If you really wipe something, that's certainly true, but a lot of times it's
just a little broken. About mid-season last year I broke an oil pump shaft.
I saw the oil light, pushed in the clutch and coasted. The motor still
sounded sweet, so I let it run a little bit while I confirmed that the
pressure was zero. It was.
I dropped the pan, pulled the center main bearing and it looked fine. The
rod bearings weren't--they were just starting to go. But the crank looked
perfect. Replaced the rod bearings, replaced the pump and shaft. Won my race
and finished the season. My wife was the real heroine--she drove me all the
way back to Portland to get the rod bearings that were sitting on my
workbench (duh) and back to the track (Seattle) while I slept in the
passenger seat. All that and she's cute!
Same goes for pistons. When number four sticks, it usually doesn't do it
catastrophically unless you ignore the warning signs and just keep racing.
You don't have junk everywhere, you just have a somewhat seized piston that
sticks it's rings. You drop the three and four rods, pull the sleeves,
replace the figure eight gasket, drop in a new #4 sleeve and a new piston
and Bob's your uncle.
Any worse than that and I'm willing to watch. But most times it's not all
that bad, and frankly I get a kick out of racing a car that was terminal the
day before that I fixed with my own hands. You don't get to do that much in
the marketing business.
Probably my looney attitude about this comes from many years of motorcycle
racing, where everyone used to expect that no matter what happened to an
engine, you'd pull it and fix it before qualifying the next morning. Broken
rod sticking through the crankcase? No problem--we can fix that. It helps
that you can lift the motor out of the frame by yourself.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-fot@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-fot@autox.team.net] On Behalf
Of Henry Frye
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 7:29 AM
To: fot@autox.team.net
Subject: RE: Changing camshafts
At 06:56 AM 03/07/2005 -0800, Bill Babcock wrote:
>For that matter, I carry rod and center main bearings, sleeves and
>pistons, spare oil pump, water pump, etc.. I don't pop a beer, I pop
>the oil pan and start fixing. Might as well, going to need to fix it
>anyway. At the track there's usually someone there to pass the wrenches.
When it comes to popping open the pan, I'm a "Cleanliness in next to
Godliness" kind of guy. Not that anyone who has seen my shop would believe
that, mind you...
I am not afraid to get into just about anything in the paddock, but I draw
the line on the bottom end of my engine. If something goes wrong that wipes
out bearings, pistons, sleeves, the oil pump, etc., my next course of action
is pulling the engine, disassembling it, and sending the block and whatever
bits to the machine shop to get cleaned out.
I am not about to run an engine if I have any doubts of contaminants in the
oil system. It's just not worth it...
Bill, when you come up with that Dzus fastener system for the head, I'll buy
one!
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