Right, this is a long ass post of high's and low's and a ****ing lot of pictures - so bear with me!
Quick pic of my engine mount as it was. Paint marked them and have done a few hundred miles of varied driving (and a long trailer journey lol) and they haven't moved. Phew!
Some more new tyres... Yoko's are ****ing awesome! Can't wait to stick the rears on too and have a proper thrash
Carried on from tyre fitting up to Yorkshire (Dewsbury to be exact) - stuffed the old girl in to a garage with a certain sexual Tigra.
Then later that evening started pulling my car apart - the man Specky at work.
Specky's jacking skills scared me. Never had a car that high on a jack
Didn't take long to stick an equal length shaft one though - Speckles even taught me how CV's went together which was nice
A quick run round the block and a launch in the wet proved that the equal length shafts make a massive difference - should cut down on the uneven wear hopefully!
Even had time to try on Specky's Micky T's - think they were 'slightly' too big - wing didn't like them much!
Was happy leaving the cars overnight - the guard dogs were larger than your average cow. Soft as **** though it all fairness
msl:
We all love Boost...just wish I had some!
Saturday night saw the tables turned - after Specky assisted in fitting my shaft, his fox shat itself so we had a nice late night repair job. F28 out, rebuilt with spare box (had to keep existing casing and swap diff over) then get it all back together - didn't take us long in all fairness!
LOT of filings when it came apart - we think the selector broke so it jammed between 2nd and 4th.
Sunday saw the wrinklies come out.
Some daft old guy appeared too. He
wasn't drunk.
Then later on Sunday, it gave up. 140 miles from home - oh dear! Thought the timing belt had slipped at first (still think it was a tooth out tbh) - got it running again but was rattling its tits off and wouldn't drive as had no compression.
Got dragged back to a local services...
...and 5 1/2 hours later an AA contracted wagon turned up. Complaint has been lodged... I was facking fuming at how long it took!
First suspicion was something on #2 going by plug colour...
So started stripping the head off on Monday morning!
Came off with no problems!
Hmmm valves look straight - just need a clean up.
So assumed the scary noises were a bottom end bearing - all pulled out and apart from some wear on the bores - everything was spot on. Clearly had a full rebuild at some point as bearings have very little wear on them.
Only slightly worrying thing was that all but one of the sump bolts was finger tight!
Found a small piece of metal in the sump - couldn't figure out where it had come from.
Stripped the head down to an extent...
Then tonight started on the rest.
Got all the way to the last exhaust valve (#4, far right) and thought I wasn't going to find anything wrong.
But wait!
That'll be the little ******* then! Matched it to the piece i'd recovered from the sump - still a bit missing though so need to blow the oil ways through and check in the filter.
So basically it was one of the spring seats that had snapped (Specky was first and only person to guess that iirc from from terrible original pictures
). Already emailed one of our parts guys to track me some down - its part number 90285797 (early engine) if anyone is interested
Earlier today I ordered everything else that I need from Autovaux (cambelt, sump gasket with baffle, rod bolts, head bolts and head gasket set). Hopefully i'll have everything by Saturday morning - going to get a new sump from GAZ'D on Saturday as mine is cracked to **** then can start sticking it together properly - my aim is to have it running on Sunday so that I can get some miles on it before TOTB.
Its going to be a loooooooooooooooooong weekend I think!
