October 12, 2003
Day 21 - start up!
Up early to wash my other car. Went down to the petrol station to fill the Jerry can with 10l of Optimax.
Continued filling the gearbox oil. I got a bit more in (I think) but it wasn't long before there was oil dripping out again. A hurried post on Blatchat suggested that a number of other people had used only 1.2 - 1.3 litres. Bloody assembly guide. After checking a number of times that the filler tube was in the gearbox drain hole properly I decided that it was full and to put the drain plug back in. I couldn't jack the car up this time and risk pouring all the oil out so I struggled for around half an hour with oil all over my hands trying to get the drain plug in. Eventually I managed to get a couple of half turns with my fingers and then could use the cut down Allen key to tighten it.
Put some petrol in the car and had a last minute check. I poured in around 6.5l of oil and then turned the battery master switch. The horns sounded and they are bloody loud! Quickly turned off the battery master switch :-). I hadn't finished wiring up the steering wheel etc. so I disconnected the horn lead in the hope that this would stop them sounding which it did. Time to crank the engine and get the oil pressure up. The fuel pump went on ignition '2' and then to ignition '3' and.....
click.
Bollocks. Maybe the battery is a bit flat? After having another look round it was clear that the click was coming from the MFU but not the starter solenoid. Quickly I worked out that the thick brown/red wire that was dangling around was the starter solenoid signal wire so I attached this and had another go.
It turns over!
(1Mb Quicktime movie - me turning a car engine over. How boring is that)
I turned the car over in about 5-10 second bursts but the battery started to flatten and still no movement on the oil pressure gauge. Eventually after 5 or 6 goes it started to flicker into life but the battery was pretty drained at this point. I reconnected the inertia switch and went for the start. Cranked for 5 seconds (slowly....) but nothing. Tried again and this time the fuel pump kicked in again to prime the system - I think it's on a time delay to stop flooding - and it started!!!
(1Mb Quicktime movie - the car running and me looking for oil leaks. Even more boring.)
Checked the oil but I couldn't see any oil on the dipstick, although the oil pressure was > 4 bar. Unfortunately I wasn't convinced I would be able to - I'd like to know who the muppet was that designed a dipstick with a yellow end making it impossible to see the oil. People had warned me that it could take 7 - 7.5 litres so I poured in some more oil. This went on for several iterations until I thought I could see oil on the dipstick but I need to check this again. The pressure stayed well above 2 bar the whole time though. My worry was the temperature that was rising really quickly. I loosened the radiator bleed screw and some air came out but the radiator wasn't getting hot. Eventually I stopped the engine worried about it overheating. [EDIT: I had ignored the assembly guide section about backfilling the heater as I don't have a heater. However, this is still relevant in order to fill the head circuit. I probably had very little water in the head and hence the thermostat didn't open and the temperature rose very quickly. Hopefully I stopped the engine before any damage occurred]
Some more advice from Blatchat suggested that this was a classic symptom of an air lock and it needed more bleeding. Later in the day I put the front of the car back up on Axle stands and ran the engine again with the bleed screw off. This time the radiator slowly started to get warm and the temperature gauge got to 80 quite quickly but them seemed a bit stuck. There was a fair bit of coolant coming out of the bleed screw but I bottled it as the temp gauge was moving really slowly and I suddenly thought that it might be broken. Some more advice from Blatchat suggests that I'm probably almost there now and that the temp will rise very slowly above 80 once the system is fairly well bled. Unfortunately I'm now out of coolant so will have to get some more before having another go.
3 hours today, 74.5 hours total.
Posted by charles at October 12, 2003 6:47 PM