It has been rumored for some time now that one of the very rew, vanishingly rare, Simon Erland engines has had some problems based on its design and installation. The engine in question went into Mark Bowles elise and was claimed as a prime example of the very best in K series tuning. The only graph available for it show it to be as peaky as hell and 20% down on the curve of a decent similar setup. It picks up some top end in the last few rpms. The graph below shows the orginal 202bhp as well.
The manifold is a bike style design from Jim @ 2tubular which was presumably chosen to shuffle the power up the rev range to suit Marks requirements and manages to squeak in the 220 bhp club. Erland on the other hand desribes it slightly differently "Marks engine was fitted with THE MOST INCREDIBLY BIZZARE exhaust manifold [ none of my doing]" and ascribes the lack of top end (as well as the weakened midrange) down to this exhaust.
More significant is the persistant oil leak on this engine and here is Marks explanation of it
" With this in mind I took the car to Chris Randall following a recommendation from a friend. I asked Chris to look at putting a new Exhaust system on, carry out a service but also to look at one other issue. Since the engine was built it has been dripping oil after heavy track use. Having discussed this with Simon he diagnosed the issue as probable blow-by in the cylinders which is presurising the sump and causing oil to be forced out past the crank seal. The cause of the blow by was thought to be the high-tech, low friction coated cylinder liners and rings we used (as used by Judd and Renault in motorsport engines). These have a rather more demanding running in procedure which, through no fault of Simon's - he was clear about what the procedure was - was not followed properly. The result was that the piston rings have "picked up" on the liners removing small streaks of liner material and allowing gasses to escape into the crank case. Chris Randall was very helpful in looking at this and has been able to confirm that this was the case by using a video bore scope."
It is worth harking back to Simon Erlands original claims 5 years ago for k series tuning - this sort of power was supposed to be easy. When Bernard Source pointed out that what he was doing was in effect replacing the K series with a bunch of motorsport components and introducing the inevitable brittleness and unreliability Simon Erland (as is his style) alternated between jumping down his throat or ignoring the perfectly valid points.
Now we have engines with motorsport components that should be specified and installed by professionals being played with by a sometimes tuner, sometimes sculptor. Such kit is usually run in on a bench dyno under exact test conditions and a bedding in cycle and closely examined afterwards. You can't just slap it together and hope.
You certainly can't expect a road "run in" to suffice even if the happy new owner is able to follow Simon Erlands instructions.
"oil leak from messed start up as fresh engine - I do not know exactly what happened except that my start up instructions - turn engine over with no plugs to get oil pressure, check for coolant/fuel leaks, then fit plugs, push car out to clear road, select first gear, put out clutch , then start engine and let out clutch immediately. DO NOT LET ENGINE SEE LESS THAN 2000 RPM OR MORE THAN 4000RPM, until oil temp hits 80 deg c, drive car - ie engine under load IMMEDIATELY , blipping throttle so engine revs from 2000 to 4000 rpm then fall back to 2000 under engine braking - this way rings are pressed against bore, then when you see oil temp, increase revs to 6000 rpm, do this for a minimum of 15mins, better 30, - were not followed.
This is the ONLY way to break in the rings in a car, if you don't do that with ironliners/chrome rings, the rings will never bed, if you don't do this with my coated rings, the coating picks up on the liners and the rings will never bed = blowby = loss of power = oil leaks past crank seals. All of the latter happened to Mark's engine, and by the by Sean's first build because he again completely ignored my careful instructions, and frankly P8888ed me off."
Simon Erland is basically building a reputation for supplying engines that just never perform well in the real work and occasionally blow up on the rollers on first map.
