Yesterday Ludo, the French SpecE30 newby, was at a DE at Roebling. He started having smoke and power problems from his engine. He came in and found that his motor mounts had sheared. In other news, Ludo is now doing hot laps in his SpecE30. Expect to see him at Comp school soon.
Ludo brought his car to my house. A compression test showed it kind of on the low side, about 20psi lower than a cherry new build, but no outlying pistons. No "smoking gun of a tired ring that would explain blue smoke and low power.
The motor mounts sheared because the passenger side mount didn’t have a heat shield. It was certainly already destroyed when Ludo bought the car, it just wasn’t obvious to the eye.
We noted that it was low on coolant so I started putting water in. To our dismay it took a lot of water. After putting in ~1.5gal we found that when the engine shifted because of the failed motor mounts, the alternator had cut a hose. Common enough. That worried me. No telling how many laps at RR had been run with an aircooled M20. The oil showed no sign of water but I still worried about the HG, a possible cracked head, and failed rings. I remembered vividly the coolant hose failure that killed engine #5, and my failure to replace the rings that doomed #6.
We considered our options, putting in one of my spare motors being one of them, and decided to try the option of “hope for the best”. Drawing from my spares, Ludo replaced the motor mounts and coolant hose while I spent a couple hrs spot painting the F-250, a project I was determined to get done yesterday.
Then we filled Ludo’s motor back up with water, he ran a few test laps around the neighborhood, all seemed to be well, and he drove it into his trailer. Maybe his engine actually survived the loss of all coolant running flat out for a couple laps. How 'bout that?
Today I drove on with the project of paint repair on the new F-250. I’ve done a fair amount of work on paint with various buffers and various types of polishing and rubbing compounds, but I’ve never wet sanded. Until today.
There were so many scratches, from driving thru bushes by the looks of them, that I was wet sanding for hours. I used 1500grit to remove or at least beat down scratches. Once I’d removed the scratch, or beat it down as much as I dared, I used a rubbing compound by hand to make the areas less dull. There were so many scratches on the sides of the truck that I wet sanded and then hand-compounded almost the entire sides of the truck. And it’s a big truck. Finally I did both sides of the truck with a dual action buffer and rubbing compound.
Using a rubbing compound by hand is pretty aggressive. Using it on a dual action buffer isn’t all that aggressive. At least in my experience.
Then I waxed the sides and the hood to protect the virgin paint. Virgin has to be protected. Ok, I didn’t always feel that way.
That was 6hrs of work w/o a break. The truck’s paint looks a helova lot better now. Except for the rocker panels, most of the scratches are now gone. Maybe I’ll have the rocker panels resprayed…the paint there is pretty pockmarked. And I still have to hit the hood and tailgate with the buffer.
