Saturday 13 February 2016

Mr Cockup pays a visit

Well,  it had to happen,  something a bit more serious...

I couldn't get the air temp sensor to fit in the plenum while it was bolted on to the engine,  so I removed the plenum. I tried to re-tap the hole but I just couldn't get it to work.  I think it's the right size but GBS have maybe used the wrong thread size for the Emerald sensor? I got annoyed and decided,  as the sensor isn't something I'm likely to need to take out,  to just use brute force and get the darn thing in.

Once in,  I replaced the plenum on the engine and here disaster struck. Up to now,  I haven't used my torque wrench much,  mainly because it's surprisingly difficult to get an agreed setting for most bolts. GBS didn't want to give me any settings,  saying they never used a torque wrench outside of the engine internals anyway. But,  for some stupid reason,  I decided to use it on the plenum bolts. And for an even stupider reason,  I just set it to 50nm because that seemed 'about right'.  I know,  I know - a true idiot....

The bolts obviously aren't very strong - the inevitable happened and it snapped:


A tad miffed...

Update: not as serious as I first thought.  I took the manifold off and the bolt had a few mm sticking out which I managed to grip with a set of pliers and I was able to simply unscrew it. Lucky escape... 

After a coffee to calm down,  I decided to start on some wiring,  as the crimping tool arrived. First is to join the wires from the GBS engine link to the ECU; crimp and cover in  heatshrink  (not yet shrunk - need to sneak the hairdryer out of the house :-) ) :



2 comments:

  1. Better to snap the bolt than thread the ali head!
    Could have been worse.

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    1. You're not wrong... horrible feeling when it went. I actually started drilling the pilot hole in the bolt stud ready for the left-handed drill and I realised the bolt was loose enough to turn, which is why I tried the pliers. Never been happier to turn a bolt...

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