Legere Motorsports

Legere Motorsports Amateur racing team/car builder from Spofford, NH, USA The trials and tribulations of a guy with too many cars, and not enough money to finish them...

Weight comparison between a cast iron Sprint and my fabricated tubular Sprint exhaust manifold. After that a test-fit un...
09/23/2026

Weight comparison between a cast iron Sprint and my fabricated tubular Sprint exhaust manifold.

After that a test-fit under the hood of one of my cars.

Almost forgot about this sucker. My home-built 1-5/8” tubular “Sprint” CIH exhaust manifold. Picked it up today, it now ...
09/22/2026

Almost forgot about this sucker. My home-built 1-5/8” tubular “Sprint” CIH exhaust manifold.

Picked it up today, it now has the 1800° Cerakote high temp exhaust coating on it.

I had zero plans to work on this today, BUT sometimes you’ve gotta go with the flow. This is the 1.9 head for my turbo 1...
09/20/2026

I had zero plans to work on this today, BUT sometimes you’ve gotta go with the flow.

This is the 1.9 head for my turbo 1975 Sportwagon. I haven’t regarded it much for a couple of years, but first thing today I was cleaning up one corner of my shop when I discovered some long-missing components needed to assemble the aforementioned cylinder head.

Now, I could’ve just put the missing parts in a pile near the head, but a little voice in my head said if I did that, I’d undoubtedly lose the parts again for a year or two. That seems to happen to me way too often!

So, seeing as it was a rainy, 60 degree crappy day, I decided to clean and assemble all the parts into one larger component which was less likely to get misplaced.

To rehash the specs on this cylinder head, it’s a 1971 1.9 cylinder head that is prepped for modest rpm’s on a turbo street engine. Nothing radical at all.

It has bronze valve guides, hardened exhaust seats, 8 mm-stemmed custom size Chevy valves (1.75”/1.45”), 1.25” Crower double valve springs, 1.25” Crower titanium retainers, billet valve locks, Viton valve seals, new cam bearings, and new rocker studs.

Porting work is very conservative, to the point where the port openings are essentially standard sized. 90% of the porting work is in the bowl areas, and the chambers are polished and unshrouded. The head does have substantial milling done to it, about .085”. This gives it a small chamber which is more detonation resistant, and the new calculated true compression ratio is 8.178:1.

I had done a flow test a few years ago and it was nothing spectacular…only about 22% more peak flow than a standard 1.9 head. But due to the small stemmed valves and high velocity ports, the average “area under the curve” flow was actually phenomenal. So throttle response and mid range torque should be excellent.

Continuing with shop improvements. I had a small bench grinder clamped to my welding bench that has a Scotchbrite wheel ...
09/13/2026

Continuing with shop improvements.

I had a small bench grinder clamped to my welding bench that has a Scotchbrite wheel and a wire wheel mounted on it.

I also had another small bench grinder I hadn’t used in years….it originally came with a small belt sander attachment on one end. The belt sander never worked well, so I ended up gutting out all the components for the belt sander, and then sanded down the arbor from 13 mm to 1/2” (only about .010” removal), which allowed me to mount a 3” diameter diamond grinding wheel to it.

Now I have a dedicated tungsten sharpener with a fine 6” grinding wheel on one side, and a diamond wheel on the other side.

Then, to aid in visibility, I added a couple of flexible-stalk LED machinery lights.

09/12/2026

A great visual on what happens in an oil pan during hard cornering and braking.

09/12/2026

Got the drive belt in today, installed it and did my first test. Works pretty damn well!

09/11/2026

Intake port flow testing, 2.2 CIH head.

A buddy of mine had an Opel 2.2 CIH head CNC ported, and wanted to know the numbers. I did a quickie flow test for him, ...
09/11/2026

A buddy of mine had an Opel 2.2 CIH head CNC ported, and wanted to know the numbers.

I did a quickie flow test for him, and found that the exhaust side was still rather weak, a common 2.2 trait. At .525” valve lift (an arbitrary number), the exhaust is only flowing about 63% of the intake. Ideally I like to see 75-80%. It could be made up for by more porting, and/or a split-profile camshaft with more exhaust duration and lift.

Overall it’s still an improvement, but I think the CNC guy was too conservative with his programming on the exhaust. To put it in perspective, a mildly ported 1.9 head with a 1.50” valve will usually flow 20% more exhaust flow than a 2.2 head.

Valves have 8 mm stems, with 1.86” diameter intakes and 1.57” exhaust valves.

Some progress today. I built a small wooden shelf that mounts on a vertical column, painted it, and mounted the belt san...
09/10/2026

Some progress today.

I built a small wooden shelf that mounts on a vertical column, painted it, and mounted the belt sander and electric motor.

I considered re-using the old wiring and switch, but a quick inspection showcased the fact that the wiring had aged out! Everything attached to the motor and switch had crumbling insulation. Yikes!

So, I bought a new switch, metal box, and wiring.

I got in some 80 grit and 180 grit sanding belts from McMaster-Carr, but I still need to run out and purchase a rubber v-belt to connect the sander to the motor.

Been refurbishing a 50+ year old narrow belt sander. Almost there…
09/09/2026

Been refurbishing a 50+ year old narrow belt sander. Almost there…

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03462

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