Christmas Catch Up

Well to roll the weeks back a bit I guess it was around the 15th of December (which was the second round of the Ollie Brown series), now I don’t remember much but as 53a was still having cooling problems it was a bit of a boring night. The first couple of races the car was pretty loose but still not running bad. But alas around lap 10 of the first two races I had to pull off and wait for the race to finish to cross the line to get at least 1 point. Better to get 1 than none. However the final race of the night didn’t go according to plan. The suspension was tightened up even more and off we went. Running up the front for the first couple of laps, down the front straight, way too fast, turned into the bend but it was all too late. The car slammed hard into and up the wall, still running and down the back straight. Unfortunately the subsequent laps a faint haze of blue smoke started drifting from the engine, and each lap it got worse and worse, until finally flames began erupting from under the bonnet.

All the gauges were still reading properly, but after the fire was put out two or three times the oil pressure started to wiggle and the engine was shut down. We were to find out later that the fire was caused by oil being squirted onto the hot exhausts from a cracked oil cooler which must have broken when the car slammed into the wall. There are some pictures on the shot360.co.nz, but at $5 per photo and another $5 for shipping they are far too expensive for a standard 6x4, especially of my own car.

Anyway after putting the car up on the hoist and draining the oil, we were only left with 3 out of 8.5 liters so the decision was made to take the sump off and check the bearings. After taking the big ends off (the part of the conrod that connects to the crankshaft) we could see that the bearings had just started catch the crank. Which means the oil pump was possibly just starting to suck air. On the bright side the main bearings were perfect, so just the big end conrod bearings had to be replaced.

Catch ya.....MadPhil