Ok, I couldn't resist any longer. Have just ordered a new striker kit. Build slot is feb so have a little time to decide spec.

This will be my second striker I have built. I've got an R1 powered car at the moment, which used to have a 16v 4age in.

Decision time. Think this ones going to be car engine again but which one? At the moment a black top 20v 4age looks like the best bet. Considered duratec but after speaking to martin at RAW this could be a real pain and would need a one off chassis. Has any body used the 1.8 2zz-ge in a rear drive car yet?

Any ideas? Have to remember the striker is a small car. I just know everyone's going to say busa, but i've just done the bike thing so want a car engine this time, must be 160bhp plus.

Ben.

PS. Anyone want a R1 striker!

Those 20V motor's are very impressive. Have you been out in the Raw demonstrator?

Have you gone for the lowered race-spec chassis? I nearly did!

S2000 ?

Isn't the engine in the boot? If so, how's about the Honda VTec? 200 bhp with a cam change, more if you use the S2000 engine (247?)

for a light, compact engine apart from the 4age i'd go for the 1.6 zetec se, developed with yamaha apparantly. with throttle bodies from shawspeed it can go to 170bhp relatively easily with bits available to take it right up to 220bhp and probabhly more if you wanted.

it is ally block so lightweight and nice and compact so easy to work around. found in focus, fiesta and puma's. the later black top one is the one to get, believe some of the latest versions are branded duratec. check shawspeeds website. bellhousings and some bits/support also available from westfield and quantum.

Ned.


[Edited on 23/11/06 by ned]

Hi cant remember exactly what i heard but havent they tied up a deal on engines with noble motorsport. What engine is it they are supplying to them.

cheers matt

Wow, you guys are quick today.

Luckily I live just down the road from RAW which was one of the deciding factors when I bought my 1st striker. I haven't been out in the current demonstrator but will before I make final choice. Thought about the lowered chassis but although the car will spend quite alot of time on track, I also want it to be road leagal. There are a few to many speed bumps in hereford for that sort of ground clearance!
The s2000 can and has been made to fit. but it's not small and the gear box alone is VERY heavy, No shortage of power though.

Hi yep just asked someone and they are offering a 350 bhp 2.0litre duratec. I think however they must be joking as the works race car has dificulty using the 180 bhp without falling of the track.

But i assume that they can however fit a duratec in then which is the way to go IMHO.

cheers matt

Yes, also checked. Looks like its there northern agent offering the 350 bhp duratec. Seems it's got a large turbo. As you say, not ideal in such a small car. Whilst I was talking to Martin earlier, he was just fitting traction and launch cotrol to the new demo car. This is a different system to the one they tried a couple of year ago.

Always fancied a S2000 engine but I'm told that they're pretty tall and would be a problem for most Sevenesque cars...

Been fitted to an Indy...so a suitably modified Striker should take it..

A 350bhp 2.0 duratec must be turboed or supercharged as IIRC max power from a normally aspirated 2.0 is 250bhp.

The 2.3 on the other hand, according to cosworth seems to be capable of 300bhp+

quote:

---

Originally posted by stevebubs
Been fitted to an Indy...so a suitably modified Striker should take it..

---

you could get 300bhp from a nat asp 2ltr but would be very highly strung..

Ned.

He striker,

You could, and I almost did,

Buy an 20v silvertop engine, tak it apart put paradise racing pistons in it, to lower the compression ratio to 9.0:1 and ditch a eaton or rotrex charger on it.

I know how feckin fast my NA 20v silvertop is, but that would be a totaly different ballgame. around 1 bar static on a turbo system yields around 230hp@ 7800rpm, and with a cool charge ala rotrex that would be even better.

I have spoken to paradise racing about this, and they recomended their Arias made pistons and a metal head gasket for the job. the pistons are $475 and the cometic gasket $65. which seems cheap enough, considering you'd need an omex anyway for the engine.

engine $800, pistons gasket, $540.
TTS has very competetive prices on rotrex chargers.

anyway would cost some serious money but a New duratec would be even more expensive. It would certainly make for a brilliant engine with power all over the place and a redline most can only dream of.

speak to Luis at paradise LuisCorujo@paradiseracing.com

grtz Thomas

Hi Thomas,
Yes, you seemed very pleased with your 20v at Le mans. At the moment I think this will be the way I'll go. Just looking in to the 2zz-ge a little more 1st though.

Ben.

Bad engine, valve problems. to an extend toyota has allready discontinued the first series of them.
if you can seriously behave yourself and never misshift or overrun the engine it's very nice 190hp stock fro 1.8L NA.

anyway a 4a serie is known to hold out with 430+HP AND 8krpm for a very long time.

gimme a 4age anytime
Yes I'm still very pleased with the engine in the car. the torque it produces and the way it produces that is just amazing and doens't let you for a second believe that it's a 1.6L engine, let alone the sound of one and the flame shooting exhaust.

here's a movie, no real revs yet as the engine had just gone in the car.
http://media.putfile.com/compilatie-striker-thomas
the donut hall, is at speedon, the dutch Raw importer (aka mischa's place)

grtz Thomas

[Edited on 24/11/06 by thomas4age]

If you've got a Striker then I would highly recommend staying with the 4AGE. They seem to work rather well together as proven many times by the RAW demo car chasing other more powerful kit cars

Oh and their demo is about to be refreshed after a hard season doing demo laps and group tests. Not one failure that I'm aware of!

RAW did a trial fit of the 2ZZ-GE but like a lot of modern alloy VVT engines it was quite tall. Also you can't do to much to them except forced induction. Which is what I did in my Celica.

Did you go for the chassis with T45 full roll over cage as its just as light as my older single roll over hoop? If I did it again I will certainly go for the TR chassis with the revised scuttle design.

As for engines Mel will be getting some more stock in soon. My "blacktop" will probably be available as soon as next week. I'm just building up a modified "silvertop". Just in case you wanted a tidy (its been painted look in my pic archive) proven engine with a big wing alloy sump.

Otherwise my "silvertop" head has been modified and I'm playing with CAMs starting next week (its in bits still). If that goes well I may have my Rotrex fitted before Christmas. I'm going with stock compression to start with. If its difficult to map on stock compression then I have some GZE pistons to lower the compression (£155 for a set).

I bought my Rotrex from TTS. My other recommendation would be to build up a 1400cc Hayabusa using TTS parts. You can follow the progress on the Radical I help to maintain on the website below. We had a ZZR1100 last season. You'll need big pockets though!

www.mtcracing.co.uk

Hi bimbleuk,

Haven't spec'd the chassis yet, will do it a little closer to my build slot.

At the moment I think it will be-

Independent rear
subaru diff
new scuttle
full cage or at very least side impact bar.

Engine choice is so hard. Very interested in your rotrex project. My old 16v was putting out 161bhp on mech repairs rolling road. Just looking for a little more from this one. Striker chassis is so good, The rotrex should give it the power it deserves and make it feel like a larger capacity engine.
It's a shame no one seems to like the 2zz-ge as I've just found a bellhousing from caterham south africa.

Think i've seen your car at RAW. Are you local to Hereford? Would be interested in looking at your supercharger set up.

Ben.

R1,

I'm fairly close to RAW and will certainly be at RAW a few times as my SC install progresses. I will be posting on here with any interesting results.

If you got 161BHP on Mech Repairs rollers you usually be confident you'll get at least that on other setups as they've always been quite conservative.

Coincidentally I was there today with my 20V head in bits checking the valve clearances. They were fine when I first checked them but I think the springs may have settled over the last week. Luckily Brian at M.R. knows someone who can make me some.

Tomorrow I start on the botom end and possibly mounting the SC by the end of the week.

[Edited on 27/11/06 by bimbleuk]

Much as I'm a vauxhall fan, and both the vauxhall 1.6 16v and ford-yamaha zetec se 1.6 16v (and the 1.7 vvt version) are outstanding engines, I think the Toyota probably fits the bill well, especially as you are close to RAW.

Sorry to contradict BimbleUK, but I'm not such a fan of the rotrex supercharger, even though I have looked at using one myself in the past. They have a similar issue to turbochargers in terms of torque and power delivery, and the vehicle I went out in fitted with one showed this fairly noticeably. Noisy and large as they are, positive displacement blowers are definitely the way to go for me. The whipple screw type ones are very efficient and pretty quiet as well.

I've seen good and bad installs of the Rotrex and I have some trepidation about it working on my car. If its great I'm sure RAW will be looking at offering a kit for the 4AGE engines. If not I'll post my experiences on here so others can benefit from it.

Mech Repairs, the garage I use, are regularly used as a developement base for low volume manufacturers. Partially because OMEX are so closely tied. Rotrex themselves have been there recently as a couple of small manufacturers are assesing engine upgrade kits.

So I'm hopefully in the right place to give it my best shot

As for the Whipple I kinda know I should have gione this route already but I quite like making things difficult for myself!

Justin,
Did you ever consider fitting a 16v 4agze instead? Any reason why you didn't?
I have only seen one striker with this set up. It was a tight fit though.
Ben.

I've drivven one once, but that far to civiliezed to be really funny.

it won't rev because the supercharger runs out of oopf before the engine does.

supercharged 20v would be manic methinks.

grtz Thomas

Ben,

I originally built my Striker with a 16V 4AGE as it was easy to get an SVA pass without a CAT. I later installed the 20V which was quite a revelation being very smooth and with a wide power band as standard.

I've built an 1800cc 16V 4AGZE (or 7AGZE if you will) before so the 20V was something new to play with.

Thomas,

I almost want the engine to be a little bit scary to drive as I need to cure myself of the tuning bug! I quite often build a perfectly good engine then get bored and look for the next project.

[Edited on 29/11/06 by bimbleuk]

Just found out Jackson Racing are now developing Rotrex SC kits!!

Now they were the bastion of roots blower kits so there must be something in them after all

Justin,
So if I go the super charger route. What are you doing about the throttle bodies. I assume you are coverting to a plenum and single t/b or am I wrong?

Ben.

Ben,

I intend to keep the individual TBs and just fabricate a plenum to enclose the openings. Jut like Skylines, Pulsars and 200SX's from the factory.

no need to ditch the ITB's.

the stock airbox seems to be pretty boost tolerant, if not just make up an airbox to sit over the trumpets, there's no need to make that from heavy stuff, because it never sees full closed throttle vacuum (which is what kills most hmebrew plenums) but only the amount of boost directed towards it, and I seriously don't think you would want to go over 1 bar static on a 20v engine.

you could make a new plenum and sell the ITB's if you'd want to. but I wouldn't.

ps Blimble, the thing on scary engines is precisly the reason why I didn't want the 4agZe engine. it's quick but civilized and the 20v can still scare my pants of sometimes. ie collecting speeding tickets is very easy at exiting a roundabout.

So what do you guys think of the Rotrex c30-84 charger on ebay at the moment? Buy it now £1000. Good or bad?. Haven't priced these up yet. Also, would there be any other superchargers worth considering?

Ben.

I was recommended the C30-94 by TTS after giving them extensive details of my engine and my target power output. I may have to use a restrictor on the inlet if it generates too much boost at high RPM. I was somewhat surprised by this as on paper the C30-74 seems to be the best match.

The price is reasonable as they do indeed retail for about £1250-1400 and £90 for the universal mounting plate. Though I got the plate thrown in with mine as I said it was worth about £15 in reality.

However the plate shown in the picture has been modified to fit a particular engine. Also where are the oil lines, filter and reservoir. Finally if that person did buy the Rotrex where are the dust caps for the inlet, outlet and oil connectors? Maybe they didn't get round to finishing the project but they certainly got quite far in mounting the SC.

[Edited on 1/12/06 by bimbleuk]

With a spec like that I think you should get the TR chassis - I'd worry about regretting it otherwise!

You might be right. Lots of decisions to make. That is really why I'm building this car. I'm looking for something that will keep up with (and pass) the R400/500's of this world with out costing £40,000!
Anybody put uprated cams in a 4agze?

Ben.

I had HKS 272 deg cams in my 7AGZE which helped to get over 200BHP on a modest 10PSI

I would seriusly consider the TR chassis as I'm always looking over them at the RAW workshop. I know it was designed primarily for 70mm ride heights on track but I believe you can get the clearance above 90mm. Go speak to Martin.

Hi before you go splashing out on the TR chassis maybe you should do some reasearch as to weather it actually has any better handeling than the STD chassis.

What you will find is that it dosent and that the limiting factor of the striker is the the same as when jeremy philips originaly designed the car .

Even the works race car of Garry goodyear whith £4k of dampers on it still has the same handeling problems as the original cars and has only picked up pace this year from more development on his own engine but handeling wise he still has one severe disadvantage which means that trying to put 200 bhp through the car is fine for playing on the road/ocasional trackday but if you are seriously thinking of catching R500's i would go and by a R500.

Hope this dosent sound as if i am slagging the striker but if you are talking about putting 200bhp in to one i would do some reaserch on the real handeling problems that are inbuilt to the basic car.

I may get flamed for this but those that race strikers are well aware of there disadvantage and work around it but they only use upto 180 bhp.

cheers matt

(edit) The handeling problem only realy applies to fast circuit use but could become an advantage for sprinting or auto testing.

[Edited on 2/12/06 by procomp]

No reason to flame you. I'm all ears if you'd like to expand a bit on the issue. Just because I own one I'm not blinkered about constructive critism.

As I mostly use mine for road and track days I can't say that I've really tried to stretch the limits of performance on mine. However if I was to continue on my engine developement, as you say, with the Rotrex and reach my target of 200+BHP I'd rather know about high speed performance etc in advance!

I tend to pick motors first to develop them think of car to go round it. The Striker kit was offered to me at a bargain price just after selling my previous car so thats why I went that route at the time.

Hi Matt,
To a certain extent I agree with you. For what my car will be used for, it would be hard to justify the extra cost of the TR chassis.
I would say though, that although alot of Gary's extra speed this year is down to his constent development of his engine, it would be wrong to suggest that NO improvements have been made with the chassis. As you say, you could have all the power in the world but if the car won't handle it's not going to help you. I think all cars have certain handling problems but i've never found my current striker to be any worse than other sevens. If any thing have always found it better (I could be biased there!)

Coincidentally, if I go for a 16v 4age it would probably be Gary building it. He built a great engine for a friends striker a couple of years ago and i've always liked his constent development attitude.

Like justin i'd ben interested to know where you think the problem areas are and if there's anything I could do to correct these during the build?

Ben.

Ben, I've seen several of Garys engine on the rollers at M.R. and they are both powerful and torquey too which is great to see. I've only seen one which had everyone stumped why it wasn't making the expected power. Another last week was using the RAW 4-2-1 manifold and to be honest it was probably restricting the ultimate power figures.

As for my Striker at high speed. I learnt early on how bad the basic seven shape can be as the front goes very light. As a result I limited my top speed to 125mph approx by fitting a 4.44:1 diff.

At a guess i assume the engine that didn't make the expected power was a s/t 20v! I think it just showed how good they are out the box. Have just been over to RAW. Had a look at the new demo car A few nice changes since I built mine.

I think it will be standard b/t to start with the possibilty of adding a s/c later. Also going for BGH box and 4.4 subaru diff. Not getting the gearing right from the start was the mistake I made last time.

Watch out next time you take your car to RAW. Mel is desperate for a 4.4 sierra diff!

No it was a Gary built 16V which put out 174BHP but really should have been in the 180s! Pretty good for a 1600cc engine anyway.

Hmm I have been thinking of going back to a 3.92:1 diff as if the Rotrex works out then I'll have rather a lot more torque to play with!

Give Mel a call then justin. He has a customer who is desperate for a 4.4 and just can't find one.

Ben

Hello Ben

I,m now building an tr striker with an zx12r engine. this striker will be very light. I bougt this one to use it as an test striker to see what the differens are with the road striker on the track.

I will go racing in the german seven mania bec serie.

Mischa

www.speedon.nl
www.racewagen.nl my private site

[Edited on 22/1/07 by sept]

my last 20v striker, i have sold this one to an guy in belgem.
Rescued attachment IMG_3019.JPG

my new tr zx12r striker on going build

[Edited on 22/1/07 by sept]
Rescued attachment IMG_30811.JPG

Im interested to know what are these handling issues with the Striker are, I always thought the Striker was regarded as one of the better handling Seven clones?
Also does it also affect other Jeremy Philips designed cars like the Phoenix or Fury?

I'm also waiting for the detailed reply.

In the mean time here's a couple some pics of the 200BHP engine which will cause my Striker to randomly fall off the road


Image deleted by owner

Image deleted by owner



Ford oil water cooler mounted