Million Mile Montego

[Doctordiesel77]

Luckily I found a spare manifold and elbow that looked to have had an easier life, so used them along with new gaskets. At first I thought the old turbo was in reasonable nick, but a closer inspection revealed a good bit of oil in the compressor side and a bit too much play on the bearings, another job that was worth doing in the end. Might be another tiny oil leak fixed too, the inlet pipe was loose and quite oily!

[Doctordiesel77]

While I was already fiddling with the car it seemed like a good time to fit the intercooler that I've had for a long time. It was a bit of a tight fit, but should reduce stress on the engine, reduce exhaust gas temperature (thus giving the turbo an easy time), improve fuel consumption & the fact that it is in front of the radiator might help the engine to warm up quicker (or may have no effect as it is cooling intake air). Time will tell.

[Doctordiesel77]

The test drive started badly, lots of smoke! This cleared after a while, so most likely sticky seals in turbo, which had been on the shelf for years. Seemed to go as well as before, pipe into engine was stone cold after a run & pipe out of turbo was quite warm, so intercooler seems to be doing its stuff. Calibrating the zemco speed sensor took a while, but it is now brutally accurate. Judging by its MPG calculation I may need to calibrate the fuel flow sensor up by several percent, either that or the intercooler is a magical device which is going to save me a fortune in fuel.... Now I just need to find the criminal that broke in last night and covered the car in oily fingerprints

[Doctordiesel77]

No 'amusing' comments on this yet, no doubt some will appear later! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxgxPe2Bl5Y

[Jeff Turbo]

No 'amusing' comments on this yet, no doubt some will appear later! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxgxPe2Bl5Y

Now would you get amusing comments on your best sunday church go to meetings suit that you were where that day. lol. Your passenger looks petrified BTW

[Andy]

Good watch that Johnny. Getting closer to show season to see it again. Daffodils are out, thats always a good sign You taking that one to POL?

[Doctordiesel77]

Now would you get amusing comments on your best sunday church go to meetings suit that you were where that day. lol. Your passenger looks petrified BTW

Can't think why he looked petrified, I don't remember telling him any interesting stories about people driving into the river, only had to drive around one lump of wood lying in the road & even if I had unleashed whatever is left of its 81 horses it wouldn't have had the same effect as the Commer van / TVR in his other videos

[Doctordiesel77]

Good watch that Johnny. Getting closer to show season to see it again. Daffodils are out, thats always a good sign You taking that one to POL?

Daffodils are just thinking about it up here, but it has stopped snowing! Yes, it will be going to POL, the Montego is the most relaxing of the cars on the motorway.....

[Doctordiesel77]

The Zemco fuel computer is still not 100% right on the fuel used side. I did put a lot of effort into calibrating it, but suspect that when idling/on overrun the tiny amount of fuel going into the engine may be more tiny than that going through the return, the journeys with most traffic jams seem to be the ones where it overestimates the fuel used. On the plus side it means that the average mpg indicated is on the low side, so I'm always going to be happy with the real figure. Having experimented a bit, I think that it'll do 100mpg at a higher speed than in the Perkins tests (their figures were 112mpg at an average speed of 32mph), they didn't have low rolling resistance tyres, 15" wheels or an intercooler. The 58.2mpg average was going up and down M6, M40, M25 and a few A roads (including Hartside, which is not an economical road), 76.5 was driving to Carlisle on A roads & making a point of driving economically. I've put pictures of my scribbly notebook up, in case anyone is curious. The figures on the left page are from Zemco, the ones on the right from filling station & car speedo. Speedo overreads speed, but seems to underestimate distance, I am pretty confident that zemco speed/distance calibration is right.

[Doctordiesel77]

While working the mpg out I realised that I'd gone past my 6000 oil change interval by a few hundred miles, when I checked I found that the alternator belt only scored 2.5 on the AR tension gauge, so I retensioned it while I was under the car. The picture of the dipstick is after running the engine to check for leaks, the fact that it hasn't gone black is, in my opinion, proof that 6000 mile oil changes are a better plan than 12,000 mile ones. While I had my 'doing what it says in the book, but doing it more often' hat on, I found that the turbo drain clips weren't as tight as they should be, not very loose, but maybe loose enough to cause a slight leak...time will tell whether or not this has fixed the last annoying dribble! The hand pump for putting the oil in might seem a bit extravagant, but using it saves any chance of tipping oil everywhere & makes filling the oil filter before fitting it very easy. Filling the filter doesn't get you out of disconnecting the fuel solenoid and spinning the engine over until the oil light goes out, but definitely saves a bit of spinning over time.

[Jeff Turbo]

You certainly have all the tools John

[Doctordiesel77]

You certainly have all the tools John

I got it mainly for the timing belts, but also good for all the other belts. I'd have got it somewhere near without it, but it takes all the guesswork out of the job & gets it set exactly the way Rover/Perkins wanted it set. A bit like using a torque wrench on the sump plug, which is something I did as well...