I got the exhaust back on this weekend, having had to modify the mounting slightly to account for the slightly repositioned can. You can see the “bright grey” mounting at the back of this photo.
Archive for the ‘Repairing’ Category
Compared to the recent bout of doom and despondency, this post should turn out to be slightly more upbeat.
First up I took the remains of the shattered exhaust over to Andy’s and we welded in a new cat, as seen here. (I really need to get a TIG welder…) Apparently, the cat I had is one of the earliest batch produced by the company that Andy got them from and they now weld the cat canister into the housing. (If you look hard at the photo you can see where there’s some grinding on the top of the housing, this appears to be the end result of where a hole has been drilled through the housing and then filled with weld material after the cat was inserted.)
I’ve now had a chance to have a look at the cat rather harder. Of course, this involves actually cutting up my nice new Tony Law exhaust system which is a bit alarming. Here it is in the vice just as I set about it with a hacksaw.
You can see the lambda boss sitting here. When I took the lambda sensor out it was completely black, symptomatic, I guess, of the thing running incredibly rich and dumping carbon all over everything.
Well, that explains it then. This is the view peeking down the inlet to the cat. The cat is not meant to look like that jumbled pile of bits and pieces.
I got up this morning having decided that the problem was either a) something to do with engine management or b) a blocked exhaust. As you can see it was the latter. This blockage would have reduced the flow of gas through the engine which effectively is what was causing the rich mixture.
Here’s a little riff on the last entry. (See, instead of fixing the car I can play with the data logger?)
