I don't believe it (TM Victor Meldrew) - Good and Bad!

[Mike R]

The Good:
I was asked to go and help set up a customer's car for Round 2 of Time Attack, which was all the way up and Croft at the weekend. The Cesil needed another few hundred miles on the clock, which would then enable me to take it to Elms for an oil change, which would finally allow me to drive the car how BMW intended (following a full engine rebuild under warranty), so naturally it made sense to take this.

Unfortunately the TA car chewed a rear driveshaft, so with only an hour away from the circuit I got a call to see if I could locate and collect one on my way up . Thankfully, I was not too far from one of my suppliers, so quickly made the 100 mile detour to Paul at North Yorks RS Spares to collect the drive / spiggot shafts.

So with a mixture of fast and slow A roads, and driving at a steady 55-85mph (traffic dependent), I was absolutely amazed to see this figure recorded as the average of the 300 mile trip:


With fuel economy like that, who needs a diesel . A mate said he only gets 34mpg out of his Golf TD on a similar run .

I also spotted a CSL behind the pits with a registration designed to spell out CSL GT - I believe it is Gavin Renshaws?

Now the bad:
50 miles from Croft the emissions light came on .

Now I believe this can be one of three things:
1. One of the lambda sensors
2. The intake air temp sensor
3. Head gasket failure .

I'm going to be speaking to Emma today and booking the car in anyway, but I was wondering if there was any additional symptoms that would point to one or the other. The reason being, I didn't notice the light had come on until I gave the car a "tickle" and under full load in the mid-range above 5000rpm, you could hear a "rattle" (which reminded me of Toughy's recent posts). I immediately backed off and checked the dash to see the light on.

All experiences in this regard would be greatly appreciated.

To top it all, when I arrived at Croft with the parts for the race car, I was greeted with this:


The car had suffered a back-fire in the morning qualifying (third fastest after only nine laps and never having been to the circuit before), which blew apart the aircraft spec alloy (stronger than steel) plenum apart . Somehow fuel is getting into the plenum and because it is running wasted spark (which fires two cylinders at a time), the fuel is then being ignited. It looks like the FPR may be faulty .