As many of you know I purchased Mike Mauro's Black Fd last winter to use as the basis for a 20b project. The car is currently stripped down to a rolling chassis waiting for the new motor. The motor will be adapted to the chassis by cutting the firewall, shortening the intake manifold, and lowering the block by 3-4".



It took nearly 12 weeks, but I finally got ahold of a D-series 20b motor. The motor is currently at Roger Mandeville's shop being disassembled. Mandeville is going to rebuild, street port, clearance everything, and dynamically balance the entire rotating assembly so that the engine is safe to run at 9,000 rpms. The ETA on the engine is 4 weeks. While Mandeville's work comes at a bit of a premium I think his experience, skill, and dependability are well worth it.



Now that I am finally in the deep end on this project I decided it was time to post a thread. Hopefully this will be a short and relatively cheap journey . I will keep everyone updated on my progress in the same fashion I did for my single turbo project.



-Chris C.

 

glad you finally got an engine for that thing Chris... post pics as you get them.

 

wow... hope you have the engine tuning to back up that nice motor.

 

Rich bastard! Seriously though best of luck. I'd be curious to see how you end up mounting the block etc. I think alot of us would like to be knee deep into a 20b project.

 

[quote name='GreyGT-C' date='Jun 6 2005, 10:43 PM']glad you finally got an engine for that thing Chris... post pics as you get them.


[/quote]



I will try, but it make take a little coaxing to get Roger to snap some photos.



[quote name='Cheers!' date='Jun 7 2005, 04:27 AM']wow... hope you have the engine tuning to back up that nice motor.


[/quote]

I am planning on tuning it myself. I did my single turbo 2 rotor and am very happy with how it turned out. However, considering the cost of this motor and the fact that I have no experience with the ecu I may end up having Roger dial everything in on his engine dyno.



[quote name='Fd3BOOST' date='Jun 8 2005, 02:45 PM']Rich bastard! Seriously though best of luck. I'd be curious to see how you end up mounting the block etc. I think alot of us would like to be knee deep into a 20b project.


[/quote]

LOL. I'm not rich. I recently finished graduate school and am still living like a student, so I have some expendable income I am really enjoying this project. It is something I have dreamed about doing for a number of years, so it is a bit of a milestone for me.



Motor

I spoke with Mandeville today. All the parts have arrived. He is going to be gone all next week testing at the Glen. He plans to start re-assembling the motor as the following week. We discussed reducing the oil pan depth from 102mm to 45MM. He said oil slosh shouldn't be an issue, even at the track, so I think I'm going to do it. I'm very happy because that allows me to drop the motor another 2" without losing any ground clearance. Finally, I purchased a second 20b upper and lower intake manifold this week and I am going to try to reduce the height of it by 2" while the motor is being assembled. If I can reduce the overall height of the motor by 4" that will save a lot of cutting to the firewall/tunnel.

 

If you can swing it, I highly recommend having Mandeville break it in on the dyno

 

i want to drive it or atleast get a ride in it

 

[quote name='vosko' date='Jun 9 2005, 08:26 PM']i want to drive it or atleast get a ride in it


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The FD drivetrain in the hands of Vosko with 3 rotors attached to it. That is a scary thought!

 

[quote name='ccarlisi' date='Jun 10 2005, 11:17 AM']The FD drivetrain in the hands of Vosko with 3 rotors attached to it. That is a scary thought!


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http://www.ppgearbox.com.au/html/products.htm



do it do it do it

 

I got a voice message from Mandeville. The core motor is in good shape with compression on all sides of all rotors and there were no metal shavings in the oil pan. The oil pan is slightly damaged. He is going to fabricate the pan for me and believes we can get it down to around 45mm, but the pickup will have to be replaced. He said the motor should be done next week. Yeah baby!!!!



I went to the NJ meet last weekend and heard my first 20b in person -the MVA RX8. It instantly put to death all doubts I was having about whether this project is worth doing.