Great Idea!! That gives me an excuse to go for another drive, I'll have to get my GF to come along and be the photographer!! I am complete sucker for Nostalgia, love it...
My preference would have been to add sealant to them, but the problem is the top half would have been sitting exposed too long whilst I was dialing in the cams, so what I ended up doing was adding some sealant where the Cam cover meets the head, just a bit of a dab right in those corners... I have already done 300miles in the car since the service, and not one drop of oil from the engine, dry as a bone.
I have been getting out and about in the 348, the engine feels great after the service, Ive done early morning "Dawn Raids", and today I went visiting friends.... I can never get enough of that sweet crisp flat plane V8 sound at 7000rpm........its like a drug, the good kind!! I have discovered though, I have some kind of "weeping" from the gearbox, I thought it might have been the RH drive flange seal, but its dry as a bone in there, so I thought it might have been that O-Ring on the side plate, so I pulled that and cleaned everything up and resealed. But I still have this oil appearing from "somewhere".....Its really not easy to see where its coming from.... Its not a lot of oil, on a short trip it doesn't leak, I have to drive more than about 60 miles, it will leave about 1/3rd of a teaspoon on the ground after a few minutes, but after that it stops..... It wasn't leaking before I changed the oil in the gearbox, so maybe it was low on oil before I changed it (wish I had have checked that before I did the change), I do recall thinking that not a lot of oil came out of the box....... So I am trying to track that down at the moment, its a bit annoying but its not stopping me enjoying the car, I know I will get to the bottom of it, I just hope I don't have to take the gearbox out of the car to sort it, that would be a bit boring.... and yes, my wheels are dirty, I was using the brakes fairly hard before I arrived at my friends place here in the pic... Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
I fixed the oil leak, so that was a relief, not serious at all........It actually ended up being the Phase sensor seal, lets just say that I should have checked it when I installed it, as it is very easy to screw it up. I have rectified the error, and the leak has stopped, I could have sworn it was gearbox oil though.....I need to get my nose checked!! The seal didn't look like it was damaged but I have ordered a new one all the same, should be here next week. The oil was seeping out of the phase sensor, onto the water pipe which runs to the expansion tank, it would drip off this pipe, onto one of the studs below on the engine block, then seep down the join between the gearbox and engine, it would run all the way to the bottom of the gearbox, and it would also start to pool right below the drive flange/Inner CV...... A somewhat elusive leak, not easy to see where it was coming from......anyway great to have that sorted, but I feel like a idiot, how many hundreds of seals have I fitted in my life!! Why was it this one that I had to screw up!! But now of course the weather has been awful here for the last week, no chance of getting out except for one quick 60 mile drive to test the leak, a small window of opportunity presented itself so I had to take advantage and go, always good to get out in the 348!! During this last weekend of horrendous weather, I have fitted a new stereo, I also removed the OEM speakers in the doors and got something with better power handling and performance. The old speakers were working, but they were done!! The head unit is a modern Pioneer with Hands Free for the Phone, Bluetooth, CD and a USB port where I can play music files off a USB stick... It actually doesn't look too out of place, I colour coded the display to keep the theme of the car as much as possible... There was also a factory wiring error with the right hand side door speaker, which meant it was out of phase, this made for some poor audio performance!! Also cleaned the interior, conditioned the leather, cleaned the floor mats and generally made things look nicer... I can feel a road trip coming on....!! Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
