nickz32

Scalpel?

Hmmm. I wonder how common this is with auto converted cars?

How’d you get on Lee

I’m looking at coming up on the bike on the Saturday

Spa classic has been on my bucket list for a long time now.... I’d be interested

The condition of the brake fluid also has a huge impact on pedal effort. Most dot 4 is meant to be flushed every 2 years.... dot 5.1 is more regular than that as it tends to be more hygroscopic that dot 4.

If my car was running I’d genuinely be up for this.... although I’d ask for the stipulation of a handful of laps to better learn the circuit

A few more...... not a bad turn out for a South Central meet!

I seem to remember that he had an old minature cannon.... and got a bit ambitious with the amount of black powder he used.... that was the end result

Yeah I remember that.... and the visit by the boys in blue afterwards! You can see my car towards the back. Sussex Stu aka shrapnel Stu was there.... can’t remember who else but I’ve got some pics somewhere

That was a blinder

I’m happy to put my name down for this

Sounds like a good idea

Not a lot to update everyone on. Engines out and in bits with no “smoking gun” of why I had metal in the oil. Bearings all show an even, if slightly excessive amount of wear, but nothing that I think correlates to what I found in the oil. For the time being I’m taking a well earned break from working on it and am enjoying being back on 2 wheels again (BMW S1000RR if anyone’s interested). Anyway, before I discovered this little issue, a new “car media” company asked for my car for a photo shoot.... here are a few of this pics of my car

Cracking weekend had by all (I believe) Gutted I wasn’t in the Z and was very envious when we went for our tour of the Dales/Pennines/Lakes, they all looked fab going down the road. Deffo fancy this again another time, but think a 4 day trip would probably work a bit better, there’s a lot to cram in in just one day. Thanks to all who organised, attended and visited. A great advert for what club meets can be!

Really struggled to get motivated today, but I dragged myself up to my workshop to finish off the engine removal.... then promptly decided that I was fed up of working on my back and pushed the car round to my mates workshop and used his ramp for the final stages. Despite far from being in the mood, the engines out. While it’s out, I’m going to look at sorting a few other bits out. Now is the perfect time to fault find my AC system, potentially replace the rad support cross member and sort a small power steering leak. Once I’m back from the Lakes I’ll look at bringing the engine home and finding out what’s gone wrong

I’m going to remove the wings to besafe I’m yet to come across one of those wing “protectors” that hasn’t marked the paintwork

Yeah, I’m paying about £1.30 for Vpower at the moment, although I’ve seen it around the £1.38 mark in my general area.... Bloocy yanks messing it up for the rest of us!

This is not a sight I thought I’d see again for a long time What on Earth I hear you ask..... well I’m very much asking myself the same! The long and short of it is, a couple of weeks ago I noticed a little rattle while moving the car, a rattle that appeared on lift off of throttle. It disappeared as quick as it appeared and I couldn’t replicate the noise again. Drove her around and all was well. With the upcoming lakes trip I decided to do an oil change, again for Motul 300V. Started her up, great oil pressure as always. Repositioned her to make room for my friends car in my workshop and that same rattle appeared again. Again, after a rev on lift off of throttle. Again it disappeared and I couldn’t replicate the noise. I slept on it and the next day (yesterday) decided to cut open the oil filter and check for any nastys Gutted doesn’t really come close. Wasn’t expecting to find so much metal in the filter. This is its 4th oil and filter change since the rebuild and the engine has just over 2000 miles on it, so I was expecting no problems. My initial feeling is that I’ve caught the very beginnings of a big end bearing failure. I spent the afternoon prepping for engine removal, which I should have it out some time on Friday. From there it’ll be a case of open the sump and check each bearing for damage. Once the damage has been identified, I then need to try and establish what has caused the bearing failure. I know my clearances were where I wanted them to be and every oil galley had been thoroughly cleaned in the block and head prior to assembly. I have heard of ACL’s failing on a number of different manufacturers engines, so a manufacture fault is entirely possible. Regardless, I’ll be looking into a new choice of bearing. Trying to take some positives from the situation and I’m going to look a doing some more small modifications. An EPR extended baffled sump is on the shopping list, as well as modifiying the block for a couple more AN fittings for an Accusump system. I’d also like to address some thermal management issues to help keep Intake Air Temps down, potentially ceramic coating of the manifold and intake tube to the turbos. But before any shopping takes place, I need to be sure that the crank is undamaged and there’s no other damage to the rest of the engine such as cam journals. One of these days I’ll get to enjoy DRIVING this effing car

I’ll post up on my thread later, but I’m more than a little gutted

Unfortunately, I will now being coming up in the BMW and not the Z

Sad face