Good evening chaps, very sorry for the delay.
I think we pretty much covered the lubrication side of things.
We have moved on now to....
COOLINGFirstly i have loads of photos but again my phone isn't sending
really gotta get a new phone.
The purpose of the cooling system...
1. to ensure no overheating
2. to ensure no over cooling
3. to maintain normal and correct operating temperature.
Firstly lets look at the radiator and its function...
in short when you start your car from cold the only coolant moving around the engine is in the water jackets in the block. this is moved about by the water pump and the pressure placed on the coolant.
once up to temperature the thermostat opens allowing coolant to not only flow around the engine but most importantly moves the (recently) hot coolant from the engine to the radiator where it is cooled and then thrown back in to the engine.
it works like this:
1. conduction - heat travels from the cylinders in to the coolant by conduction (heat movement through a solid object).
2. convection - the heat then travels through the coolant en route to the radiator
3. radiation - the coolant enters the radiator hot. it then gets cooled through the radiator by the air coming in from the grill (or by the cooling fan during idle).
our first practical was to drain coolant and refill... piece of piss
you jack it up, brake loose the top hose (to let air in to help with draining), brake loose the bottom hose (or drainplug like in the case of the omega), all hoses back, fill her up, run the car with a few revs, wait for the bubbles to subside. DONE.
The second thing we had to do was remove the rad. ive done 3 now and have to say its a piece of piss also. generally speaking you drain the radiator of coolant, undo (normally 2 monting bolts from underneath, pop it loose from its rubber grommets. DONE
Third thing we did was to test the coolant for its percentage of antifreeze using a hydromoeter. simply press the pump and draw in some coolant from your expansion tank (if you have one) like a syringe and the amount of discs in the tube that float indicate the boiling point of your mixture. we then have a nice graph we can look at which shows what the various boiling points are compared to the exact percentage of antiofreeze mixture. 50% is what you want. not from a ''how low can you go'' chart in terms of temperatuure but also it needs 50% to help with the other things that the mixture does which is stopping rust and corrosion on the engine.
fourth thing we did was to test some thermostsats. this was well easy. take off your thermostat (generally found by trailing back the upper hose to where it meets the engine), put it in some water in a saucepan and put it on the heat. we luckily had a ''thermometer gun'' which we pressed a button towards the water and it magically took the temperature. awesome! anyway on the stats they generally have a number that is the temperature that they're supposed to open at. example, our first one said 89. so that meant it should open at 89oC. when tested ours started to open at 80oC. Bad stat and would need to be replaced as its opening early, causing over cooling and therefore wouldnt get to temperature (or would take too long).
an interesting side note on the thermostat talk is the housing. made of the most brittle material in the world. i only nipped mine up and i broke the housing
mended it with a made gasket out of some gasket paper
and some proxy glue which properly stinks of actual shite!!!! horrible. and i still smell of it even after a shower
finally we came to do a pressure test to look for coolant leaks. only had a quick demo of this but we found that the stat was leaking following me breaking it
obviously the gasket didnt work
anyway, as i said im sorry for the very very late update but above is what ive done in a nut shell.
i am desperately trying to add my photos as i feel they add a lot to what im doing and trying to say at the same time.
love car bear