Oops!
 

Mananged to destroy my engine on Tuesday night!
After letting it idle on Sunday while I was messing about with the aircon it overheated and spewed the coolant out. So after turning it off and putting everything back on and letting it cool for at least 15 minutes I tried starting it. Fired up first turn no problems and it didn't look as though it had lost too much coolant but I wasn't about to take the radiator cap off to fill it up so I thought I would give it a little run out to test the aircon.
Well the aircon was working fine but 10 miles away from home I saw the temp guage was showing 134C! Drove back fairly sedately with the temp never droping below 110C but got back.
Tuesday night topped the coolant up - about 3-4 litres. Started up again first turn of the key, amazing!
Went for a little gentle run, warmed up fine and settled to 87c (normal) and all the while listening for any unusual noises but nothing seemed amiss. Assumed I had got away with it and just amazed at the fantastic Honda engineering so I gave it a good lungfull. Still pulled really well to 7250 rpm in 1st, 2nd and 3rd so started to go home. Then I noticed the whisps of blue smoke coming out of the engine cover vents, f**k! Well the smoke got worse and it finally cut out about 2 miles from home. 2nd time I it has had to be towed back but at least the last time it was 1.00 a.m so nobody witnessed it!
Not bothered to strip it yet. Got my eye on a couple of Legends on Ebay, last one went for £400 so with the current price of scrap I reckon I should end up with an engine for £250 plus quite a few spares as well (new wheel bearings are over £100 each). There are a few jobs that I have been putting off (cooling system was one of them) so no excuses now when the engine is out.

Ouch!

Thats the good thing about kit cars though - you know the car inside out and parts can be fairly cheap :hail:

John

Doh, surely this is an excuse for some head mods to reduce compression so you can up the boost? ;)

Any ideas what actually went, HG or something more serious?

doh, I've arrived home on a flat bed once and towed a second time :lol: hopefully it won't be too painful to sort :)

She's alive again!

Could have had her back on the road sooner but lots of mods done while the engine was out.
1st up was cooling system mods. Main one was to install an electric water pump to help with idle and low rev circulation duties and at the same time re-route the inlet from the header tank to also self bleed the radiator return pipe.
After the rediculous amount of stripping needed to get the old engine dropped out from underneath the car (gearbox had to come off and the air con pump, alternator, turbo, exhaust manifolds plus the rear suspension had to be stripped and pulled out of the way) the fixed chassis mountings have been cut off and replaced with bolt on mountings. I recon I could now manage a complete engine swap in a weekend, professional crew could probably manage it within an hour (provided no siezed screws/nuts.)
The old charge cooler had been blown up like a balloon because of slightly higher boost than originaly designed for, so a new system was called installed.
While the suspension was in bits the drive shafts were modified to cure a problem with the passenger side one bottoming out in its tripode housing when right hand cornering (ie every roundabout taken at reasonable speed.)
All of this was done while a new engine was sorted out (this one only had 110,000 miles on it, 40,000 less than the old one) unfortunatly when the new engine went back in quite a few of the mods clashed. Chargecooler was fouling the exhaust manifolds, charcooler tank plus re-routed header tank feed were fouling the cambelt cover.
So engine out again. Repositioning of the chargecooler tank and header tank pipework were fairly straightforward but timeconsuming. The chargecooler on the other hand involved new brackets, pipework and I even had to cut out and reroute the petrol filler pipe to get enough clearance from the exhaust manifold.
A few other minor mods done at the same time but now back on the road.
Can't say if they are performance improvements yet as I have 3/4 tank of old petrol to use up before filling up with fresh Vpower and giving her some beans.

Sounds like you've made some excellent progress Ken, well done.
And all way ahead of time for stoneleigh, you feeling alright? must be some other jobs you can do for another month ;)

Did you manage to do all that work without damaging the body? i'm petrified of scratching mine when I come to do some engine work on it.

Congrats on getting it back on the road. Sounds like it was no mean feat :high5:

John

Hi John,

I think 3/4 of the fun of kit car ownership is in the building and modifing and dreaming up the next alterations and improvements.

As for the bodywork no it didn't quite escape intact but not because of the removal and reinstaling of the engine and the chassis mods.

With the engine was sitting on the garage floor I was removing my gearbox adapter plate and one of the M12 cap head screws was fully rusted in. So with a resonably long bar on the end of the allen key I started standing on it. Then when that still didn't work I started bouncing on the end of the bar. That didn't work either but when the allen key finally broke there was that much tension in it that one of the bits flew off at what seemed like supersonic speed across the garage and hit the front of the car. It then carried on untill it caught the edge of the bonnet which was slightly open. After removing a chunk of that it flew up to the garage roof, bounced and then smashed into the rear wing before rattling to a halt at the back of the garage. So now got three dings to repair and ended up drilling out the cap head which really I knew I was going to have to do from the start.
Plenty of copper grease around the new cap heads.

Suppose it could have been worse - shattered windscreen, piece of allen key lodged in the brain or it might even have caught me in the bo!!ocks.

Blimey, sounds like you were a bit lucky really. Cars arent proper cars unless they have battle scars :)

You coming to Stoneleigh?

Yeah I'll be there - got to have a Phantom Vortex club meeting at least once a year or my insurance will go up by 10% :eusa_shifty:

What day though?