Congratulations, Mr. Jeannette...it's another Lola! This is our second chassis being delivered just days ago. The grand plan is for the two chassis to have the two different motors you've seen us building. Due to some engineering difficulties that will take a little longer to sort out, we'll be using the 4-valve/4-cam motor at Sebring instead of the air-cooled motor we've been building up in the last few installments.

The revised shifter and cables mostly installed. The arrangement for the air-cooled motor will be different, because the induction for that motor interferes with the shifter cabling we just made. No problem, we'll just engineer around it for the other installation.

Back to building up the 2-valve air-cooled motor. Here you see both halves of the crankcase have been bolted together, and you see the connecting rods through the holes where the cylinders will mount, plus the cam-drive chain (and there's another one on the other side. This will be clearer below).

First the pistons are installed (that's a ring-compressor in the center cylinder) and the wrist-pins fitted, then the cylinders - finned for air-cooling - are attached to the crankcase. You can see the piston in the cylinder at far right.

The heads in place (one for each cylinder). The valve springs for the intake (at the top) and exhaust (at the bottom) valves have been mounted, and at the top you can see the intake ports. Each cylinder has two spark plugs, and they go in the larger holes in the heads.

The cam towers and chain boxes in place, it's now clear to see how those drive chains work. Note the chain tensioners for each cylinder bank inside the chain boxes. The mid-90's RSR fan is fitted in place to check the clearance for the fan shroud. This shroud will need to be modified, as it was made originally for a smaller fan than this one.

Without the fan in place you see how the airflow will work, to cool the cylinders. The fan sucks air in the front and pushes it out the back, underneath this shroud. The shroud diverts the air down and around the cylinders, and ultimately exits at the bottom of the motor through a series of baffles (shown in a previous update). The 962 induction system is in place here, but it's easier to see in the next photo.

This is a better view of the cam tower, one of which fits across the top of each bank of three cylinders, showing the rocker arms inside. The 962 induction is in place.

This is the four-valve/4-cam motor you saw us installing last week. Note that it has a smaller fan and an externally-mounted alternator.

The air-cooled, 2-valve motor has an alternator integrated into the center of the unit's housing (just like in every street 911). The black part is the alternator cover, and inside the end you can see the alternator cooling fan blades. Next to that (at left) is a conventional alternator, showing how its cooling fan is mounted.

The fan shroud being modified to fit our larger fan. The bump that has been added in the round part is for clearance for the alternator cover (see photo above this one for a picture of that part). All the pieces of tape are covering spots that have been fiberglassed-over. The tape prevents drips, and forms a smooth transition between new and old surfaces. It peels away easily once the new 'glass has set.

The new glass has been ground down in this photo, and note that the cooling shroud now fits down flush on top of the cylinders. The squarish duct that has been closed-over was intended to supply air to an oil cooler, but since our oil cooler will be in a different location we'll be fitting tubes to this blanked-off section, and that air ducted to various other components. This will be clearer as we progress.

The open front of the cooling shroud had to be closed-off, so that area was also fabricated with fiberglass. The fan opening is now much larger than it was before we started.

Since we did our last update, all of the turbo plumbing was worked out and fabricated. This is a top view. The single waste gate can bee seen underneath the crossmember for the wing support.

A side view of the turbo setup, showing how the exhausts meet the turbo, and how the exhaust exits between the wing supports. The taped-off part on the turbo is the induction to the compressor (cold side). Engine air will be ducted to this compressor through a small snorkel through the rear bodywork.

Finally today, here's an overhead shot of the air-cooled motor - minus most of the parts we've just been discussing - mounted in the Lola chassis. It sits really low in the chassis, which should contribute to an overall lower center of gravity than the standard Nissan V6 would.

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