MoT Pass

Awesome news!

2nd round of the MoT was a thundering pass :) That's made me one very happy Engineer.

The drive there was much, much nicer this time on account of the weather being "almost spring", there was a bit of blue sky and sunshine - even better.

Arrived with plenty of time to spare, didn't want to get stopped by the police (which didn't happen) and be late

We had a good chat about what I'd been up to (I bring 5 cars per year there, normally twice each test as well so we tend to get along) and then he got it on the ramp.

Steering wasn't a problem as the new rack was fine. New nuts/bolts were also fine too. Handbrake cable routing was much better, and the front brake flexis were deemed fine as well. As for the handbrake efficiency, well I was still having trouble with it, but as I'd effectively paid for a full test and all he was doing was checking a few bits; he was very kind to help me adjust it up correctly. The trick is to let all the slack out of the cable so the lever on the caliper hits the back stop, pump the pedal and THEN take up the slack in the cable. That worked a charm, and the handbrake pulled 20% efficiency. (MoT limit 16%, IVA limit 18%, so all good on that front).

So finally just down to the emissions then. This is the scary bit because if that ain't right, then who knows what's wrong with it? Clear conscience on the error codes and a new MAF and CPS?

To start with, it wasn't good:

Still High CO...

 Mercifully, after much revving it started to come down a bit, but at 0.307 still over the BET limit of 0.2000

Coming down...

 But then finally, it dropped and settled below 0.200 and finished at 0.195. I then had a chat with the tester who explained that if it fails the standard BET test you can go onto an extended test which takes about 10minutes, and allows a lot more revving and a higher limit of 0.300, which is what happened at the first test. Although at 0.600 it was massively out last time. The IVA limit is 0.300 as far as I can make out from the manual, so I should be OK.

This time though, settled down below and passed fine. Hope it does this on the day of the races though!!

Passed!

 So in the end it was a pass, and now the car has an MoT - awesome news. (but no tax or a number plate yet... lol) Gives me confidence that an IVA is indeed within reach.

Whilst out and about and "legal" to drive with my letter from VOSA, earlier in the week I booked in a four-wheel alignment at another garage on the way home from the MoT. Something else you can't really do in your shed, at least not with any degree of accuracy. This garage has one of the most sophisticated bits of kit in the area.

Because of the nature of the car, and the fact the garage staff had absolutely no idea what to do with it (also possibly because it was a sunny Saturday and mine was the last job of he day and perhaps they couldn't be bothered) I ended up helping to a large extent. The camber adjustment isn't easy as you have to take the wishbone off, so I ended up doing that and taking the wheels on and off with their tools, in their garage with me paying them!!!! The supervisor joked "don't think this makes the price any lower". Cheek!!

After a great deal of faffing we got it pretty good, except the n/s/f camber which ended up 0.7° negative instead of the 1° of the other side - but it literally wasn't playing ball. Of course all the measurements for camber and toe are linked, so when you adjust one, the others all jump around. that's "within tolerance" I feel (a posh way of saying "close enough"). Or at least I'll give it a go and see what it drive like. I did get them to put a rather substantial -1.5° of toe in on the front, hopefully that will help with the self centring issues.

4 wheel alignment kit

A rare moment: garage staff working isntead of me

computer readout, in this instance, rear toe

So that was my exciting Saturday out. Achieved a lot. EXCEPT the self-centring issue. It's still not even budging when you let go of the steering wheel. With a brick for the accelerator pedal the car would happily drive around a roundabout without me in it - not good news for the IVA. Further investigations required I feel... Other than that, the car is driving very well indeed -most lively now. I did take video footage on the way there, but it wasn't a clear run - lots of traffic and crawling in queues, not particularly exciting and hardly worth the effort in editing and rendering the clips. 

This was truly a kit-tastic weekend - On Sunday, I did another exciting thing.

I went forth and collected the S50B32 engine like-wot-I-won on eBay earlier in the week :)

Nice chap all the way up in Kent sold it to me - very reasonably as well I feel. (Why is Kent is some sort of mecca for me and BMW car stuff? hah.) He had it in a track car and spent a fortune building up the engine, only for a tiny piece of metal the size of a grain of rice get into one of the cylinders. Being the fastidious sort he immediately stripped it down and then promptly decided it was lower priority than other stuff - hence me stepping in. It's missing a few key components, but it'll do nicely for a winter project and phase 2 of my car

Fit an M3 engine they said... it'll make your car faster they said. Didn't work though.

 I fetched it back to the workshop and had a quick look - yes it's damaged and will need some machining and yes it's missing a few key components, but nothing insurmountable. Although the first few bits I've tried to seek out is like hunting horcruxes or pieces of the devil's soul, so a formidable challenge it will be!

Block and head

"Piston broke". Note numbers 2 and 3 have some chattering on the top face

Exciting stuff....

Thanks for reading.