You've got to laugh really, or just cry
Have a guess where my oil pressure was going?
Liirge; The SW10 was a great cam, its not savage when it comes on cam but you can feel it come on cam, I think you could have it as a daily drve but you need to drive it with respect and not thrash it everyday, (asking a 17year old to NOT do this is pretty hard as its gives you such a big smile on your face when you do so its pretty hard to resist) It probley could do with a lower FD aswell i was using a 3.6 with the sc/cr box, i'd say a 3.7 or 3.9 would have been better to make use of the cam.
Sooo... The engine...
Well, where to start uhmm, When i built the engine everything was as it should be, On the initial start of the engine we took the plugs out and waiting for the oil pressure light to go out, which it did. I have a oil pressure guage in the binnacle but wasent connected because I didnt have the little gasket for the union. So I was drivng it for a good couple of months (trying not to thrash it) with no problems then connected the oil pressure guage to see what it was 60psi on initial start up and 45 in traffic.. great!!
In the mean while i did have a huge oil leak from cam cover side of the engine (it was so bad then fan belt came off but luckly was at college going to minispeed so they lent me the spanners to tighten it back up lol). This was from the begining of the engine build I thought i must have put a gasket or somthing on wrong so we then took the engine out to have a look for where the leak was coming from, removed cam cover etc... and found the spring inside the cam cover oil seal was missing so must be letting oil out and spraying it everywhere. so put a new seal in and still leaking!!!?! Wasent coming from the gearbox so must have be the half moon oil seal which i have put on wrong. So I left it leaking as i couldnet be asked taking the engine out again, just topping it up with 10w40 every other day because i couldent afford to keep getting decent 20w50 so used my old man's oil drum in the workshop (on the sly) This was probley one reason why it didnt last because of the diffrent grades of oil being used..
1'st i was using 20w50 running in oil cheapo, 2'nd millers 20w50 semi-sync, 10w40 from drum, 5w30 (done a long trip from w london to reading then brighton) and needed oil urgently due to loosing it so quickly at high revs on the motorway. and had to buy diesel 5w30 as thats all they had in the garage!
(sorry engine!!). Not a good mixture, is it.
so a few weeks later i noticed my oil pressure was getting rather low in traffic 15psi if im lucky, i thought oh f&*k!! So i went straight to minispeed to get some decent 20w50 and new oil filter to try and help it.. but it dident it was still low so i checked the oil relif valve which was looking in good order so i put a spring behind it to try and raise it a little, this worked for a while but i knew the damage had been done to the engine and wouldent last much longer in the back of my head
. But i needed the mini everyday so kept using it with the low oil pressure, every day it was getting lower and lower... and then one day i was driving down the motorway doing 50mph and heard a really bad knocking sound coming from the engine the oil pressure was about 20psi when this happend, so i had to go off at the next junction anyway but when i was approaching the end of the slip road i put it in 3rd as you do and the clutch pedal was all soft and was a pulsating/vibrating feeling was not right at all. So i pulled over and opened the bonnet to see if theres anything extremly obvious, there wasent just as it should look. so i carried driving up the road doing a steady 20mph but dident want to move and wanted to stall in every gear i must have got 800yards up the road then it just stalled everything turned off. so i pulled over in the road and tried to start it, it started but when you press the clutch it died instantly the oil pressure at this stage must have been 10psi im guessing. so I phoned the aa and they came to tow me.
So what i think caused it to basicly blow up, consistent wrong grades of oil, not really run in as it should have been, thrashing it about to much around town at huge revs, doing 105mph at huge revs isent a good idea to. The release bearing and pivot pin where really worn aswell (see pictures) so wasent helping matters on the clutch side.
The primary gear wasnt the best to begin with either. But all the thrusts where in the right way along with everything else. The crank is scrap basicly because it has picked up really bad on the mains/big ends and its already on a high grind anyway and you couldnt save it, the block is scrap to where the thrusts have worn so much on the crank and block and has left nasty markings on both sides of the main.
So are now both on the scrap, sad day.
The anoying thing is the half moon seal was fitted correctly all that time!!, so still have no idea what caused the leak!!! But I think the seal was a crap one and was really hard prepared to the genuine one ive brought.
New, with new release bearing, hopefully this one wont rattle like a demon.
Hope that sums up what happend to the engine, I've probley left bits out of what happend but thats it in a nutshell.
Edited by Racer_Pete, 24 April 2010 - 10:29 PM.
