AR7E - Alcester Racing 7's Equipe
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OK, if you are performing a 'big' oil change, you will be removing the sump and changing the foam baffle... The first task is to *loosen* all of the sump bolts around the periphery of the sump-pan. Most of these bolts are M5 hex-head (allen-key) jobs and with the exception of roughly three bolts, are identical. You will notice when you loosen the bolts that they are not very tight - it is easy to damage the threads in the aluminium block - so just remember that they will only need to be nipped-up by hand on replacement. In addition to the (mostly vertical) M5 bolts, there are two M6 bolts that are driven horizontally through the clutch cover and into the sump-pan. These can be removed in their entirety at this point (note - they were very stiff on this particular engine...) With the rear horizontal bolts removed and the others loosened, the sump should partially drop down either of its own accord, or with a firm tap of the heel of the hand. The sump should then be supported while the M5 bolts are finally removed - care being taken towards the end as there will be a good half-litre or so of oil washing around the sump... Note also that the gasket remains loosely attached to the engine - do not try to remove it at this point... Sump InspectionWith the sump removed, you can inspect it for general nastiness as in the image below (noting that a lot of the excess 0.5 litres or so of oil has been drained (or spilt...) by this point):
You can see that there are some gritty particles (labelled 'A' - 'B' is the sump-plug) in the pan - but in no great quantity. The origin of these foreign bodies is not clear -but in small quantities, they should not present much of an issue. We were also lucky in that there was no significant evidence that the foam baffle had broken up - other than a couple of insignificant tiny sections found in the oil-pickup filter that we will be looking at shortly. The sump should be completely drained and cleaned out with paper towelling - and the gasket surfaces checked and cleaned also. Baffle RemovalThe foam baffle is held in place by a metal plate, but in order to remove *that*, we first need to disconnect the oil-pickup pipe (two bolts) as shown in the image below:
The oil-pipe is labelled A in the image above - and you can just see one solitary piece of sponge material caught in the pickup filter labelled 'B' - nothing to worry about... With the pipe removed, the plate retaining the baffle can also be lowered. The baffle will look something like this below:
Key: A - baffle retaining plate B - sump gasket C - old foam baffle You will notice from the image above how nasty the baffle looks compared to the new one...
The second of these two images shows where a corner has been cut-off in order to provide space for both the dipstick and for the entry-point of the oil pickup pipe. You can use either the old foam as a template, or just offer the new one up and cut accordingly (which is what we did because a lot of the foam seemed to have been removed down the dipstick side of the old baffle. You will also need to punch holes through for the baffle-plate retaining studs and the pickup pipe retaining bolts - this can allegedly be done quite neatly with a soldering iron - but we just cut small holes with a knife instead. ReplacementWith the foam cut to shape, it is almost time to replace the components -but first the sump gasket and mating surfaces need to be cleaned and inspected. The sump-gasket is partially held in place by the baffle retaining plate - so this could do with a third-hand while the foam and plate are secured. It seems that the plate does not always locate properly in place - so the best method of attack is to loosely bolt it into position, then fit the pickup pipe (which might need the plate to be nudged into place) before everything is finalised. The sump should be offered up and loosely bolted back into position - final tightening of the bolts should take place in an exaggerated 'star' order (i.e. start with the middle ones and then work in rotating diagonal pairs). Please do remember that the bolts only really need tightening by hand so as not to damage the threads in the ali oil ladder. Once everything is back together, you can rejoin the standard oil-change procedure and perform the refill - noting only that as an optional extra step, you should/could remove the cam-cover and check if there is a small piece of sump-foam retained close to the Apollo connector. You should also add the sump-gasket to the list of possible leak points to check, of course... We didn't seem to have one in our engine, so after lifting the cam-cover, we slapped it back down again for another time... Job done... Back to Oil-Change Pt. 1 |
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