the Solex's myself and have poured countless hours of trial and error into finding the sweet spot of each mixture screw, with each adjustment being so minute, most of the time I didn't even know if it turned at all... But once you hit that sweet spot, you can hear it. The engine bellows this magical throaty roar that just begs for more. But then there's chokes, jets and countless other tweakables to tinker... Talk about fine tuning.

Thanks for the recommendation of CnJ motorsport Nev. I'll keep them in mind if I'm having trouble tuning the 45's. There's also Rob @ Carbtech on the northside who's a great guy who knows his stuff. He did a lot of time with the great Ian Stewart (a wizard with Webers) before he retired. Highly recommended.

[Lambolica]

I'll follow this thread. it will be interesting to see what combination you settle on.

I'm looking to change from the 48mm webers.

Cheers
Simon

[Ren_RG28]

Lambolica: That's great to hear, I'd appreciate any input or advice you have to offer.

Why are you wanting to ditch the 48's? If you're wanting to go 45's, talk to Steve @ Top End Performance. Because I'm ordering in 8 of them, he gave me a great bulk-buy price of $412AU ea including postage. Well worth looking into...

By the way, did you record any footage of your '28 at the drags?

[Turdinator]

Turdinator: Sounds pretty mean! Reassuring to hear it's very drivable. Any idea how much power that things putting out?

Check my signature...

Thats with a cracked head i found out too. I've got the head off getting ported and am putting 45s on mine at the moment. Hopefully it doesn't destroy my drivability...

[Jackel]

pics! where are the pics !

[Lambolica]

Lambolica: That's great to hear, I'd appreciate any input or advice you have to offer.

Why are you wanting to ditch the 48's? If you're wanting to go 45's, talk to Steve @ Top End Performance. Because I'm ordering in 8 of them, he gave me a great bulk-buy price of $412AU ea including postage. Well worth looking into...

By the way, did you record any footage of your '28 at the drags?

I Know sweet bugger all about Carbs, I'm learning alot at the moment, but that aside I'm taking the angry 18R-G back to a better street drivable package, Mine is out of tune a little and chews the juice like no tomorrow. I really want to tune this package for one last dyno to crack the magic number and then I'll de tune it back to closer to factory spec.

I do like driving it when I can open it right up but the drag strip is about the only place this can happen. On the road it runs pretty rich up to about 4000rpm and the cam starts to come on about 4500-5000 rpm.

I haven't seen the guy online that took the footage so I don't know if there is any. I'll take it out again after its tuned.

Cheers
Simon