What a Mess!

Yecch.

The minute you bolt a car together, dirt seems to fly in from all over the world to make a new home in the crevices juuuust out of your reach. Equally amazing is the phenomenon whereby oil apparently flows uphill to join the dirt, drawn as if by magnetism. The resulting sludge will stay in place forever, or until the car is taken apart again.

Add to the mix a season of very hard running and three minor off-course excursions (two of them at the last two events), and you've got the recipe for one heck of a mess. This car can scoop up a lot of dirt, grass, and other debris because it sits so low to the ground. The configuration of the bellhousing (the front is open at the bottom) means that a LOT of debris can be stuffed in around the flywheel and starter, and it isn't inclined to come out on its own.

Until you pull the engine from the car, of course. You have to tilt the engine to clear the frame rails, so the dirt falls right out. Most of it lands smack in the middle of the oil that dripped out of the engine when you rocked it the other way. That weird magnetism again.

I could literally start a small garden with all the dirt that's caught up in this engine. That's not such a bad idea, cosmically. Maybe potting a couple of plants with this dirt could go some way towards balancing the bad karma from spilling so much oil...

Ah yes, the oil. How can something so slippery be so sticky? A fine layer of oil acts like flypaper, attracting and holding every available speck of dirt for miles around. For some reason, I keep thinking about putting "lifetime supply of paper towels" on my wishlist. (Before you run out and buy some for me, let me tell you a secret: I've gone through a roll and a half in two evenings so far, and the engine isn't even clean enough to go in the back of the pickup truck yet.)

The rear suspension teardown revealed a couple of surprises. One outer CV joint bolt on the right side had broken (usually they just loosen). The inner rod end on the lower right rear wishbone failed in a perplexing way: the race (the part holding the inner ball in place) actually "walked" out of the housing! I've never seen anything like it, and the confusing thing is that there was (theoretically) no load in the direction that the race travelled. The left rear hub also loosened up again -- time for some stronger hubs! And two of the ball bearings from the transmission layshaft rear bearing were found wedged in between two ribs in the bearing carrier.

Tonight is my night off, but I'll get back to the cleanup work on Thursday. Still planning to begin engine teardown this weekend!

(Leslie, that link is just for you.)