"… After a great day harassing everything on track (well maybe not the Radical) we had a pleasant cruise back to Manchester basking in the sunshine, it is days like this that the 7 was born…" see entry no. 2 here

When the highs are as high as last months Auto-Journal the lows can be very low.

May was a write off and I'm not just talking about the terrible wet weather we've had here in Manchester.

The night after getting back from Anglesey some local 'yoofs' decided that they were well within their rights to try out the Caterham for size. At about 1 in the morning a group of them stood around as one of them tried to modify the ignition wiring and force the car to start. This involved pushing the immobiliser socket through the dashboard and pulling all the wires out of the back. Thankfully this was the extent of the damage caused as a dog-walking neighbour disturbed them and they fled the scene. Frustratingly I slept through the whole episode, despite the 7 being parked beneath my bedroom window.

In the morning I found the car cover and roof folded back, allowing the over-night rain to soak the interior. Late for work I immobilised the car further by removing the fuse I replaced at Anglesey hoping they wouldn't return to have another attempt whilst I was at work.

Whilst being glad that no serious damage had been caused I was rather annoyed that I couldn't leave my property in the street without worrying about someone claiming it as their own. I took the opportunity to pull my finger out and fit the quick release steering wheel boss I had bought last summer and not got round to fitting; this involved replacing part of the steering column, but is a very neat solution.

Sorting the electrics took a little longer as I could not figure out the wiring diagram in the build manual that originally came with the car. With a little help from the Lotus 7 Club forum www.blatchat.com and an electrician friend, we worked it out and soldered the immobiliser wiring back together. Thankfully it started first time (when I'd remembered to put the fuse back in…).

With the weather being so poor I hadn't rushed to get DNF back running but one thing did motivate me into action. A good friend of mine asked me to take part in a surprise for his kid sister. She was having an end of school ball, a 'Prom' they think they call it these days, and as a surprise we arranged for DNF to whisk her there in style! In my day these things didn't seem to be much of deal but in this case her classmates were hiring limousines and we thought it would be fun to be a bit different.

So togged up in a DJ and bowtie I sedately, so as to not mess the poor girl's hair, drove across town to deliver her to the ball. The reception was very warm with friends and peers cheering as we upstaged the Fire Engine and faux Fire Men who had been hired by another attendee, by making a racket as we parked between it and the entrance to the venue. It certainly got the evening off to a good start.

For a week in May I was down to one car as my daily driver was away being serviced, however the weather was so bad most of the time that I elected to take the train for my daily commute. On the one sunny day of the week I took DNF instead but it over heated on way to work. I put this down to just being stuck in slow moving traffic and forgot about it until on the way home when it really overheated and I had to nurse it the last few hundred yards, where I found it lacked a couple of pints from its coolant.

The procedure for topping up the caterham coolant is a bit hit and miss. Because my car is spec'ed with a heater, the front of the car has to be jacked up so that the expansion tank is above the level of the heater matrix. This method is still prone to air locks in the system and I believe it is the root of many cooling issues.

Anyway the car seemed to be running normally and I parked it up for the rest of the week due to the poor weather. A few days later I needed to make a trip to the local hardware store. On start up the top end of the engine rattled and it took an age for the oil pressure to rise. I risked the short return journey but I was depressed at the lack of oil pressure. Again poor weather prevented me taking any more action than researching blatchat.com for possible causes.

Internet forums can be very useful and very misleading. The more I researched the more convinced I was that I'd killed the engine at Anglesey on the sticky AO48 tyres, the increased Gs too much for the lubrication system and the crank bearings. This led me to investigate the possibility of replacing the engine, something I'd pencilled in for a future date but was convinced that was required now.

Because DNF's engine is to Super Sport specification it is a pretty simple case of transplanting the 1400cc short block (the bottom 'half' of the engine) with an 1800cc short block, all the Caterham specific items swapping straight over. This is a fairly economic engine replacement, what with so many cars using the Rover K series engine.

Once my initial disappointment had subsided and I had thought the problem through some more I decided that the issue had similar symptoms to that I had previously suffered with the foam baffle which is located at the bottom of the engine above the sump. There has been many pages of discussion on blatchat.com about this foams value to the engine and many owners have elected to do without it as although Caterham suggest that it requires changing every 12000 miles they can break down a long time before that and cause oil pick up problems. In this case, the engine had covered less than 3000 miles since the foam was changed.

And so as June clicked around and the weather improved I spent a morning on my back in the street removing the sump (16 bolts) and checking the state of the oil pick up.

As you can see from the photos, the oil pick up pipe which hangs down from the bottom of the engine and sits in the bottom of the pan, was well and truly blocked. I feel bad just having started the engine in that state let a lone driving it. I'm leaning towards the idea that the overheating caused by the lack of coolant caused the oil to overheat, breaking down the polymer foam.

The pictures also tell a store of just how close the sump has been too the road. A little too close…

I cleared out all the offending foam and checked the sump for other debris. There was none, it looks like my bearings have got away with it this time. What did start alarm bells ringing however were a few small spots of what could be water. Could this be condensation? I doubt it and with the evidence stacking up it is starting to look more and more likely that the head gasket could be failing which would have caused the overheating in the first place.

I have put the sump back on sans the foam baffle and recharged the cooling system carefully and everything appears to be running normally with oil pressure and water temperatures remaining steady.

Time will tell if the Head Gasket has survived. I'm hoping this journal is not turning into a rebuild diary and next month will bring sunnier weather and DNF and I will manage more than 50 miles in the month.

< previous entry
next entry >
read the feedback section >>
feedback, tell us what you think >>>>>>