Money Shift Postmortem

I very nearly titled this entry “Money Shift Forensics”. I was thinking “forensics” was a suitable synonym for what I really want to say. But forensics is defined as “scientific tests or techniques used in connection with the detection of crime”. I’d say my missed shift lies more in the neighborhood of negligence than criminality. Although the car isn’t dead (and never was alive, for that matter), parts of the car certainly are dead so I think “postmortem” is a better word in this case.

Monday, October 14

In spite of Ryan having a few other Lotus to work on, he was able to start digging into my issue on Monday. He started it up for a few seconds to hear the noise. Then he got to work pulling things apart and assessing the damage.

Initial reports looked good. In an email at the end of the day he said, “I actually think we may have dodged a bullet here!” At that point the extent of the damage looked to be limited to the flywheel. But the investigation had just begun. He wanted to remove the transmission, continue the inspection and record some measurements of the crank to verify no damage has occurred. Ryan suggested that, all said and done, I might get out with a bill for parts and labor “near the 3k mark. This is assuming that there are no engine issues found or any other hidden gremlins.”

He asked me for authorization to remove the transmission to continue the inspection. So far, I’d be billed for 2 hours of labor. To continue, it starts to get expensive: “11.5 hrs for transmission removal and inspection, clutch and flywheel replacement.”

I consented and waited patiently.

Later in the week I was telling a coworker my tale of woe. I made the rather flippant remark that “I’d taken the car to the most expensive place I could think of” to get the work done.

Monday, October 21

That bullet that we dodged? Not so much.

Here is the email Ryan sent me late on the 21st:

I was able to get the transmission off this afternoon and have a look.  I first removed the clutch and found all 8 of the flywheel bolts to be EXTREMELY loose and had backed out. This allowed the flywheel to vibrate at such a rate where it almost welded itself to the nose of the crankshaft.  After about 5 minutes of prying with 2 pry bars (side to side) I was able to release the flywheel from the crank. This should normally pretty much fall off once the bolts have been removed.

The galling was so bad between the flywheel and the crank that the remnants left on the mounting flange of the crank as well as the nose is very severe. I noticed a couple things during the removal as well. There was an oil leak from the back of the engine. This was because the bolts were loose without any type of thread seal/lock applied. These holes are open to the crankcase through the crankshaft.

So, here we go. Because the galling and build up on the flange mounting face and the nose is so bad we pretty much have 2 options.

OPTION 1)  I attempt to remove as much of the galling as possible, replace the rear main seal, flywheel, and bolts and hope for the best.  Having this professionally machined would be just about impossible with the crankshaft installed in the engine and/or the engine installed in the vehicle.

*** THIS I DO NOT RECOMMEND. The crank is a perfectly machined piece where the flywheel and clutch assembly are designed to fit flush with almost zero runout. A small variance here will be very large at the outer circumference. Apply this to an 8500 max rpm limit and track use, the repercussions down the road may be worse than what we have seen here.

OPTION 2) We replace the engine. New, used, rebuilt, whatever you’d like. This will provide the safest option for the future, the best outcome, and guarantee the most trouble free in the long run. 

Option 1 doesn’t sound too good to me, so that means I’ll be replacing the engine. The first decision to make, then, is who will do the work. As I said above, this is pretty much the most expensive place I could have it done. It may very well be that no one would do a better job than Ryan. Even with the club discount rate for labor, I’m already near twelve hundred for the diagnostics.

We initially thought we dodged the bullet because the timing chain is okay and there is no damage to the pistons and valves. So perhaps there’s some salvage value to be had out of this engine. Compression is good, and the top half was rebuilt less than two years ago.

Ferrari of Denver doesn’t get as much work over the winter as summer, so it would be better for them to utilize Ryan at a lower rate than for him to be idle. And as I’m in no hurry to get it done, they would have scheduling flexibility. So Ryan put together a quote for the work with a deep discount.

It was not an unreasonable quote, but it’s not a small number. I don’t want to go into debt to get the car running again. With the luxury of having four or five months to get it running again, I think Michael and I can get the job done. It doesn’t look like it will be difficult to get a good replacement engine. Michael has done an engine replacement before and he graduated with high marks from the same school as Ryan, so I have every confidence in him.

Now I just need to get the car home.

Friday, October 25

The other Ryan came to the rescue again.

We met at 10:00 at Ferrari of Denver. They got a few guys to help us push it out, thinking perhaps that we’d need to push it into the trailer. They seemed impressed by the winch in the trailer, and that my little tow ring was robust enough to pull the car. They asked Ryan if he had the same tow ring. “No, but it threads into the same hole.”

My big concern was getting it into the garage. We could winch it in, but not winch it out. The driveway is sloped enough that the car is almost level when the back tires are on the ramps. With the tongue of the trailer as high as it would go, we’d still have to push it uphill. And at tipping point, it would start to roll down the ramp and into the garage, so somebody had to be in the car to hit the brakes. Which meant only one of us could push.

But Ryan backed the trailer up, inch perfect, and we easily got the car into the garage. With it backed into the garage it’ll be a lot easier to deal with than when we did the clutch; we should have backed it in then, but I didn’t give it a second’s thought.

This one hurts

I’ve spent quite a bit on repairs, but this one is different. Brakes and tires and the clutch are all wear items. The ordeal of the camshaft was engineering failure: first the excessive wear on the cam, a widespread problem, and then compounded by defective parts from Toyota. The suspension failures were both due to failures of bolts. Those bolts aren’t generally considered wear items, but I now have their replacement on my calendar. The wheel studs will also be replaced on a schedule.

None of those repairs was due to any fault of mine, other than putting miles on the car.

But this one’s all on me.