7th February 2004
Took the car out for run this afternoon. The original intention was a quick trundle to get the oil warmed up so I could change it, but I ended up going Castle TVR/Lotus open day with Bonce.
This was the first time I had driven it since I got the new tintop, and it is certainly quite different! Had a bit of clutch trouble at first, but got used to it, though it seemed to be a bit sticky sometimes.
Anyway, had a reasonable run out, was good the blow thw cobwebs out and oggle some other nice cars!

14th February 2004
Decided I would get on with the oil change on the car today. There's a list of jobs pending now, and the weather is not too cold for spending hours in the garage again - haven't done that for a while!
So I got the ball rolling by a short drive around the block a couple of times to warm the oil up, which will help it come out of the engine better. Once back I got the car up in the air, with the rear higher to help drainage. Then worked on letting the oil out - the sump plug lets out what's in the engine, remove the feed from the oil tank to empty the tank, and (cos I'm excessively thorough) remove and empty the oil cooler.
This all takes a while and is quite messy, but at least I know it's all being done properly, and I'm getting as much of the old oil out as possible.
While I have got the oil out, I decided I would take the clutch out for an inspection (otherwise it's oil out again). This is quite easy on a bike engined car as it is just behind a cover at the front end of the engine. So a quick check with the Haynes manual, and it's off with the clutch cover. Easy enough, but the gasket has self-destructed, no great drama, you can't really re-use them anyway.
Next thing to do is to carefully remove the clutch springs. To do this you should unwind them each a bit at a time in a criss-cross pattern. This ensures that the plates release evenly and don't get jammed in the basket.
Once the springs are removed it is a simple enough job to carefully remove the clutch alternating friction and steel plates, being careful to maintain the order so that they can be replaced as they came out (although it is only the first and last friction which are different). I also had the less simple task of removing the damaged gasket from the clutch cover.
Something I noticed whilst inspecting the clutch parts was that the springs appear to have a blue coating on them, which can be scraped off with a finger nail. I'll have to research whether this is something bad or not. Also the last steel plate was quite blued so has obviously seen some temperature - though as this is the one nearest the gearbox it is not totally surprising.
I'll consult the BEC list on these points, and also find out what the general method of replacing the gasket is. Also as the clutch is out I am thinking about replacing the springs for some uprated items - they are fairly cheap and may avoid clutch slip issues in the future (bearing in mind that the oil has to come out, and therefore be changed, to get at the clutch).

15th February 2004
Carrying on where I left off yesterday, I fit the new oil filter and re-attach the locking jubilee clip around it, which I fitted to prevent the filter from unwinding itself. On a similar theme, I decided that it wouldn't take a whole lot of effort to drill the head of the sump plug in order to lockwire it. This is simply done using a small drill bit, and I'll find something to wire it to when I refit everything properly and fill up with oil.
Whilst feeling suitably paranoid about losing the oil, I am going to get some new jubilee clips for the oil feed and scavenge pipes. These clips are not the toughest things around, so doubling up and using new ones seems like a fairly sensible precaution.
Whilst I've got the oil system in bits, I decide that I will look into resolving something that has been bothering me since day one. The oil pressure sender is fitted via an adapter which spaces the sender from the engine - this both adapts the threads, and isolates it a little from the vibration of the engine, which is well known for killing senders.
The problem is that the adapter extends the connector on the end of the sender against the oil feed pipe. You can see on the pipe where it has been sitting/rubbing against it, so I've decided to check out getting a flexible adapter made up. This will provide better isolation from vibration, and resolve the rubbing problem.
The next chunk of time was spent finishing off the draining and tidying up of the old oil, and loosely re-assembling or covering bits of the oil system to prevent any contamination. I can't refit it all properly yet as I am yet to sort out the clutch, which has to be done first - I am going to order some uprated springs, but can use ordinary silicone to replace the gasket. So it's a good clean up at the front of the engine bay while I have access, and a chance for a look and check over everything.
Final bit of fiddling for the day was the start thinking about a replacement for the airbox. I'd like to try out a foam 'sausage' filter, as these are generally considered to provide a little extra power, particularly over the Westfield airbox. The possible downside is that there will be some more induction noise, which is not really a problem for road use [indeed, it could be argued to be a good thing : )], but may push the noise too high for track use.
The problem I have is that the injection Blackbird features a cold air injection system for improved cold idle. This is fed through additional channels in the top face of the throttle bodies. So a standard air filter backplate would block this off and the cold idle would not work so well. The airbox has some natty machining to its backplate which allow air to leak into these channels, and I will need to replicate this on the backplate for a filter. Another problem is that the face of the throttle bodies is below the level of the fuel rail, so a flat backplate would foul this. (For some pics of this problem, see 7th April last year)
So I spent some time making a mockup of a shaped backplate which will resolve both of these issues. The first part raises the height of the backplate to clear the fuel rail, regulator, and throttle cable linkage. Part two will be working out the orientation under the bonnet bulge for the filter (and hence backplate). The pictures probably explain things better than I can in words...

28th February 2004
Didn't get chance to play last weekend, and it's been too naffing cold to motivate me out to the garage during the week! But I've been working in the background on researching what I'm doing next.
Whilst I've got the oil system apart, I can't help thinking I should do something about the connections to the sump. Presently the pipes just push onto plain fittings on the sump, and are tightened up with jubilee clips. This has worked just fine until now, but there's always a nagging paranoia that it's just a bit too easy for one of these pipes to work loose - then it's bye bye engine before you know anything is wrong.
By some fortune, DanB from cam7 has got some JIC connectors for the sump going spare, so hopefully I'll do a deal with him to get hold of them. Then I need to measure and price up new connecting pipes and some connectors for the scavenge pump and oil tank.
Whilst I was thinking about these improvements, I got back onto thinking about adding a thermostat to the oil system. The problem I have is that generally the oil is massively overcooled - even with two thirds of the cooler blanked off, even in hot weather in the summer the oil was still normal temperature. When pressing on, the oil gets warm quite quickly, so the cooling is needed.
The answer is an oil thermostat which will only allow oil to flow through the cooler at 80c plus. This will ensure I have the benefit of the cooler as and when I need it, and will mean the oil runs at a better temperature most of the time (and sooner from cold).
So today I spent some time looking and measuring up where the stat can be fitted and what adjustments to the plumbing will be needed. To make life easier I removed the air horns, and removed the oil pipe from scavenge to cooler.
The oil stat has four connections on it. One is the oil flow in, another the oil flow out, the other two are the flow to and from the oil cooler. These final two are bypassed up to 80c by a wax-based 'switch' in the stat. This means that it is fairly simple to just interrupt the existing oil cooler circuit with the oil stat.
I rough up a template to the dimensions of the stat to allow me to play with finding space for it, and measure up the pipework requirements. The pipes have to be made up with a special tool, so I need to get this bit right.
Fortunately it looks like the best location for it, behind the air horn compressor, is pretty much already on the route the oil cooler pipes take. This means I can just chop my existing pipes and add extra connectors to ends that are left, and it should all fit.
Another couple of little jobs I did. Firstly I moved the earth connection for the water temp gauge, which was previously attached at the air horn mount bracket. I spied what appears to be an earth connection on the engine block which was much nearer and neater, so moved it to there.
Secondly I had tried before to remove the adapter for the oil outlet on the oil tank, but couldn't budge it. It is clearly removable, and the main problem is actually holding the tank whilst leaning on a spanner. So I clamped the adapter in the vice and it easily came undone. It revealed a pleasant surprise in that the tank contains a gauze filter in the outlet, a good thing. The idea here is to find out if I can get an adapter made up for a threaded fitting for the pipe.

29th February 2004
I was going to fit some aftermarket uprated clutch springs, but there is some differing experiences and opinions on whether this is a good thing (since the Honda ones work fine), and which third party ones are any good. So I think I'm just going to stick it back together, but add a couple of extra washers under each spring to aid the bite a bit. Also I was going to just use silicone instead of a gasket on the clutch cover, but then I realised for the sake of a few quid it's not worth risking having excess silicone floating around in the engine.
When I came to the job I didn't quite have enough identical M6 washers to fit two under each spring, but I modified some M5 penny washers to fit over the clutch spring bolts, cleaned them up, and then refitted the clutch cover plate properly. I just need to get hold of a gasket before I can refit the outer clutch cover.
Not alot of garage time today, but I took some extra pictures of the connectors on the sump and scavenge pump so I can look at replacing these with some better/ threaded connectors. As you can see, they are a very simple push on fit, which although seems to have worked fine to date, does seem like a potential weak point worth upgrading at this point in time.

©2002-2009 David Hackett UDM4