Bianca Ratlye

[C2K]

Haven't updated this in a while. Mainly because I didn't touch the car since April.

Cambelt turned out to be a disaster one way and another. I changed the water pump as a precaution, only to have a faulty genuine pump which had a knackered bearing. Swapped out the waterpump and then replaced the cambelt onto the car. New pump was better but still making a noise. Whilst the car was running, the inlet cam pulley bolt worked loose (was tight, but clearly not tight enough, slight miscommunication with the person helping me) and made the most godawful knocking noise you could ever hear an engine make.

As a result of that mucking up all my plans I walked away from the Rallye and did everything necessary to get my house on the market. That consumed a huge amount of time one way and another.

Fast forward a few months.

Was getting sick of pushing the rallye up and down my single-width driveway as the TVR has been home a few months now. Finally got some time to return to the car to establish wtf had gone on last weekend. I'd worked out that the noise was the cam pulley thumping the cam forward, which by the action of the valve springs makes the cam jump forwards (as you find during a belt change) before being smacked again by the pulley, what I didn't know and almost couldn't face was the prospect of valve damage to the engine which was bought from my mate's car with FSH, low mileage, and had just been installed with the charger conversion to replace a tapper, not to mention the several hundred pounds worth of service stuff that had just been sunk into it (oil, charger oil, filters, belts etc)

Got the belt back on on Sunday night, to find that the engine itself is quiet as a mouse with no valve damage. The relief was indescribable. Still not happy with the water pump but given that I have to move house soon i'm not touching the damned thing for fear of rendering it immobile again. I spent last night putting all the engine covers back on, and then refitted all of the splash guards.



A lucky escape. Since then i've been busy putting it back together and trying to customise the replacement arch liner to hide my oil cooler lines out of the way, and the brakes are absolutely shocking so i suspect a union needs nipping somewhere. Once i've spent time checking all the car over properly I shall book it in for an MOT.