Skoda Rally Blog

… there’s hope.  So for any hope, it was time to see if the new engine would run.  Most of the work had been done last weekend, but there were still a few things left before I could even turn it over, and to get started it was time to take the cover off the car.  As you may know, I don’t have a garage big enough to work on the car, so it’s out in the drive.  And it was cold last night.  Cold enough that even though I’d left it til nearly midday, getting the cover off the car wasn’t easy as it was iced onto it!  Not a good start, and getting anything done then involved picking up tools which were of course bloody cold as well.  Unpleasant, but necessary.

I connected everything up, making up the new fuel hoses as needed, and double-checking everything.  Then it was time for the radiator, which meant changing the water pipe (there are two types on the Felicia, and this was, predictably, the wrong one).  The other one I had had a weird bracket on it which made it impossible to fit onto the car, so it was time to cut that off.  I did it with the hacksaw to make sure I didn’t cut anything important, but I then wanted to tidy it up, easiest done with the angle grinder.  Which didn’t seem too happy and was turning rather slowly.  I touched the grinding wheel onto the part, and suddenly the grinder REALLY wasn’t happy.  There was smoke, and I ended up having flames coming out of it – I’m no expert, but I think this means the grinder is broken.  I walked out of the garage holding the now-dead grinder by the cable, looking like Dr. Venkman with the full trap in Ghostbusters.

The rest of fitting everything went smoothly enough, it’s just plugging bits in.  Putting oil into the engine reminded me how cold it was – it was pouring like treacle.  And then, the big moment.  Would it even get oil pressure, let alone run?  I disconnected the ECU so I could just turn the engine over to get oil pressure, and it did so fairly quickly.  Result.  Now I plugged the ECU back in, and turning over saw no activity at all anywhere, and this was quickly traced to the crank sensor needing adjusting.  Once that was done, it made encouraging noises, and fairly quickly, it fired up!  Result #2.  I checked everything over for obvious bad signs (leaking oil or water, etc), and all was well.  So I fired it up again, and kept it running to warm it up a bit.  The wideband O2 meter was showing that the mixture was a bit rich, but you’d expect that during warm-up, and indeed the idle mixture ended up being really lean (I can’t remember what it was set at before, it was that long ago), and it sounded a bit lumpy as a result.  But with a bit of adjustment it was ticking over, so I let it warm up and then was very good and cautious and changed the oil.  This engine had been left standing for a while so I wanted to make sure any dust/crap/junk/insects that were inside would get washed out, and that it had nice new oil for its new life.  Easily done, along with a bunch of other little things that were needed, and I decided to do a compression test which showed all cylinders at good pressure and nice and even, and then finally it was time to see if I can get in the car.

This might sound silly, but getting in or out of a car is something that’s generally painful for me at the moment, and doing so with an X door bar in the way, even more so.  Amazingly it was easy enough to get in, and I went to fire it up and nothing!  Reason being I’d disconnected the starter to use a remote for the compression test, which meant I had to get out of the car sooner than I’d though, another thing I wasn’t looking forward to, but it was OK.  Second time, it was easy, and a chance to spin the wheels up in each gear to check the gears were all OK, and the box was happy.  And it was.  Five speeds plus reverse.  Brakes seemed OK and the engine pulled against the brakes OK as well.  Overall, a good day’s effort.  I’ve written a list of things to do tomorrow, but until the car is insured I can’t do anything about either getting an MOT or getting it mapped, so I’ll have to take it a step at a time.   And decide what’s happening about the Sunseeker, which is four weeks today.