SimonB

Always hard to know which of the contradictory ones to go for! I'm going to do a mixture I think, I'm going to give it progressively more throttle and back off aka Motoman, but no real positive boost. Then I'm going to change the oil and filter after 50 miles or so and drive it with varying throttle and engine load, keeping it off much boost (it needs a remap anyway) and under 4krpm. It needs to be MOTd too.

It lives! Had some problems getting oil pressure to start with, in fact it took most of the afternoon! I ended up using a hand pump to pump oil through the oil lines to my oil cooler (from the oilstat), the return to the block from the oilstat and back up the feed from the block to the oil filter. Having the remote filter, cooler and oil thermostat definitely didn't help. Eventually after a lot of mess and fiddle I got the pump to prime. It pretty much fired straight up. It runs a little rough - it needs the map tweaking a bit but it's ok on the wideband closed loop on the Motec. I forgot just how much new heatwrap smokes, bit disconcerting having clouds of smoke come out of the bonnet! Took it for a quick shakedown drive, the new clutch is really grabby right now! I need to sort a few things out, I have a couple of coolant leaks from the hose going from the pipe on the block to the heater matrix, plus my oil pressure sensor isn't working, think the plug is connected in wrong. Think the power steering needs bleeeding too. Still, I'm a happy man!

It may prime the pump for a couple of secs if you haven't started it for a while, can't remember now. But it certainly shouldn't run the pump continuously, that's why you have to bridge the FP and +B pins in the diagnostic plug if you want to check fuel pressure etc. And if you have just shut it off it shouldn't prime with ignition on either IIRC.

Not true actually. Ignition on doesn't run the pump, it only runs while cranking. It also runs briefly on key off IIRC to prime the pumps for the next time you start it.

Egger Lawson aka competition car insurance are still the only place I know that do it, it's not like normal insurance though, you have to specify how much cover you want and what excess you are willing to pay. Even then it doesn't cover engine damage, but it does cover bodywork damage if you go off and clout a barrier or tyres or whatever. I've had to claim on it in the past and they paid up with no problems.

It's necessary if you want to increase the stock fuel pressure if you are trying to squeeze more from smaller injectors, or if you replace the fuel rail, in which case you obviously need one as the stock one would go as well. With a T61 and 650ccc injectors you should be fine.

It won't be the O2 sensor, assuming you're talking about starting it from cold. It will be in open loop until the sensor warms up, so won't be using the O2 sensor. It will be a dodgy map or incorrect fuel pressure for the map if you have an adjustable FPR, but most likely the map. Don't run it if it's running very rich, it will destroy your engine through bore wash - i.e. the excess fuel will wash the oil from the cylinder walls and you will score the cylinder walls and knacker the rings.

Ok, I'm bored so here's some info to correct some of the statements in this thread. The valves wouldn't close, the cam shafts would stop rotating -not necessarily immediately if they were really whizzing round but pretty quick because there's a lot of resistance there due to the valve springs. The position they stopped in would determine which valves were open, closed or somewhere in between. The valve spring would indeed press the bucket and shim upwards, but that pressure won't rotate the cam even if it was pushing at just the right bit of the lobe because one of the other lobes on the cam would have to compress another spring if the cam rotated. The reason you need higher oil pressure if the engine speed is higher is to make sure the main and con rod bearings have a strong enough oil film to stop the crank from touching the bearing and damaging it. Since the oil pump is driven by the crank, the oil pressure will always be correct for the speed the bottom end is rotating. The engine sensors would in fact continue working fine as the ignition would be on. But if they didn't it wouldn't make any difference - the only sensors for general engine operation are oil pressure (which just lights a warning light), cam and crank position (obviously the cam sensors would stop signalling and the crank would continue which would cause the ECU to flag an error), oil level, coolant temp, intake temp and manifold pressure (or MAF). None of those have any bearing on oil flow.

It's not free to do anything, it's connected to the wheels! Plus with no compression you have no force on the pistons to do anything other than run at road speed, or coast down if you put the clutch in. And even if it did, the oil pump is driven from the crank, and therefore spins at the same speed as the engine. Plus it has a pressure relief valve to avoid running at too high a pressure. So no!

Funnily enough I did exactly the same thing, so was about to suggest it! I hand't clamped it in, there's a lever that does so.

I'm hoping to fire it up tomorrow. I was going to do it last weekend but had a few problems to sort out. To start with I was getting no power to the ECU. Got the multimeter out and probed around before I discovered I hadn't locked the big orange multiplug into place above the ECU. It was connected but not locked into place. Then after filling it with coolant and water and checking everything the starter wouldn't turn. This turned out after more multimetering to be a small grey plug on the harness that wasn't plugged in on the left hand side by the ECU - easy to miss as it's hidden by the other plugs and I thought it was the plug for the traction control ECU or something. Anyway it's all ready now, and re-insured.

I'd say yes generally, I've yet to see a decent one, so I'd much prefer to vote for a proper pic IMO. Apart from tweaking colour balance and stuff of course. Also, for me the arty shots should be just that, arty. Not pics of a full car against a background - those are supra portraits. You want strange angles, bits of a car, mirror views, unusual views through your wheel spokes, that sort of thing. There, I have spoken...

Unfortunately not, I reused my old gasket. It's not 1/8NPT, it's bigger than that, I can't actually remember the size now, it's either 1/4 or 3/8 NPT.

No, that would be a pain! Not too bad from underneath if you had a lift perhaps.

Well sort of, you can't beat a good placebo. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong, I should believe in some of this rubbish! Although you could just believe that drinking tap water cures all ills and save yourself some money...

I didn't need to because I have an aftermarket intake. As I understand it the coolant lines are there to stop the throttle freezing in very cold weather. Same for the idle control valve. The stock oil cooler I have removed because I have a Mocal oil cooler, that leaves a threaded feed in the block that I blocked with a NPT plug. There is a feed from the head that goes to the TB that I have just blocked for now.

Mine goes to the port on the water pump that is used for the stock turbos - I replaced the fitting with a threaded union.

That's exactly what I have done one my engine build, only instead of blanking off the intake side I used a water pipe from an NA which doesn't go round that side of the block. Still have my heater as it's a road car. There's details of what I did on my engine build thread.

Couldn't agree more, don't even get me started on homeopathy. Just go and drink some seawater, the ultimate dilution of every possible homeopathic remedy.

Cheers Jake, it doesn't mention diamond cut wheels on their site but I'll give them a ring. Got to get the thing back on the road first anyway! Hmmm, they do have these on their site though, nice...

Also, the famous Motoman method is talking about NA engines when it's talking about full throttle. The equivalent on a turbo engine would be to run it up to 0 on the boost gauge (i.e. atmospheric) rather than give it full boost. That would be enough to force the rings against the bores. The other thing is you need to make sure you have a proper map if you have an aftermarket ECU, fueling etc so it doesn't run rich while you're running in.

That's the stuff I'm going to use. The thing is to use good quality mineral oil, not cheapo crap stuff. There's nothing wrong with good quality mineral oil, it just breaks down quicker than synthetic. There's lots of hearsay and mystical stuff about engine break in you find. The engine builder is probably right, I'm not really sure it makes any difference with modern rings and plateau honing. But hey, it's not much more hassle doing it so I figure I may as well. I'll be using Millers break in oil for the first fill and the second after the initial run. Then I'll switch to fully synth after 500 miles or so I reckon.

He didn't use to be able to do diamond cutting, unless he's started doing it recently. You need a lathe etc so it tends to be engineering places that do. EDIT: Oops, beaten to it!

That's not too bad at all with free carriage too. Post up some pics of the results, would be good to see!

Thanks guys. Luckily I have the standard wheels I can swap on while they are being done. I'll give Pristine a call. How much did they charge?