After the meeting at Wakefield Park in February I knew I had to do some serious maintenance. I had to prepare another diff as I destroyed another one during the races. I paid particular attention to the bearing preload and backlash. I hoped that it would be ok. I am using 3.55 ratios only now as the 3.36 diffs knock off too much torque low down. I changed the diff, making sure I cleaned out the housing properly. There was a heap of metal in there!
I had Bob check the timing and we decided to check the valve clearances. Lucky we did, as the valve area was covered in milky oil. Bugger! I must have a cracked bore. Oh well. We made the checks and put it all together. I got some chemeweld and ran it through the cooling system. I need to keep this engine going for a while yet. The chemiweld took ok and the engine is running fine.
I carried out all my regular checks, changed over the front brake linings, changed the oil and filter, gave the car a thorough going over.
I have now started to prepare another engine. I selected another block, found the crank that came out of it and took them both in for cleaning. I cleaned out the water galleries and filled the galleries up to the welch plug holes with a cement mix. I had the crank checked and it will live to fight. Good. I have bought a new camshaft to replace my second hand one. I had the main bearing blocks cleaned also. Since I will be running my present engine for as long as possible, I can go no further with the new engine as I need to use many parts from the old in the new.
