crank repair, driving faster

[simple]

Gazza said:

Do you think it failed from factory or from a poor repair at
some stage?

Given that the car is 185,000km old, and was 114,000km old when it
came into my life, it's possible that at some time someone has had
the cambelt drive pulley off and didn't follow good procedure in
replacing it. My uneducated guess, though, is just old age.


I've been reading a book I borrowed, called "Going Faster: Mastering
the Art of Race Driving : The Skip Barber Racing School" (by Carl
Lopez)(it's reviewed here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0837602270)

Now that I've got more torque (and more education), I'm finding it a
lot easier to provoke power oversteer than before. Maybe I was just
being too gentle before, but I'm now finding oversteer to be
pleasantly easily available. Previously my attempts more often
resulted in understeer - exciting from the point of view that I would
find myself heading toward the kerb, boring from the point of view
that I wasn't travelling sideways

My former understanding of oversteer/understeer, and the ways of
achieving these things, was lacking. It is good to have an
educational car.

Whilst I don't really want to go terribly fast (I'd just hurt myself,
or the car, or attract the attention of the law), I think the book is
helping me communicate my wishes to the vehicle. Remember: a
squealing tyre is a happy tyre (note: squealing is different
from screeching - the latter is not necessarily a happy sound)


An arguable downside of the repair is that I am now driving in higher
gears than I used before (when I was compensating for crappy down-low
torque) and the variable power-steering is therefore lighter. I was
enjoying the heavier steering I had. Of course I can just drive
harder to make up for this

An upside is that when cold, as well as having torque, the car no
longer makes a chuffing noise - if I wanted chuffing I would have
bought a steam train!


Karl.

[Mikkels]

I called in on Karl and Fletch while they were doing the
repair. They had things well under control. Great result
too. Later in the week I was at Taylor's engine
reconditioners in Grafton and noticed they had a silver MX
in the workshop with the front of the motor "undressed".
Being nosey I looked at the crank and yes it was flogged a
little worse than Karl's. Paul from Taylors showed me how
they repair these. They weld up the front of the crank,
engine in the car then grind back and cut a new keyway - all
in the car. This is achieved with a jig and tools they have
made themselves. Price about $300 for the welding and
machining.

I thought the list should know about this as a badly flogged
crank would be beyond the loctite fix.

Don
[...]