Scaffolding poles + old VW bits + Rotary engine....

[PhillipM]

Oh yes, I mean you could use smaller diameter, wider bearings instead, but then the driveshafts wouldn't fit

The driveshafts run through the middle of the bearings and bolt up to the wheel face on this, so they have to be enormous to let the CV joint sit inside them.

[PhillipM]

That's one together, after a little more machining work, also, a bearing with Pot Noodle for scale. Highly scientific units those:



And yes I was hand packing bearings with grease. No it's not advisable. Yes I still did it.

Here you can see where the barrel goes and the bearings and seals sit a bit easier:





And then torqued up, new modified lockplates fitted:



And all assembled and ready to go:

Edited by PhillipM on Friday 7th April 01:54

[PhillipM]

Yazza54 said:

Surprised how light duty those bearings look. Large diameter but small balls

The shear diameter of them makes a fair difference, the pair of them will take about 4-5 tonnes of vertical load in service limits, and over a tonne purely axially (which never really happens due to the spacing), but yes, they're quite narrow.

It's signed on for racing at Tong next weekend so we better get the other side done!

Edited by PhillipM on Friday 7th April 16:27

[PhillipM]

I'm fine on the drive plates, if need be we can make those anyway, but I could do with a spare barrel and two bearing housings, so that we'd have a spare built up ready to swap.

And yes doesn't seem like many want to buy second hand ones given the issues. I might now just because I think I can fix the issues but that still means a complete rebuild and machine work.

There's not a whole lot of option with the seals unfortunately given the limited space and the machined seals they use to fit in there to start with. ideally they'd have a proper wheel bearing labyrinth stream in there but you'd need twice the width to fit them.

Edited by PhillipM on Friday 7th April 20:50

[PhillipM]

Not really, just the shear cost of machining and building jigs really. AJD has the programs but afaik he's just swapping everyone on them back to shorter RR shafts and normal uprights and limiting the travel.

I'd suggest if you haven't run with them yet just split the casings open after an event and check. Is that an old Milner frame or are you building something yourself?

Edited by PhillipM on Saturday 8th April 01:15

[PhillipM]

And all back together, gotta put the floor and under armour back on the car before we can test it though. They feel much smoother and far less tight than initially, which is good, you needed a fair bit of strength just to spin them before given the size of the seals dragging, etc.

Edited by PhillipM on Sunday 9th April 14:28

[PhillipM]

Well, the good news after a test run up and down the lane here, everything bedded in nicely, bearings are running much cooler than previously, noticably less drag too. Also the car rides much smoother from the damper work, and the turn in is a noticeable chunk better, whether it's a little too flighty remains to be seen but better that than another season of fighting understeer.

Bad news, it blew a front brake line out leading to squeaky bum time and a dent to the workshop wall...luckily the car is okay, and even better is at least it happened now. Not quite sure how it looks like it's split clean across, the theory at the moment is either a rogue stone strike or a faulty crimp that damaged the hose, every other line looks fine.
So it's still going to be a rush to sort it for the event at Tong this weekend!

Edited by PhillipM on Tuesday 11th April 17:53

[PhillipM]

No it was a bit of a shock

Better in testing than racing though. There's a lot of forest at Tong, the trees don't move much.

[PhillipM]

Okay, new brake lines, front circuit rebled and she's ready to go again, just needs a bit of testing, so hopefully this time we actually make it to the racing. It's up at the Parkwood Offroad Centre in Tong/Bradford this weekend if anyone is up that way!

[PhillipM]

Nice weather for a roadtrip

[PhillipM]

[PhillipM]

There is yes, but there's a couple of bumps there as the track flattens out you can't really see too well causing most of that. It does need stiffer rear springs though but the lead time on 18-20" long springs is.... considerable

Saturday didn't go too well we got a couple of runs in but then an oil fitting/adaptor cracked and started leaking. Enough that it would shear off removing and checking it. But because there were two days of racing, a trip home to the workshop to modifying something suitable into one got us back going again Sunday so we just pounded laps in 2 at a time all morning to make our runs back up and she didn't miss a beat even after putting 11 runs in on a day it should have done 6

My 406 then split its coolant tank on the way home and it turned a 45min trip into 4+ hours of bodging a bypass and limping home so I was a bit too tired to write anything up last night

We did get a minute penalty on all the runs we didn't do on the Saturday so that knocked us down a bit I think we ended up about 18th or 19th in the end. Not great but we got some serious miles on the car and setup a lot of stuff, had some fun. Was a bit of a struggle with 2wd as they ran the course backwards compared to usually so there were a lot of dead stops or 90 degree bends followed by scrambles up hills which made it hard to get going. One of the climbs was so bad we were literally crawling up it it almost didn't make it a few times

Edited by PhillipM on Monday 17th April 23:13

[PhillipM]

Whelp.

[PhillipM]

Engine. Suspect a thrust bearing atm.

[PhillipM]

Okay seems like it is thrust bearing debris - although this time doesn't look like our setup as it's on the other side, suspect the previous owner of this engine liked to ride the clutch pedal or did a lot of town driving.
Fortunately it looks like we've got away with it, there's a little damage to the dry sump pump but nothing we can't clean up, the engine, crank, etc, seems fine bar a tiny bit of soft babbit debris in the main bearing shells - so I think a thorough clean out, flush of the oil systems, maybe swap the oil cooler just in case, and then a new set of main bearings for insurance and new thrust washers and we should be good.

That was a heartstopper for a while there.

[PhillipM]

Bobberoo said:

Glad it's not terminal, still sounds like a lot of work though!!

Yes, it's gonna make us miss a couple of events unfortunately - even more galling because we measured the end float specifically to check the thrust bearing wear when it went in. But the one issue these S2000 engines do seem to suffer from is thrust washer pickup.
The US guys often mod their cars so they don't have to press the clutch to start the engine for similar reasons.

[PhillipM]

Haven't really updated much as I've been busy rebuilding a Merc engine and now a Yamaha, but Eddy sorted new bearings and washing everything out while I was busy, got it all together and took the buggy to Minehead today, along with the new rear springs to match to the previous damper changes - and it's just ended up 7th (might be 6th we're waiting to see if the car in front has a penalty).
It had enough pace to be in the top 3 if it hadn't been for some steady morning runs (which lost about a minute or two) to make sure the engine was all okay, top 5 was literally only a couple of seconds away, pretty happy regardless!

edit: 6th it is!

Edited by PhillipM on Sunday 4th June 16:58

[PhillipM]

It was literally 2 seconds pace behind 4th, damn

[PhillipM]

Honestly pretty happy about that, it's slowly looking better every race so far.

And it was at minehead which is usually a bad event for us - there's a lot of tight turns into uphill rocky climbs and we've blown the diff out and other issues there before, so that's one event's bad luck run broken

[PhillipM]

Little bit of damage to fix, alignment is out a little and a brake caliper got trashed by a rock on the last run.



Not sure why the alignment is out