Moggy

Just a track day. We've got a friend of ours giving free tuition for the day so hopefully learn something.

It would be good to see you down there. Only £135 for the day by the way.......

OldDogmeat

Chaps, seeing as how you two stripped a 325 you'll have a good idea of what would be involved in putting back the bits that would make it road legal I imagine.

If I were for instance to buy a race car that had been stripped back complely what would you see as needing to go back on to make it road legal and what's involved in having the car certified again as road legal?

B0ZWELL

10 years ago it was easy. i bought an ex race Renault 5 Turbo Cup Car and got it road registered. it cost the price of an MOT and £25 plus 1 years road tax.

they MOT'd it without a registration number and just put 'not registered' where the reg should be. a man from the ministry came and inspected the car, took a few reciepts i had with the car, then a few days later i had a V5 with a Q reg number.

i fear now that it wont be anywhere as easy with the new MOT system .

plus be aware that many race cars could actually be stolen just to go racing. i was at one race meeting where the police turned up and impounded loads of cars.

my Renault didn't have a chassis number so the guy from the ministry said i could pick one out of the blue.


the chassis number on this car is my date of birth



rust free, just a few war wounds.


it didn't need an interior for the mot just one seat and seatbelt will pass . as long as all the lights work as well as wipers etc and it has road legal tyres there shouln't be a problem

Moggy

Fairly easy.

Will chat on Sat.

mikey k

Didn't make it - too much DIY
How did you get on?

OldDogmeat

Shame you could'nt make it Mike, would have been good to have met you.

Was good and useful to meet with Nige and Lee (Finally, after previous failed attempt) and had a good chat with both the chaps.

There appeared to be a bit of an issue with oil temperature for the chaps which looked a tad concerning for them so myself and my mate got out of the way for a bit but on return Lee told me that another E30 owner who really knew the cars had taken a look and said it was likley the oil itself and that a change of oil would probably fix it.

I'd be very interested to hear what the outcome was chaps.

Really good to meet you both btw

Fieldl

Sorry we didn't get a load of time to chat we were a little sidetracked with a worrying issue as you mention. I will PM you my contact details feel free to get in touch with any questions.

I'll copy a post I made to the tech forum elsewhere yesterday. Any ideas gratefully received!

--------
We were out at Oulton yesterday in the race car and had some weird goings on. We replaced the engine one race and two track days ago. In that time we've also change the oil and filter. We are using Fuchs 5w/40 Semi-Synth

Whilst on track we could notice immediately that the engine was making a ticking noise under load. Primarily when accelerating hard through 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Backing off the noise went away.

Checked oil, all fine.
After lunch the oil light started making an appearance, so back to the paddock and check oil again. All fine. The oil light seemingly was on occasionally on the track again whilst under load or cornering hard but more frequently whilst idling. Later on the light was on permanently when idling. We also noticed the car getting hotter than we have ever seen.

Checking the radiator hoses the thermostat was working as all where hot. We decided to knock it on the head and load the car on the trailer. When I got it in, it overheated and started boiling over, dumping the fluid out of the steam valve.

I had also notice the car get progressively harder to start throughout the day and by early afternoon it was struggling to idle. Loading it on the trailer was a pain as it would stall on idle at that stage.

So whats gone wrong....
Initial thoughts:
1) We were advised to run higher spec oil, 0W30 fully synth. We will remember this for the future however I suspect an oil change isn't going to fix it
2) Coolant was replaced recently (last engine change) but radiator wasn't it might have crapped out. Then I would expect either of the hoses not to have been nuclear or coolant all over the bloody place.
3) HGF possibly linked to oil pump failure or valve spring breakage which then screwed the lot.

Any ideas I haven't considered?

So to diagnose I guess I need to get the head off?
Would it be easier/cheaper to replace the engine again?

Some thoughts...
Next time around we will upgrade the oil pump either by adding washers to the pressure spring or using the diesel one.
Swap the rad for an e36 one with integrated coolant reservoir binning off the viscous fan and replacing it with a switched one.
Run higher spec oil to prevent it from overheating and turning to pish when hot.

mikey k

Not much else I can think of on the oil, losing the pressure or cooking it will always lead to trouble of various types and usually together
Get an oil pressure & temp gauge in there for the future

Fieldl

Yep next time around oil pressure gauge is a must. Current think is suspect crankrod bearing failure or similar leading to other problems. So soon we will be on the hunt for number 3 which we will have apart before fitting, reshell and check other core components prior to fitting it.

So tune in soon for you next installment of "Lee & Nige - How do engines work?"

ge2

I feel your pain.

I'm just having the bottom end of the Caterham engine rebuilt. The annoying thing is that it was a perfectly healthy engine with at least another season in it but something caused it to lose a lot of oil and that was that.

The good thing with these beemer engines is that they are so cheap. I take it you're keeping it standard too?

We're having the spare engine that came with my BMW stripped down and rebuilt just in case. We'll go halves and it'll go into the first car that needs it (I mean the other bmw, not the Caterham, that would be silly ).