BDC Round 4 and Santa Pod.....

Well the car finally got a stage where I could use it after Matt had finished mapping it. It still wasnt quite there with a reduced rev limit of 5,200rpm but due to funds I just cant afford new injectors right now, so had no option but to go with the car like that.

Got to Donny on Sat after driving up the night before, my mate swan knecking my gear shift in Milton Keynes at 01:00 in the morning, and only getting about 3hrs sleep.

So got the car unloaded and started her up, waited for her to come up to temp and then had my first real drive in her up and down the car park, before this I had never driven her more then 10ft. Straight away there seemed to be a problem, she was dropping a cylinder. I had hoped this was due to the constant smoking and just fouling up one of the plugs a bit so I decided to give her a thrash out on track in a hope it might clear it, so proceeded off on my first practice session. Half way round the first lap I spun and everything went dead, no electrics, nothing. Looks at the back whilst being towed back and spotted the earth strap in the battery had come off, so puts that back on and she's running again, although now it sounded like she was dropping more then 1 cylinder, even 2. So decided to go through the hassle of removing the NA inlet to get to the plugs, pulls them out and basically everythings covered in oil. I have always known about what looks like a slight leak on one side of the cam cover gaskets, but wasnt expecting the amount of oil around the top of the plugs that there was. Took the cam covers off as well, cleaned the gaskets up and put on some instant gasket stuff as well, put it all back together and fired her up, and she was on all 6, excellent I thought. By this time I had missed both practice sessions so it was onto qualify.

Drove the car down towards the track for qualify and straight away she was dropping cylinders again. I decided I was still going to do my runs depsite the car loosing 2 possibly 3 cylinders at some point, white smoke followed by black smoke it was very obvious she wasnt happy, but thought I owe the club an appearance run at the least to show the clubs name, so I did my best with a very sick 2j and depsite the runs looking very poor I hope my enthusiam made up for a bit, but obviously my positioning was poor, but I wasnt that down about things, the Supra was finally at a stage that it made an appearance, but more development and general fettling was needed.

Unfortunately, I havent came across any on track pics, I was only out there briefly, but I did get these quickly whilst waiting for qualify

So I got her home and pulled all the plugs out again and compression tested her, it wasnt great, no.1 started off as low as 30-35 over 2 tests, with the rest getting higher until no.6 at 120. I put some oil down the lowest 3 and re-tested and it was then 120+ so it looks like rings.

So I cleaned eveything up again, due to the amout of oil the block was leaking and she was back on all 6, and she stayed on all 6 around the car park at home. My mates were planning Pod on the Wednesday and depsite being very skint I decided to take her along to see if we could get something out her.

So gets to Pod and gets her out on track, still on all 6, and it was awsome to skid her properly with all cylinders firing. The reduced rev limit and stock lock took some getting used to, but I didnt care, I was tearing around in her.

http://www.blackettphotography.com/images/images/driftworks/DWYB14thJuly2010/DWYB29.jpg

[More pics to follow soon]

So we broke for lunch and went back out after, my second session wasnt as good, I kept spinning a lot on certain sections of the track and couldnt think why, this could be for a number of different reasons, firstly the rear needs lowering massively, also my dampening needs setting up, plus I think where I havent got the lock to recover the car it just keeps spinning, but still seat time is seat time. Unfortunately shortly after lunch she dropped a cylinder again so I pulled the 3 plugs out that I could get to easily and it wasnt pretty, there wasnt oil everywhere now, there was puddles.

So, this year aint exactly panning out how I would like, but Im in too deep now to give up, so I have another NA block lined up, for the cost its not even worth trying to sort this current one out. I should hopefully have the engine swapped out by next week.

There are a possibly 3 reasons why this current engine is knackard as far as I can see......

1) The engine always had something wrong with it before I took ownership of it ? (Possible)

2) Turbo'ing it, killed it ? (Doubtful)

3) Due to no air intake temp sensor Matt has had to richen up the whole map and that could be bore washing ? (Would like to think unlikely)

So I guess I'll find out if this other engine dies in pretty quick succession.

So I got her home and pulled all the plugs out again and compression tested her, it wasnt great, no.1 started off as low as 30-35 over 2 tests, with the rest getting higher until no.6 at 120. I put some oil down the lowest 3 and re-tested and it was then 120+ so it looks like rings.

 

So I cleaned eveything up again, due to the amout of oil the block was leaking and she was back on all 6, and she stayed on all 6 around the car park at home. My mates were planning Pod on the Wednesday and depsite being very skint I decided to take her along to see if we could get something out her.

 

So gets to Pod and gets her out on track, still on all 6, and it was awsome to skid her properly with all cylinders firing. The reduced rev limit and stock lock took some getting used to, but I didnt care, I was tearing around in her.

 

http://www.blackettphotography.com/images/images/driftworks/DWYB14thJuly2010/DWYB29.jpg

 

[More pics to follow soon]

 

So we broke for lunch and went back out after, my second session wasnt as good, I kept spinning a lot on certain sections of the track and couldnt think why, this could be for a number of different reasons, firstly the rear needs lowering massively, also my dampening needs setting up, plus I think where I havent got the lock to recover the car it just keeps spinning, but still seat time is seat time. Unfortunately shortly after lunch she dropped a cylinder again so I pulled the 3 plugs out that I could get to easily and it wasnt pretty, there wasnt oil everywhere now, there was puddles.

 

http://i203.photobucket.com/albums/aa264/Team55/266f7a90.jpg

 

So, this year aint exactly panning out how I would like, but Im in too deep now to give up, so I have another NA block lined up, for the cost its not even worth trying to sort this current one out. I should hopefully have the engine swapped out by next week.

 

There are a possibly 3 reasons why this current engine is knackard as far as I can see......

1) The engine always had something wrong with it before I took ownership of it ? (Possible)

2) Turbo'ing it, killed it ? (Doubtful)

3) Due to no air intake temp sensor Matt has had to richen up the whole map and that could be bore washing ? (Would like to think unlikely)

 

So I guess I'll find out if this other engine dies in pretty quick succession.

Can you get the engine out and over to us Ash, I'll stick some turbo pistons in and give the bores a hone +++ balance the bottom end, then you can run more boost and revs.

Can you get the engine out and over to us Ash, I'll stick some turbo pistons in and give the bores a hone +++ balance the bottom end, then you can run more boost and revs.

Take that offer

What an offer, and you can't turn that down mate.

Can you get the engine out and over to us Ash, I'll stick some turbo pistons in and give the bores a hone +++ balance the bottom end, then you can run more boost and revs.

Thanks John, thats erm, taken me back a bit That would be a massive step in the development for this car.

I can get the engine out next week mate and get it up to you, it would be interesting to open it up and see exactly whats been going on inside

I'll text you next week mate and keep you updated. And whats happened to your car, saw a post about someone was looking forward to seeing it but now not ? What you done to it ?