Had a slightly too interesting day yesterday - the type where you leave the house at 06:45 to go to the Dyno and arrive home 11 hours later in an Uber from the train station . . . .
Got to the Dyno no problem, car seemed to be using more fuel than usual and was misfiring at 4krpm but had bags of power and torque below that so it was a joy to drive down. Got it loaded on the dyno and strapped down:
A few runs up through the gears and a fuel cut issue at 2400rpm was resolved followed by the 4k misfire being fixed - the extra fuelling needed with the cam timing sorted meant it was running crazy rich under full boost hence the misfire, pulling the cells back had it revving out sweetly. Autotune hadn‘t helped as they were too far out of spec for it to bring them back in line - I could have resolved it myself by tweaking the map from the logs but as I was heading down to see Dan I figured it would be easier for him to do it.
Dan commented how great the car was to drive even on the dyno and it was reaching cells we hadn’t populated before due to how much earlier it was spooling up. Knowing that this was the boring bit going through all the rev and load cells I left him to it and went for a walk to Tesco’s for mini muffins and biscuits for mid-morning coffee break. I was nearly back when I got a phone call. There was a problem. It was a significant one. We’d had a fire but it was all under control and no apparent damage.
When I got back they were unstrapping it from the dyno and opening up the doors (for those that haven’t been in a dyno cell its pretty much a sealed box with huge industrial fans), so when a powder fire extinguisher goes off the fans turn the thing into a cheesy nightclub with too many smoke machines! This was what greeted me:
A cursory check over showed that the clutch reservoir to master cylinder hose had split, dumping all the Dot 4 fluid onto a very (very) hot exhaust manifold. The teflon fuel lines run over the master cylinder and although the nylon braiding was singed they were fine. Dan had reported that the clutch went to the floor, he looked down to flick it up with his foot and when he looked back up -
. Luckily for me he’s very quick on his feet!
10 Minutes later and a member of staff was blowing it all off with an air line outside, no time for a belt or pulling his trousers up:
And then while they mopped up and cleaned the dyno cell, I got the hose out and rinsed all the last vestiges of powder off the car before going round with the airline to get it back to how it should be so we could inspect it properly:
Within an hour of being extinguished we utilised the pump-prime feature of the DME to pressurise the fuel system and check for any leaks or issues - luckily it’s just very superficial cosmetic damage to the hoses but I’ll replace them of course. Everything seemed fine so we started it back up and let it run up to temp/pressure and all is well . . . . Apart from the lack of clutch obviously.
New master cylinder arrived there today, being fitted tomorrow, and I’m back on the 06:40 train on Tuesday to finish the dyno tuning and drive it home. On the one hand it’s terrible bad luck but on the other I’m so fortunate it happened when and where it did - Dan’s quick actions saved a lot of trouble.
So there you go - pretty much the only original part of the engine bay has borked and now been replaced, if I didn’t have bad luck I’d have no luck at all sometimes!
Of course the answers to the two . . . . erm . . . . “burning” questions are:
1) Yes I have told him to add the cost of a fire extinguisher refill onto my bill
&
2) The mini muffins were delicious
.
