Well, Totem Rally didn't exactly work out as planned. The event started out well enough...I had great drive up, and Saturday was a tonne of fun. The morning stages were mostly gravel due to warmer temperatures, but as we climbed up in elevation we got to see some colder temps and 'old snow'. The car started to feel 'right', and I was getting used to it on the slippery stuff which was a relief beyond reliefs.
See, I swapped from super-stiff sidewall summer performance tires to snow tires, and then immediately left on a five hour drive over the Duffy Lake road to the rally start. The Duffy is a mountain pass full of twisties and dangerous corners, which I pretty much know like the back of my hand and usually enjoy. The entire trip the car felt like it was trying to kill me. You'd turn the wheel, the car would turn in...followed by the sidewalls flexing and then it would REALLY turn in. Horribly unpredictable and near deadly before I wisely calmed down.
But yes...by mid-day Saturday, I was back to getting along with the car on all surface types.
Saturday afternoon was a blast. Mud, gravel, a bit of snow and then a "late on transit" night time blast through mud and ice with the odd fallen tree. Fun is seeing a downed tree, hitting the brakes and having to do the split-second determination of whether a) you lost all brakes on the car 'somewhere back there' or b) that's ice, not water and you have no grip. Oh yes! B. Quick, adapt! Alas, a stage later and the fun was over.
The last two stages for the day were cancelled due to multiple road blockages. I came upon the rally group as they gathered at a bridge, and stopped the car. I left it idling as I got out and walked four cars down the row to get the latest update. A brief chat, and walking back to the car I noticed the air had a lot of exhaust vapor. Wait, "is that my car making all that smoke?" OH #$%!!!!!!!!! It is! We're talking blown-motor, can no longer see the cars parked around me smoke-show. I jumped in, oil-pressure light was on, and shut it off just as my brain registered the 0psi on the oil pressure gauge.
Checked the oil tank, completely empty. Checked under the car, as best we could with flashlights, no major oil leaks that we could find...though the skid plate was coated. I filled the oil tank with the 5L extra I had and started the car. After about 20 seconds, the oil pressure light went out and 20psi popped up on the gauge. (this, for the record, is normal procedure when filling the system from dry). While the procedure determined the oil system was working, there was no diagnosing where all the oil disappeared to. Thus, I had sweep rope-tow me 40km to the highway, where we dumped the car. From there I had a 14 hour towing adventure with borrowed vehicles that still didn't get the car to my house. Sigh.
I met the guys who owned this Mercedes about 10min before they offered to loan it to me for an overnight towing adventure...a bit nuts, but I wasn't going to complain!
Getting the car on and off the trailer, however, required some creative techniques.
That was two and half weeks ago, and finally last Friday I was able to pickup up the car and bring it home. Driven hard, and put away wet. Yeah, this cleanup was going to suck. It started with a $10 trip to the car wash, where I thought I had gotten most of it. Once it was on axle stands in my garage I realized how much more mud there was...
So, a second wash in my garage...and then the floor...and then I could start on tear down.
Yeah...that's probably not a good sign:
I'm seriously thinking of switching to track racing. This is just brutal :P
Now, I suppose at this point I should mention the magical beast which is my oil system. See, when the motor blew deep in the woods of Lac La Hache we found no oil in the tank, and added 5L. When I pulled the car off the trailer, however, the tank was overflowing onto the floorboards. The breather tanks were overflowing into the engine bay and the actual engine had half a dipstick worth in it. Now I have all the oil I was missing, PLUS the extra 5L! After some thought, it seemed pretty clear the scavenge stage of the oil pump must have failed and it was no longer removing oil from the engine. Once the system had pumped all the oil into the engine, there was none left to pull from the tank and thus zero oil pressure. The heads would have been stuffed full, and thus we get the massive smoke show.
But here's the trick shot. The BugPack oil pump is 100% a-okay:
So what happened? And why did 'it' fail, and then start working again (as evidenced by the pump emptying the engine and overflowing everything else)?
So far I've managed to disassemble the entire engine and I've found no clues. The pistons and cylinders are perfect, the main bearings look like they're barely used. The rod bearings look like they've been run for about 20min, the cam bearings are basically new and the lifters and cam are also perfect. The pickup is tight, and clear. I still need to test the line from the pump to tank, but that's not a very likely failure point. It's a total mystery. At this stage I'm going to have to reassemble and simply not leave the car idling without being in the driver's seat.
On the plus side, my heads are beginning to show the 65,000+ miles they have on them. The combustion chambers cleaned up nice, but when I pulled the valves for a cleaning I found two guides with lots of play and one guide broken (with bits missing) in the exhaust port. The heads are going to visit Darren at K-Roc heads for a much needed 'refurbish' while I continue to clean the mud and oil off of every component from the front bumper to the rear bumper.
Track racing seems like it would be a whole lot cleaner...
-Dave