AR7E - Alcester Racing 7's Equipe
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It's hard to determine if this is a maintenance issue, or a new product... We had a bit of a disaster on one of our cars - the coolant (water) temperature gauge sender failed (again - having only been replaced a month or two back) and this time, the gauge showed a steady 100+ Deg C rather than the 'normal' failure reading of 60 Deg C flicking occasionally to 80. When we tried to remove the sender from the engine, the head sheared off, leaving the body of the sender embedded in the water rail leaving us with two options: i) Attempt to remove the dead-sender (possibly damaging the £100+ water rail) or; ii) Leave the body in situ and fit the so-called R500 Submarine which relocates the ECU and gauge senders away from the current location just above the exhaust manifold - and happily cost only £23+VAT (so damaging that in the future won't break the bank). Unfortunately, the old sender failed to remain water-tight, so we were forced to remove the dead sender (risking the water rail) - but we decided to fit the remote R500 submarine anyway. R500 'Submarine'First of all, let's look at the existing water rail.
Click Image for Full-Size Key: A - 'Dead' water gauge sender in water rail (ECU sender is immediately to the left) B - Heater bypass pipe (disconnected) C - Radiator top-hose (disconnected) The two important things to note are that both senders are immediately above the exhaust manifold - (and so they can suffer from heat-soak etc.) and secondly that with no heater fitted, a heater-bypass pipe transfers coolant from the water rail to the thermostat housing on the other side of the engine. In the next image, we will see the 'submarine' next to the original water rail.
Click Image for full-size. Key: A - Original ECU and gauge coolant sender locations - now plugged. B - ECU temp sender in submarine C - Gauge sender in submarine D - Earthing stud You can see that we will/have sealed the original sender locations with blanking plugs (not screwed fully home in the above image) and that we will need to provide an earth-lead for the submarine, as it will no-longer be bolted directly to the engine. As an aside, we finally managed to remove the old-sender from the water rail by carefully drilling out the body of the sender in 0.5mm increments - until the steel thread of the water rail was just becoming visible. The remaining spirals of brass from the sender (i.e. the 'male' thread) were then chased out with a pick, knife or similar - we had decided that if the threading on the water rail was damaged in the process, we would simply have the gauge sender mount welded up... Installation and LocationThere's not a huge amount to say about the installation - it goes along the lines of: i) Drain coolant from system The following two images show the submarine in situ, including the earth wire and zip-tie.
Click Images for full-size. In the first image 'A' points to the earth lead location - in the second, 'A' points to the zip-tie. That's it really - job-done. What can we say? It works - and with any luck the senders should last longer than before and give more accurate readings due to them being relocated away from the exhaust manifold. |
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