Time for a little post snow catch up!
I finished the oil cooler mounts, and fitted the AN fittings and push fit hoses and clipped it all up so it can't go anywhere or rub on anything:
Turned the key, and all seemed good
no leaks.
A quick check with the temperature probe as it was warming up. I wanted to do this fairly early in the cycle so I was reading genuine temps on the cooler, and not just heat that had radiated throughout the cooler after extended running.
Oil temp during warm up:
Temp on oil cooler 30 seconds later:
And the otherside, this is just changing between 39.7 and 40 degrees:
Great. I checked the oil cooler all over, and temps were the same all up the core from bottom to top. As it warmed up more there was a noticable temperature difference between the two side also as the cooler does it's job.
Having let it run up to temp, I turned the engine off, and checked the oil level immediately.
As expected, having filled the cooler and lines it was low.
I left this another 30 minutes, and checked it again. Exactly the same level. It didn't seem like there was any drain down from the cooler as
@desertstorm correctly suggested would be the case.
From the mocal website, I got the volume of the cooler to be 0.32L. I confirmed this by washing out the old cooler, then checking using water. 0.32L it was.
In addition to this, the hose length needs to be considered.
I had used a total of 2.25m of AN10 hose, which has a 16mm bore. This has a CSA of 201mm², multiplied by the 2.25m length, giving a volume in the hoses of 0.45L total.
0.45+ 0.32 = 0.77L
So, with that in mind, I left the car overnight, keen to make 100% sure there was NO drain down.
The snow came, and it was actually 3 days before I went to the garage again. the oil level still hadn't changed, so I am now VERY confident there is no drain back to the sump in normal operation.
With the 0.77L figure in mind, I slowly added oil from a fresh 1L bottle until the dipstick showed bang on max:
And surprise surprise, this was the level on the bottle:
Very confident there that all the numbers were right, and the engine has exactly the right amount of oil in it. I'm also happy that when checking the oil level I can use the standard max and min marks.
Whilst messing around with this I also did a little headlight repair as one of the tabs had broken off due to a seized bolt.
Not the prettiest, but basically I bonded on a repair washer with an m6 nut bonded behind that:
In other news, I got the vernier out to check the tread depth on the 2555 AD08s I'd picked up recently.
very pleased to see that they have over 6mm remaining
Sharp eyes will spot a few cuts on the tyre on the right. These are only 1mm deep or so and don't go anywhere near the depth of the tread so zero worries about those. If there are any concerns at all I'll run that one on the rear.
I offered the 255 AD08 up against a 235 Khumo KU36. the difference was insane!
Given it should only be a 20mm difference, I was surprised to measure the khumo 235 tyre at 225mm over all, and the yokohamma 255 tyre measured up at 270mm over all!
I also decided to check the preload on my diff as a reference point for keeping an eye on it.
Whilst the diff Preload was set at 70lb from new, it's very hard to correlate this to a checking torque like this, as you're also having to turn the crownwheel and gearbox in this particular example.
What it does do though is give me a measure of the current preload, which I can then check routinely to monitor how the diff is changing and bedding in.
In this instance, it took 95lb to turn the driveshaft with the opposite wheel on the ground.
More later!
