Bremen 19.04.13
Our spare part box is ready for the transport to Novosibirsk. One of patients comes from Siberia and his aunt owns a pharmacy on one of the Novosibirsk main roads. She promised to keep the box until we arrive and we organized the return transport of the eventually exchanged parts, a quite complicated matter due to customs regulations of Russia. The main part in this aluminum box is a complete shaved stage 2 cylinder head. The organization warned us not to raise the compression due to the bad 80 octane fuel available in Mongolia. So we prepared the engine with a standard head which natural will give us less power than we would like to have in respect of the extra load our small TC will have to carry. We had to prepare a new rocker assembly because the one we used in the Flying Scotsman Rally in 2012 was ruined. On the second day after lunch break the 1250 xpag unit started to make ugly noises. We thought about adjusting the valves but in the evening when we removed the valve cover ( it was raining cats and dogs ) we saw a head without a drop of oil. We removed the rocker shaft assembly and found hard to move rockers, a ruined rocker shaft and terribly worn bushes. We cleaned and polished everything a could as we could, we even dismantled the shaft itself to clean out eventual dirt inside the shaft, assembled everything, started – no oil. we loosened the oil pipe nut on the head – plenty of oil. Nothing but question marks in our eyes. Finally we checked the nut that connects the pipe to the head and detected that somebody had soldered the opening and then redrilled the opening to 0,5mm, probably in order to raise to oil pressure (before selling the car?). We removed all plumb and Hurray plenty of oil appeared. Valve cover back on the finally we made to the bar in the hotel where we met two sad german teams. On team had smashed and shortened their prewar Alfa Romeo into a british stone wall -a total loss for the time being. The other team was a couple driving a small blue Bugatti – they got stuck in a long water passage with a clutch damage. No big thing they said: we have several of these (Bugattis) ! The next morning saw us cruising along to Scotland with happily rattling valves. Along with the new head we will send another set of newly made half shafts (our individual copy of the Bob Grunau version) together with other small parts we might think of during this weekend.
Peking2Paris 