Lube her up first..... No! The engine!! Sheesh you guys...

[delicanuck]

Hi Gang,

Here is my next little Delica project:

http://www.autoenginelube.com/

Anecdotally, some wildly exaggerated proportion of engine wear occurs on startup because all the oil is down in the sump so for the first few seconds, your parts are working dry. This gadget stores some oil in a little pressure vessel and releases it at startup, while you are waiting for your glowy bitz to warm up anyway, so that on the first crank, there is at least some oil in the working bits of the engine. The theory sounds good and it isn't expensive. I'll let you know how it goes.

[josh]

Can you find space to mount the oil storage tank for it? And what about oil changes: will all the oil still drain out, or does the dirty oil in the pressurized storage tank remain?

Just those few questions... cool concept though. Sounds great, keep us informed.

Josh

[sean]

That seems like a very simple install and a great idea. Love to hear how it works out.
Sean

[BCDelica]

I would go for it Brett, I had a 1970 Caddie Eldorado for years with a modified 8.2 liter engine (the real reason I run WVO, to make up for the huge amounts of gas 'we' consumed) that had a similar setup. Crude, but efficient. The mechanic that put the wild cam in, also installed a heavy duty window washer pump connected to a 10 second timer, that would spray oil on both valve trains before the starter kicked in. Controled through a 10 second timer wired to a relay. It was tapped into the oil pan. And of course if it was early enough 'we' woke people within a two block radius well starting that beast; but 'we' only had the cops called once for noise. I drove that car ridiculously hard, and after a year would change the oil to find it was still amber colored (I was young and not much into service). Can't hurt and has to benefit the engine.



Bueatiful, yes I loved that beast!!! :D :D

[crushers]

HOLY PIMP MOBILE BATMAN!!

[delicanuck]

Hi gang,

So Josh, I ordered two sizes of bottle so I can test to see where I can nail the bottle down and which is the biggest size that will fit. When its time for an oil change, you just turn the key to the prestart position to open the solenoid, then instead of turning to the crank position and starting the engine, just turn it off and wait 15 or 20 minutes for that last bit of oil to run down to the pan.

Kevin, That Caddy is (was?) a thing of beauty! I have an innate appreciation for anything done exceptionally well or otherwise done to excess. I have seen guns that I liked. I actually own a Curta machine. Of course, I have a Delica. I must remember to go over to my neighbours house and get a picture of his SUV. He bought a T62 main battle tank. Like you in your Caddy, he also gets about 2.2 miles per gallon but its ideally suited for a veggie conversion, provided the engine itself will drink the stuff. Those ruskies ironically, didn't have a lot of success with their multifuel program. Oddly, I thought, he had to remove the SMGs but he got to keep the main gun. Buying amo is going to be a challenge.

[BCDelica]

First of, do you mean one of those mechanical calculators? Which I remember one at UBC and thought they are super rare. Secondly, if so, how does that fit in with my youth excessive plaything? Just looked it up, 14,000 Curta machines made.

Thirdly, are you serious about the T62 main battle tank?!? Wow, I had to goggled it, what a ruskie monster. Dozen cylinders, 700 hp, cool. Two thoughts come to mind about the rig, first drop the engine into the back of a Deli with a V-drive - have to get Bruce into that mod; secondly what does transport Canada have to say about a tank shipped to Canada. LOL. Guess if you drive a tank, fuel cost aren't a issues. Please take a picture.

Are you going to mount the bottle just to the left of the diesel filter, which is one of the comparably roomy areas under your van's boot. If you have only one battery it could fit in that area also. Just for an interesting comparisons, when working on my Caddie's motor I could recline on the fender inside the hood. If I threw a tarp over the raised hood and had a work light 'inside', it was like having a mobile shop.

Kev

[delicanuck]

Hi Kev,

The Cadillac was, and perhaps still is perhaps the hallmark of American opulence, as in "the Cadillac of such and such" the same way that Bruce the Good might say " the Rolls Royce of so and so" to indicate the best of the best. The Curta is, to my mind, the highwater mark in mechanical computing. I actually had mine in the car on the Harrison road just because it is my pocket calculator. Should have whipped it out then. Mine is a Curta II from the early 60s .

By car standards, the T62 is a monster but by tank standards, its surprisingly small. Something the Americans would make great sport of because of course, size is what matters to the military. The Americans stopped laughing when they saw a T62 roll out of a sea container in Cuba. Try to fit any US tank into a sea can. Imagine the implications.
This reminds me of the vacuum tube story, way off topic but then, we are anyway. There's a guy in Seattle that I've met, " Colonel Mike ", I don't recall his real name, who defected from the Romanian Air Force with his Mig 21 Fishbed. When the Americans got hold of it they were laughing their narrow asses off at the fact that the Russians were still using tube radios. They laughed and laughed until an ex-intelligence guy whom I've also met, who was then working as a writer for Stars and Stripes asked if vacuum tube radios would still work after a nuclear blast. The room became very quiet.

DOT etc. licenses a tank pretty much the same as an excavator or Cat and they kind of ignore the main gun 'cause wadahyah gonna shoot? We will have to put rubber tracks on to drive it on a road it but as it happens, there's lots of them going spare in England, surplus from the Centurion tank, and they fit! ( The Centurion really was a monster.) The Centurion tracks have arrived so maybe some pictures pretty soon. Might convert the main gun to a really big propane/spud gun.

No plan yet as to where to park the bottle. I think the bigger the bottle, the more oil will live in the car and the more oil the better, right? I mean, you don't want to over fill and blow a gasket but I might otherwise have installed an oversize oil pan to achieve greater oil volume and that would be a good thing... Wouldn't it?

We had a Triumph GT6 in the seventies and it too would instantly convert itself into a workshop with tool rests and drink holders, built in lighting, even hand warmers. That aught to have been our first clue.