3.0 Supercav!

[Envoy CDX]

I think some proper oil cooler pipework needs to be made up to be on the safe side. Take your pipes to "Pirtek" and they will make you some identical hoses bit with proper preasure clamps on etc..

This is one of the things that's annoyed me Dan - I did go to Pirtek, and it is the hose that split that I got from them! I asked for proper crimped joints but they said I may as well use jubilee clips as that's all the hose is rated to anyway. I'll be massively p###ed off of I've been lied to - someone at Pirtek will be getting an enema with some Pirtek hose and whatever oil is left in the engine if it happens again!!

I'd be going back that being the case.

[TurboDan]

Yep i'd go straight back and tell them you want proper crimped hoses.

[btcctroy]

I'd use the mocal oil areo fittings, there superior, and push on to the unions without no clips or crimps
If your gonna run oil through hoses they need to be proper

[himselfunknown]

Well gents, the gloves are off on this: on the way home from work this afternoon, another hose popped clean off an end fitting, one that Pirtek themselves did (using hand crimps). Cost me an hour in the car waiting for the RAC, and £50 for 3 litres of oil.

So this evening I have stripped off all the hoses ready to take them to Pirtek tomorrow. I'm going to be pointing out to them that they have cost me over £360 in total due to their #### hoses and workmanship, and would very much like some braided PTFE hoses with proper machine crimped end fittings, thank you very much.

Will any of you guys be available around lunchtime tomorrow to bail me out if it all goes wrong?!?

[Envoy CDX]

Well gents, the gloves are off on this: on the way home from work this afternoon, another hose popped clean off an end fitting, one that Pirtek themselves did (using hand crimps). Cost me an hour in the car waiting for the RAC, and £50 for 3 litres of oil.

So this evening I have stripped off all the hoses ready to take them to Pirtek tomorrow. I'm going to be pointing out to them that they have cost me over £360 in total due to their #### hoses and workmanship, and would very much like some braided PTFE hoses with proper machine crimped end fittings, thank you very much.

Will any of you guys be available around lunchtime tomorrow to bail me out if it all goes wrong?!?

Nope, but keep us updated. Hope you have the recovery bills and such to present when you go down.

[himselfunknown]

So, I went to Pirtek, but unfortunately they didn't have enough fittings in to remake all the pipework in PTFE. So they made up one PTFE 'bypass' hose up for me, which I duly fitted:



Before I did, I did a bit of a trial fit to see if it was possible to route to the cooler with less joins. It turns out that the PTFE pipe is a lot more flexible than the rubber. Why didn't I just insist that Pirtek made the hoses out of this in the first place? #becausesocalledexpert:



However, after discussions with the bloke in Pirtek, I was now paranoid that the system was over pressurising or may overheat with no oil cooling whatsoever. So I decided, for the price of a couple of extra fittings and what I had lying around, to fit some gauges:









The OEM Vauxhall pressure gauge tops out at 5 bar - which is too low for this engine. Which is why I fitted the other gauges. The gash pods were because at that point I was still trying to get the car to Nurburgring and was pushed for time. However, due to a culmination of fails, and at the advice of my mates (about 3 hours after we'd planned on leaving for Germany), I ditched the Cav, swapped the wheels on the Golf, and went in that:



While the Golf didn't perform faultlessly (I had some weird clutch related issues, that came and went with no intervention - probably heat related), it didn't die on me, leave me stranded or dump oil all over the track. Which I don't think would've been the case with the Cav.

Since I got back, I've had it steam cleaned (again), and have put some miles on it with the bypass. Max oil pressure is at cold idle and full throttle, but never exceeds 90psi, which I don't think is unreasonable. Max oil temp seems to settle out at 110 degrees C, but as yet I've not had it stuck in traffic on a hot day. When the guy at Pirtek gets back off holiday, I'll be going back to get the replacement pipes made up, now I can show him that the car hasn't been overpressuring the pipework (which was his claim).

While I was faffing, I found another vacuum pipe leak, so while I was fixing that, I fitted the uprated inlet:



And a photo of the car today:



The plan is to drive the car more and build up some confidence in it, and get it running right on LPG. On the plus side, since I've been able to drive it at full chat a few times, I've remembered why I built the car in the first place - it's awesome and has a much better soundtrack than the Golf V6!

[himselfunknown]

So I've not updated this in absolutely ages, mainly due to ownership of this car developing very much into a love/hate type thing!

Get yourself a brew and settle down!

Following last years aborted trip to the 'Ring, I'd planned on putting some more miles on it, getting the LPG working on it, and generally building confidence. As with everything lately with this car, not even that went to plan. Trying to get the car working on LPG proved to be a mission all on its own, as it was misfiring on one cylinder. After many (expensive) weeks of diagnosis, it turned out there were two problems, not one. Firstly, when previously fitted to another car, someone had wired it in wrong, realised their mistake and rather than solving the problem at source, just bodged it. Secondly the ECU had a fried channel, which resulted in an expensive replacement. But first I had to dig it out from where it lives under the bonnet:



Can't spot it? Let me make it a bit easier for you, it's arrowed:



So that cost me some knuckle skin!

Anyway, having got it running on LPG, I drove it a while and fell back in love with it a little bit. It's cheaper to run than my old 1.9tdi Passat, and sounds/performs a load better too!

Gave it a bit of a clean and a mate took some photos of it with his SLR:











Anyway, it wasn't looking likely that my track car was going to be ready for this years 'Ring trip, so I decided that I was going to take the Cav. To do this I wanted to have the oil cooler plumbed in and some gauges working so I could monitor engine health as I blatted it round. This turned into another monumental (and expensive) mission. After much trial and error and buying most of eBay, I decided to bin off the single oil temp/pressure gauge and buy some new ones. Bought these, which came complete with senders and everything:



To start with, the pillar pods were waaaaay too big for the Cav, then the console gauges I bought were a shonky fit too. As I had some other wiring to do too (cruise control, electric sunroof, auto dimming rear mirror, heated front screen) and some bulbs to replace, I pretty much had the dash apart, which was fun:



To get the gauges to talk to the engine, I needed to plumb the senders in, and while I was at it I reconnected the oil cooler too. To do this I needed an expensive hose from Pirtek:



Anyway, after all that hassle, it turned out that the newest bits I'd bought off ebay were no good, so I couldn't connect the coolant temp sensor, the oil pressure gauge flat out refused to work (I replaced it with another I had kicking about), and the oil temp gauge played with me for a bit before dying.

Still, undeterred, I took it to Germany. A friend of mine was also having car woes, so I lent him my Golf. Obligatory 'Ring photos:





Some professional photos of it on the ring. Yes, that is smoke coming from the front wheel! It was the oversize semi-slick tyres destroying the plastic arch liners:







Here's a link to the video footage of the second lap I did, which was 10mins 14secs BTG, which I didn't think was too shabby for a 21 year old car, with some traffic. I could have pushed it harder on some of the corners, but at the Ring, it's better to be safe than sorry (read: bankrupt!):



Anyway, on the way home I was feeling all smug having survived, and the cost of LPG being approx 30ppl over there, when at a service station halfway across Belgium I (luckily) noticed that the gearbox was pouring oil out. Turns out one of the drive shaft seals had literally worked its way out of the gearbox and was rattling around on the drive shaft! So most of the oil fell out of the box. Luckily, my Golf has a tow bar and a mate had taken his A frame, so we hitched it up and carried on! It was a long trek back to the UK, but managed it back eventually, with the Cav, although the box was a bit warm on arrival. I'm hoping the remaining oil splashing around stopped any major damage. Unfortunately, the rotating seal damaged the 2wd conversion plate, so I've had to source another one, and a new seal is on the way too.

[James McGrath]

Great write up, love the video!

Welcome back by the way!

[Robsey]

Yes - interesting update.
These Cavs do like to torment with their unwillingness to stay fixed.

Some excellent pictures..
awesome engine sound on the video...

And nice to see you on the forum again Tony.

[Greig Sri]

Nice video
You got around a lot quicker than I did when I done the ring in 2014.

Greig