So I’ve been getting pretty excited over the last few days and its not because Santa was coming. Car has been off the road since August and I’ve finally decided exactly what I’d like doing, and work has begun.
Rear Bulkhead Removed
New Roll Hoop/Cage in place
Dry Sump Tank
Fitting the dry sump tank in the engine bay is going to be an interesting exercise. Its one of the reasons that we have removed the rear bulkhead so that we can get some additional space on the shelf above the tank.
Looking err good mate. So I guess the bulkhead goes back in or is a new windowless bulk head going back in? Interested you went down the cage route, how much does it weigh and where is it from. Are you changing your drivers seat as well?
Hope it’s ready for Andlesey.
A new windowless ally bulkhead will go in, as the idea is to reclaim space in the engine bay for the dry sump tank.
Gone done the cage route as it seemed like the ideal opportunity when the clam off and the bulkhead was out. Certainly wouldn’t want to have had the new bulkhead fabricated and then changed again in the future.
The cage is a Custom Cages cage from Hofmanns. Only the rear cage, as I’m wary of driving car on the road with front cage as well.
Not sure exactly what it weighs, but from lifting old and new it certainly hasn’t added any weight. Sticking with the Reverie seats for now.
[quote=marcp]
How did you get the crutch harness mounts in the rear seat mount ? you don’t have a picture from the rear do you [/quote]
Sorry no pictures from the rear. The harness mounts are drilled all the way through with spreader plates on the underside of the car. There are inserts in the beam, so that it doesn’t crush when they were tightened up.
I stopped using them for the crutch straps a while ago and went back to a 5 point belt with a bar attached to the underside of the seat.
Going to go back to using a 6 point again next year and have got some of these to fit:
Will, just in the interest of a good discussion why have you decided to go dry sump?
Don’t get me wrong, I know what a dry sump is, what it does and how it does it, but if you are doing it for oil surge issues, what was your thinking behind all the work, expense and extra weight and complication that a dry sump brings? Don’t you think you can deal with any surge issues with a good sump baffle and / or an accusump?
A good dry sump system will give extra BHP due to the fact it will create a vacuum in the crank case and this all helps the engine. However you then get problems with oil seals that are designed to stop oil leaking out rather than air being pulled in?
Why a dry sump? Well in the end it came down to more of a why not as I didn’t trust my previous setup anymore. Any BHP gain will just be a bonus.
I’ve been running my car with a Moroso baffled sump and an Accusump for the last few years so thought that I had the oil starvation issue covered. Unfortunately as you all know that doesn’t appear to have been the case and I’ve now got an expensive engine rebuild in progress. I could have put it down to bad luck and continued as I was, but to be honest, I’ve never been very comfortable with the Accusump. If I’d been keeping it I would have added a tell tail indicator to let me know when it was working as I’m not convinced it was doing its job. Worried that it might have been sucking additional oil out of the sump, and potentially making things worse, rather than better. All just in my head I’m sure.
The main problem I’ve had in deciding what to do, is that we don’t know exactly what caused the failure. Its clear that there was next to no oil left in the sump after the failure, but not sure where the oil went. There is some evidence that some has burned off in the sump, but not sure if this was just at the end or if it had been occuring prior to the main failure. If I’d had people commenting that the car had been smoking then I’d have been happier.
The year before, I’d had problems with loss of oil on a day at Silverstone and that was down to the Accusump. When pressurized it had been leaking into the boot. That was a bit scary with the proximity to the exhaust. That was fixed, and there is not evidence of recurrance, but it just added to my unease.
In the end bought a new short block as it didn’t cost much over having the original sleeved and I felt that there was more scope for problems with the liners.
Original block had light scoring and the crank was bent so getting the short block made a lot of sense.
Hangar 111 have been doing the work, with Scholar handling the engine internals, porting, balancing etc.
