July 2004
Sump repairs
Unfortunately when I left the Upper Hayford Driving Day, I had a slight problem. I went to the M40 services and refilled the car with enough fuel to get home. After that I left the filling station, went around the roundabout and the sun came down at just the right angle to temporarily blind me. The results of this can be seen below, I obviously thought the roundabout centre was round when it was in fact oval.
Pictures of damaged sump
The sump was returned to the fabrication company and fortunately turned out to be repairable so it only cost me ΔΆ45 plus a new gasket. A word of warning the torque figures given in a haynes book for the sump gasket are useless, I foolishly applied these settings and took the car for a run, it came back with no oil left in the sump as it was all either on the bottom of the car or the road.
As a result of that the sump gasket has been tightened properly and now should be leak free, the only problem being that when you park the oil drips out of the gearbox bellhousing where it was thrown through the gasket.