Tech tips for today

Thought I might impart a few tech tips that spring to mind as a result of goings on in the w/shp this week. Firstly be careful when fitting or refitting your 6 cyl oil filter adapter to your block. We have a couple of instances recently of terminal and near terminal cranks and or crank shells as a result of damaged or incorrect spec inner 'O' rings that go between the adapter and block. The first was a week or two ago and the seal that had been fitted was far to small in profile and was allowing unfiltered oil to go straight to the shells/crank. Fortunately the crank survived unscathed but we had to change the shells and this on an engine that had run less than an hour, not fitted by us of course, but by a 'professional' garage never the less! The second was on a car in for an engine change this week because of a noisy crank. On taking the adapter off Karl noticed that the inner 'O' ring had been damaged when it had been fitted, again allowing unfiltered oil straight to the crank.

Second tech tip. We have a lovely PI saloon in the w/shp that was losing power and dying. All the usual culprits were blamed pre seeing the car diagnosis, fuel pump, prv, etc, etc. Poor old Lucas PI it always gets the blame and 90% of the time its something else. As it was this time, any thoughts as to what it might be? No. Try this, the car had recently been fitted with a refurbished tank with some of that miracle gunk injected that is supposed to line the tank with a bullet proof layer. Well within a couple of weeks this layer was starting to be washed off by the petrol! Sheets of the stuff were being sucked into the outlet and giving the in line filters a coronary.

We had a similar thing a year or so back with a TR6, a great big glob of silicon sealer was rolling around in the tank, the car would go great for a while and then the sealer would roll over the outlet, and then? Well you know the rest.

Talking of TR6's and silicon sealer, we have had a nice red 125bhp car in the w'shp this week. The owner was being passed between pillar and post with various traders 'having a go' at fixing the leaks from around his metering unit. Having reached the end of his tether and having shelled out for recon metering unit and loads of labour to no avail he was pointed in our direction. What did we find? Metering unit pedestal seals shagged, allowing fuel to drain from the m/unit past the first seal and exit via the tell tale hole in the pedestal. It was worse than that though, whoever had fitted the metering unit last had fitted far to small a profile 'O' ring between the m/unit and pedestal, and decided to back that up with a good application of silicon sealer! It gets better, the m/unit had been timed 180 degrees out and the distributor clamp wasn't (clamping!), allowing the dizzy to float around to its hearts content, no wonder it ran like a bag of poo! A couple of hours labour and a couple of quid for some new seals/O rings, and the thing is really sweet, lovely and smooth, and no leaks!

That's it for today, I'm orf.