It was time to decide: should Ford be demolished and taken to the scrapyard or should it be repaired for one more round at a F-Race? Leading with a nostalgy to old good times spent with this car, and a passion to clarify why Ford transmission broke, a happy 3 friends decided to investigate, repair and give that car another try to reach the race track.
All started on late, raining Wednesday, the 16th of September, 2021. We all gathered at a garage where Ford had a great sleep for about a year or so. We had some 'fun' taking Ford's gearbox out but eventually all nuts came loose and gearbox fell out of the engine bay quite easily. Few precious moments:
To our surprise, clutch pressure plate was full of clutch disk material. It seems that half of clutch disk just fell apart due to overheat or high revs, or whatever. Non of us had seen such clutch failure before. Half of the clutch disk was in a good shape and half of it was just gone. We found clutch disk material stuck in a pressure plate, which seems to be locked by that in open position, plate was not operating at all. Interesting! Fotos speak for themselves, have a look:
Repair with a surprise!
In terms of the repair, all went quite well. New clutch, new pressure plate, new slave clutch cylinder - all new! Gearbox jumped out and then back in smoothly, no challenges at all.
Once new parts were installed and gearbox joined the engine back together, we tried to start the engine again after almost 1 year of silence. It was running fine before, so it started fairly easy this time again.
However, the garage is not ventilated and there is a high level of humidity which turns into corrosion all metal parts to our misfortune. The engine stood quite for so long that generator got corroded and stuck. When we cranked and started the engine, auxiliary belt slipped over generator's pulley so badly that eventually generator case cracked! It was jut a matter of couple of seconds and woalia - we need a new generator now, damn! Here is how cracked generator looks like:
We are almost ready
So, we ordered another generator, used one but in good condition. Well, that generator was from 1.8 diesel motor, so we had to swap the pulleys but apart from that all seems to be the same. Replaced without any major difficulties.
Another thing that must have been done - the exhaust pipe re-installed as there was a sound level limit of 92 dB introduced to F-200 racing rules. Meh.. worked hard with those rusty parts but eventually we made it.
Last minute fix
When everything seems to be fixed, we noticed that break hose is bleeding when we were loading Ford on the trailer! Damn! The corrosion did it's job and break line hose just broke down. We replaced this line in 20 min on the road to the race. That was a real challenge!
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