Wednesday morning Cadwell Park.
Cadwell is a fair old 3+ hour drive for us from the Northwest so we now have a habit of booking a hotel in Louth so it's only a ten minute drive in the morning to get to the circuit.
Cooked breakfast in the hotel to start the day and we were at the circuit before 8 clock.
I had set everything up prior to putting the car on the trailer with cold tyre pressures and damper settings so it was purely a case of rolling it off the trailer and signing on.
Sighting laps went off without any issues and I was straight out on track as soon as the track opened. Not my usual style but I was ready to go and wanted to take a friend who was on his 3rd ever track day and 1st time as Cadwell park for a quick morning session to show him the lines and some tips around the circuit for his first session.
The car felt perfect, the changes to the rear end feeling noticeably more predictable with the tyres staying in contact with the ground given much better drive out of off camber corners.
I did a nice 15 minute stint getting some heat into the car and popped back into the pits to go out as a passenger in his mini and give a few pointers.
Managed to then get a few sessions in on my own and find some reasonable laps with a little bit of traffic. The day was interrupted a little bit with red flags due to the floppies ending up on the circuit and them having to red flag a few sessions to replace them. The car felt so much better than this time last year, change of tyres and a little more aero with the help of the rear wing and the car had noticeably more grip and was far more planted through the corners.
Not long before lunchtime my stomach would catch up with me though, for some reason I've always struggled with sickness at Cadwell. No where else not even Spa. But just before lunch as the car was getting really hot inside I did a little bit of dry heaving driving through hall bends which resulted in a trip to the toilets, some water and some paracetamol. I've often felt sick at Cadwell but never physically been sick but he heat inside the car today was terrible. I dropped the window a couple of inch by taking off the door card and phyiscally lowering it and change from a long sleeve to a short sleeve top ready for the afternoon.
Quick check the logger and cameras were all working fine in the heat and we're ready to go out again.
The afternoon sessions where brilliant, nice an quiet with only light traffic on the laps. Managed to do a few sessions chasing some quicker cars, some of them you've seen me post about before. Jordans E36 and Nigels Pinderwagon. Will finish off the video from the afternoon and post it up afterwards.
The second to last session I managed to get 3 nice clear laps without anyone holding me up. At the time due to the heat and still feeling a little sick I was just focusing on driving smooth not chasing lap times but managed to post some consistent 1:42's. Nicely 2.5 seconds quicker than my best lap times last year. Still lots of time to be found around the circuit as my cornering speeds are still way lower than they should be with the car set up now but it's improving all the time.
I did notice in this session with some clear track on the straights I was looking at the temperatures, oil and fuel pressure, oil pressure seemed a little bit low on the back straight. At the time I made a mental note of a 30-40psi oil pressure and carried out... Continues later...
Completed it. Another fantastic flawless track day at Cadwell Park in prime conditions once again. Time to pack up the car and trailer and head into Louth for a couple of drinks and an indian before driving back home the new day to get sorted for Snetterton.
Reviewing the track day - Data, Data, Data
After the track day I do my usual editing of videos and checking all of the data from the logs. The data logger logs a lot more information than shown on the videos but I when looking at the oil pressure logs I did confirm what I saw when I was out on track was that the engine was only doing high 30's to 40 PSI hot at high RPM.
Looking back at previous logs the car normally runs at 55-60psi Hot at higher RPM. Thought it was a little strange but I checked the oil pressure when It had been left over night and the oil was cold. Started the car and initial oil pressure was 60psi. No trouble I thought until the engine oil got hot again and it settled at 18psi idle which is normal but when reving the engine the highest oil pressure I could get was 40psi. 20psi lower than expected.
I decided to dig deeper into it this morning, despite the fact we set off for Snetterton in two days.
I assumed it was going to be something to do with the oil relief spring or similar. Time to get the sump off and have a look.
It's not the easiest of jobs to get to the oil pump. but when the sump was dropped the problem was obvious straight away and it wasn't what we expected at all...
initial observations shows that the bolts that hold the two sections of the oil pump have backed out, no wonder it was showing lower oil pressure as it was being pumped back into the sump rather than up into the main gallery of the engine.
Second observation, despite my efforts when I built this engine of lock wiring the VAC Motorsport ARP bolt to the gear as this previously has come undone in the past despite the VAC kit being an upgrade for the known weak OEM oil pump shaft, The wire was still holding the ARP tight however the gear has been wearing on the oil pump shaft. This is the second one to do this.
2021
2020
This engine has only ran for 5 full days since it was completely rebuilt so there is something I need to address with this oil pump issue on the M54's. I will come back to this topic later on.
The main priority at the moment is to get the car to be able to work for Snetterton and then address the issues afterwards.
I still had the OEM oil pump shaft in the garage and a friend has a spare gear from an E36 that I could run on it to get me through the next week. However the OEM shafts have a left hand thread nut on them which are known for coming undone and causing zero oil pressure.
I decided the best I could do with leaving to go away in 48 hours was to drill the standard nut and lockwire it on.
Drilled two holes in the nut on both sides to lock wire in place.
Rebuilt the pump back up with high strength lock tight on the bolts and the nut, as well as adding stainless lock wire to the nut to try to prevent it from coming undone. Not the neatest wiring I have ever done but I wanted to make sure that the nut was under preload to try to prevent it from moving
Last job of the day today was to replace the crank pulley, I had a brand new Febi damper pulley on the shelf so I thought it was a good time to get it put on there while the car was in pieces. The old pulley was looking a little tired so hopefully this will help a little bit
Some fresh oil and many hours work today and the E46 is back running on axle stands, there's a few jobs to finish off tomorrow which is waiting on parts to arrive in the post but it should be ready to go onto the trailer tomorrow evening.
Oil pump future.
Keeping it short and sweet but here's a list of fixes for the future.
-To fix the oil pump issue I need to fix the harmonic issues with the crank which can only really be dampened with a better quality damper such as a super damper. These are the best part of £1000.
-The oil pump chain is looking a little bit slack so I'm going to replace the chain with a new one.
-While replacing the chain I am going to drill and thread the block to add in a change tensioner similar to those seen on the S50/S54 engines which are designed for revving higher.
-Will probably look at different oil pump kits which offer a more solid key between the shaft and the gear.
Update to follow tomorrow with the final jobs finished - We're getting closer to being ready for Snetterton now.
Finally another video from Cadwell Park.