Projects Austin Somerset Gasser Build (DragNasty)

I was quite interested to see how much of the original A40 Somerset was used in the end.
It looks like the original chassis and much of the original body was retained.
I think most of the A40 Dorset (1948 2 door) gassers only used the body shell and not much else.

There are several "Brit Rods" from in the UK that use the Somerset four door "saloon" and then re-power them with four cylinder power plants (MG etc.) to make a rather delightful, different and affordable cruiser.

 

To be honest, I had not planned to use the original chassis until I got a look at it. It was built crazy stout, light weight, fully boxed with an excellent "x" member. there was no way I was going to fabricate anything that good and of course I knew the body would simply bolt right back on. It was a win, win...

 

HOT ROD HOLIDAY SHOTS!








We had an absolute blast at the Hot Rod Holidays Car Show in Springfield, MO. There is another thread here on the HAMB for full coverage of the HAMB Friendly Rides in attendance.....including "wrenchbenders" Digger.

 

That looks like you had a lot of fun. Great display.Love the wheels up!

 

AND...
Just when it appeared we were about ready to wind this build thread up, the saga continues. After lots of thought and tons of coaxing, I decided this weekend to make a change to our aspiration pursuits. When we got back from the show last night, I ordered one of these!

So we are going to tear her down a bit this winter. We already were going to have to go as far as the blower intake gasket as we pushed it out on that last run. And when we did a leak down test a few weeks back, everything was perfect except for the number 7 exhaust. It was leaking a bit, not enough that I was going to go chase it at the time, but since we have the winter down time and the heavy stuff off the top anyway, we will pull the heads and give her a look see.

 

So Jackson you think some little injector is going to scare me.
You better be doing some home work or its just more tail lights for you.

 

IF you get that "wiring Job" done on time LOL

 

With a .0009 and a .0008 R/T this year.....I will be on time.

 

Does that mean you aren't selling it? I hated to see it go u did such a great build

 

Just a bad job of red lighting!

Roo

 

Well my car is not that quick so sometimes the head start is my best chance to get a win.
I think I only had one red light this season.

 

Quick update...I think my injector unit is going to look like this instead.



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Hope you get the efi version, and tell me how well they work. That way I can make my day dreams, of having one myself, more accurate.

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Cool, it's not over yet.
By the time your Summer rolls around, it'll be our Winter.
I'll look forward to sitting by my fire, watching how the little Austin likes the new injection set up.

 

Well yesterday morning we hit the shop to tear into the Austin a bit. And yes "flathead_10" we are going to put an EFI Hilborn unit on for next season. I am pretty excited about that but we have some work to do first. If you remember a while back, we did a leak down test. I had told Dad the car just didn't sound right, I couldn't really describe it other than it just didn't sound as crisp to me. So we tested it and all the numbers were good except for number 7 exhaust. It's number was higher than the rest and I actually had some leak down sound in the header. I turned the valve a bit and it got better. It was something we decided to keep an eye on but not something in my opinion worth ripping the whole car apart at that point.

However, with the new injection system coming and needing to replace the blower intake gasket anyway, we decided now was the time to address the valve issue and have a general look see inside.


Looking down into the flip front hood, the extra time we took wiring the front end with quick plug adapters made quick work of unhooking all the wiring up there. And within a few minutes the front end was off.


With the front end off it was time to drain the radiator and while we were patting ourselves on the back for the fancy plugs up front, noticed it would have been nice to have done that on the radiator fans too...We will fix that when we put it back together.


So we removed the radiator and then flipped the car around and put all four corners up on jack stands. It is going to be here for a while and we don't want to flat spot the tires etc.


Then we just started carefully tearing her down. How about Dad in his traditional Doctors Coat...


Not long before we had a table full of neatly arranged parts.


So we get all the way down to the intake and carefully pop it up. Basically that is the end of our care free day of happily preparing for Hilborn Injection etc. etc. etc.....


Three of the lifter sets on this side and one set on the other have lost their cross alignment bars. If that is not bad enough, there is only one bar and two large rivet heads in the valley. The other three bars and 6 rivet are gone!


Without the alignment bars, the lifters have rotated around an instead of efficiently rolling on the lobes are simply digging in and giving the cam their own version of a "re-grind"....




So we are scratching our head a bit here. To be honest, at first look it almost appears like we installed the failed lifters upside down. It can be done. You have to be very careful to look at the arrow on the cross bar and make sure it is pointing up. Furthermore, just in case the factory goofed up, I always take a look at the orientation of the roller as it is going into the hole to make sure it is parallel with the cam.

In case anyone is wondering how this is possible take a look


Here is a lifter set ready to install. If you look closely, there is a COMP text logo on the cross bar with an arrow pointing up.


However, if you rotate the lifter on the cross bar pin access like above...


After both are rotated you have a very similar looking lifter set...


Turn it right side up in that position and it looks nearly the same minus the text and arrow being upside down. And the set will slide right in. However if you notice laying flat, the above lifters are turned a bit sideway (meaning the roller would not be perfectly parallel with the lobe. This is an issue that will produce side pressure on these lifters, eventually breaking the cross bar connections and spinning the lifter sideways creating the exact situation we appear to have.

When I spoke to Comp Cams yesterday that is what they told me had happened. And I will admit, it certainly looks the part. Not to mention I will be the first to admit I am as capable as anyone at any moment to pull a big blunder. However, as you have seen through out this build I am also pretty good about documenting with photographs...


Here is a photo from way back...you probably will not be able to see the actual text and arrows in the scaled down HAMB Thread photo here but when I zoomed in on this original photo, you could clearly see the text and arrows. So in our case, something else caused the kind of side pressure to pop the cross bars off. And or these lifter sets were defective in some way.

BUT it really doesn't matter at this point because COMP CAM will only warranty these units from year of the purchase date. Although the car has only been operational for 6 months, I purchased all this stuff over a year and a half ago.


So we pulled it on down and as expected when we inspected the Clevite cam bearings they were junk. What a pain in the backside too, because to pull the engine we basically have to removed the interior (or at least a large portion of it).




By around 8 p.m. last night we had it out, the trans pulled and the block on an engine stand. We pulled a few rod ends off to have a look and the of course those Clevite bearings were junk as well. However, the journals look good so far so that is at least a bit of good news. Today we will finish pulling the pistons and crank and get the block in the morning to a machine shop to install new cam bearing and probably a quick cylinder wall clean up.

The next step for us is taking the advice of Jackson "wrenchbender" and ordering a new custom ground cam and kit for the car from Crower. Just makes the most since at this point. Then we will slap her back together again.

 

Ouch...you sound pretty enthusiastic in spite of the good news.

 

Some days you are the windshield and some days you are the bug.
I hate that this happen.

 

Either way it leaves a mess! LOL!

 

That sucks, but how good is it being able to go back and look at the pics, due to your efforts in documentation.
I guess parts failure is part of racing, still sucks, but the new engine will better for it.
I can't wait to see how well it'll perform with the injection.

 

Sorry to see a failure like this, YES it makes a hell of a mess, I have been there more times then I would like to admit. I guess the oil pump is also junk. On the UP side, can not wait to follow along with the injection project, I would also like to do the hilborn EFI on my blower, been dreaming about it at night.

 

Now you just need to put a HEMI under it!!!

 

After spending quite a bit of time today dismantling the rest of the internals, and honestly thinking about what in the wide world could have caused all this, I very quickly developed a theory on our engine failure. AND it is totally my fault. We made so many changes to the power plant portion of this build it is actually hard to keep track. We also made those changes, gathered parts and assembled it in a very short time. I mean we started to build a good, stout, simple, flat tappet 454. But by the time the build finally made it around to final assembly of the engine it had morphed into a supercharged, full roller, fire breathing BBC. However in the malay of part changes, parts upgrades, mix ups with an engine builder and the self applied pressure to get it rolling, I missed something important: valve springs.

To begin with these heads came back to me completely assembled by the same guy that if you remember "mistakenly" installed low end parts in the engine. He did the stand up thing and I eventually got all the good stuff I had paid for but I opted at that point to just drop off the junk, pick up the good parts and move on. So with that being said at the best, the heads have valve springs with seat and lift pressures set for a hydraulic flat tappet application. And using my past experience with the builder as a guide, likely lower quality springs at that...

So it was a good lesson (certainly an expensive one), a mistake I will not make again, you can bet on it. But with that being said, I am really excited about what this winter holds. I mean think about it. This little machine ripped off a mid 10 second run at 130 mph while most folks that have seen the carnage wonder how it was even running at all. Kudos to Brad Penn 20/50 Racing Oil...I will never run anything else! LOL...GO GREEN! Just wait till we are back with a custom cam, matched valve springs and Hilborn Injection! We are going to give new meaning to the term licensed to fly!

 

Hope results at the machine shop are good. Grumpy said he found power when he rehoned after a run in so you know you should be making more power.

 

I had never heard that...Love the Grump!

 

Yep loose is fast lol just as lean is too but it's a fine line and hard to stand on trust me I have one of them degrees from the university of hard Knox


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Man that blows!! Well, good on you that you recognized the "off" sound and pulled it before it came from together!!

If you're interested, I have a good friend that works at Comp (and has for MANY years) and might be able to help you out with it all if you want to give him a try.

 

I don't think the Grump was going for looser but I think it made a better ring seal.

 

So you are saying the valve springs started the chain reaction that caused the lifter failure and all that followed?

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Imagine if it had sold on EBay a couple months ago and what a ugly mess that would be now. Things happen for a reason. I have two sets of those lifters in a 427 and 468. So far so good for me.

 

That is exactly what I told Dad when we discovered it. That would have been a mess! But she is going to get quite an upgrade now, I am going to have to change the price on the HAMB Classified . New custom grind Bullet Cam, lifters and springs plus the Hilborn Electronic Fuel Injection.

So I had tossed around injecting straight alcohol next year but found out that is really not in the cards for EFI. I spoke with Hilborn and there is simply not a large enough electric pump on the market right now to deal with that kind of fuel volume and pressure needed. They are working on something for the Grave Digger Monster Truck Group but it is still in development. So I decided to stay with what I know, e-85. However that is a pretty big upgrade in itself to the standard Hilborn unit.

So here is what is coming:

The standard old school four port (tall) unit with polished Hilborn Scoop. However, because we are running e-85, we will need 8 very large injectors (120 lbs) we will run them through a base plate and plug the four injector holes shown above.


There is a pretty cool plate that actually hides the injectors but it only holds a max number of 6 and a max size of 95 lbs. So we will have to go this direction with two rails, one on each side.

It still takes a killer fuel pump not only for output etc. but to be rated for e-85 fuel. However even with this, we will be running a pretty trick Weldon Dial-A-Flow controller. It will allow us to run the pump in continuous duty if needed. The controller slows the pump down so it does not over tax the return system (helps to prevent over heated fuel and cavitation etc.). It is pretty cool, I am just learning about it myself but it will interrupt the electrical current to the pump 12,000 times per second reducing RMP.


And then there is the heart of the kit. It is a self learning system but you can set manual inputs as well. It even comes with a cool little touch screen unit for tuning on the fly. Like when I see something in the other lane from "wrenchbender" I can dial it way down etc. .

Actually I probably better keep quiet, I may need his help installing all this crap!
Not to mention I am already 0 and 1 against him!

Never-the-less, there are plenty of parts, plugs, filters etc. Here is a full list of what the conversion is going to take (minus the new fuel lines).

I am pretty excited about the change. I think it is the best of two worlds. It has the killer vintage Hilborn four port injected look but at the same time it is pretty much state of the art as far as tuning and controlling it. It will also allow us to continue the dual role of ripping up the drag strip and driving it home should that ever be the case.