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Jensen Monday Club |
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In more years than I care to remember, this has to be the most bizarre motoring incident I have ever seen. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it! Here's Is Chris's story...
Well, what an interesting and amazing day it's been today. This is
a long
story, so get comfy.
Some time ago I had a problem with a oil sump pickup getting
clogged, resulting in total loss of oil pressure. At the time it was
suspected that this was caused by the internal failure of an oil
filter as what was clogging the pickup was a fibrous material
much like the inside of a filter.
Yesterday the problem re-occurred, thankfully only about 100 yards
from home, so I coasted in and shut it down. Today I started by
removing the pressure relief valve in the oil pump, and it was clogged
with debris as before.
Next off was the oil filter; the outlet holes were completely blocked, and finally I drained the sump; again quite a bit of debris so it looked like a repeat of last time, but not so...
The reason I was out driving yesterday was a shake-down run after
installing mapped ignition as part of a conversion to Holley fuel
injection. So, whilst waiting for the sump to drain the distributor
was removed and amazingly the drive hole was also clogged with this
fibrous material.
Steve Payne, Kerry Moore and I started to pull bits of debris out of the dizzy hole; the more we pulled out the more there was, until Steve pulled out an entire hand towel!
Not just a small piece but a WHOLE towel about 2ft square!
We were utterly amazed, but there was even more in there that we could see through the dizzy hole. Next off was the inlet manifold and valley pan. The remnants of the towel were wrapped around the camshaft at the dizzy drive end. We managed to pull out the oil pump drive gear, and cut the remains away from the end of the cam.
Needless to say we were all utterly amazed that the engine even ran, let alone that it had been running for at least 10,000 miles, which is how long I've had the car. The oil pump drive shaft was missing about 1 inch from the pump end where it had broken off. I removed the oil pump and extracted the impeller and found the broken-off tip. Our guess is that the pump jammed and the force of the cam gear broke the tip off the drive shaft.
We suspect that a PO had used a towel to protect the valley area
whist working on the engine and then left it in there and put the
valley pan gasket back on top; utterly bizarre to have seen the
resultant mess and that everything kept working for so long.!
Luckily I had a new oil pump and drive shaft and these have been
fitted and everything put back together again. It started snowing just
as I finished so I abandoned work for the day.
The car started ok the next day, and the oil pressure is the same as before, so hopefully no damage done. Utterly bizarre, but as they say in the X-Files... "The Towel is in There"
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