Slipper man

Speak to Eddie Marriot at Oxted trimming (they advertise in LF). He may be able to sell them to you (he makes them for Caterham) unless he has some IP constraint.

As implied, most compressors have an adjustment by the pressure guage. You need to turn it up I suspect.

Alex, you know what I would do... 😬 If you don't want the 20 mile old stuff, do let me know - I can think of an R500 owner that would happily use it. Whenever he pours the oil from the catch tank back into the engine, he thinks of you Edited by - Slipper man on 16 Apr 2007 18:05:22

If your car is the same as mine you will find you also have another pressure sender fitted. Look on the metal thing that the pressure sender is attached to. Do you have another with a single electrical terminal on it? Mine did, and attaching it to a big yesllow light gave me an emergency indicator light on a seperate sensor.

What are M1 dampers?

Yes. Mick Attree (sparing his blushes) is one of the country's leading Duratec/Caterham experts. If he says it doesn't need it, it doesn't (and he wouldn't say that about the K series installation). I believe even the race cars do without dry sump.

They all do that, sir! Well, mine does from all three, though the plate on the bottom of the dry sump can be oil free if I bother to install the o ring

Don't know if you can wash them. Mine says 'dry clean only' so I do as they say. Don't want to find out they couldn't be washed by having it fail in a fire

Agreed - it needs a session on a rolling road. The map can be improved, and you will likely fond the kangarooing caused by some faulty sensors, which you will only find when you put in on a rolling road. Steve G also transformed mine making it an absolute baby at low speeds.

You aill find that smaller wheels and high profile tyres will transform the car. The handling will be better, but you will notice more is the far better ride quality and the lower tendancy to tram line. Totally recommended

Thirded - you can't set these things up without a rolling road. With it, in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing the car will be transformed. The best I know is Steve Greenauld, near Dartford (which I realise is a long way from Scotland). Changing ECU will be a waste of time - it is the map that is wrong

If you do need to change the gasket, go to a Land Rover dealer and get them to provide you with the pick list for that job. They can just run it off the computer and it will tell you all the bits you will need You have to ensure there aren't any non engine bits that are only needed for replaceing the bits of a Freeelander that you have to remove to get at the engine, but from memory I didn't have any of those. They can suppy all the bits as a kit. Don't worry about the steel dowels - when I did my wife's Freelander 3 years ago the steel dowels were included

Why tell the insurer anyway if you have removed it? If the car has gone, they can't tell it has been disconnected and if recovered, obviously the thieves disconnected it to start it!

I use the FIA boot cover with my cage. It isn't quite perfect, but it is close

For an R500, those figures are not all correct. Assuming you are using a Caterham dry sump, the max oil temp reading should be 95 - 100 deg C. Over about 105 deg and you may well be in trouble because the Stack is measuring bulk oil temperature, not what is happening in the engine, where 125 deg is perfectly OK. Water should also be below 90 deg (Minister have set the ignition to retard when the temp exceeds 86, IIRC). Oil pressure is typically 55 - 65 when hot. Voltage levels are about right, but when my engine is running, the voltage shows 14.2 v Oh yes, and NEVER go above 5,000 RPM until 50 deg oil temp is showing.

I really should have these, but already have some

If you like the 32R's you will love 48R's. I never really liked CR500's - made the car understeer like a pig - but the clincher for me was that they were almost twice the price

Alright, Mr Picky - sucking on a vacuum then Still perfectly normal (except that mine doesn't do it any more so perhaps I should worry!

Always used the 205's, which work very well

Provided you have a dry sump system, it is absolutely normal and nothing to worry about. As Peter C says, all you are hearing is the scavange pump sucking on air, having done its job and sucked all the oil out

Another vote for Autoglym resin polish. Works a treat, but you must make sure that the windows are very clean first

Mine came with Champions and i have only ever used them or NGK. All seems fine with them.

I have always found Graham to be very helpful. Some of the misinformation about temperature is due to differing sensor positioning. Modern oils are quite happy at 125 deg or so, but the place you measure the oil temp on the R500 dry sump gives the 'bulk' oil temp in the main tank. IIRC, Graham reckons 95-96deg bulk oil means in the engine you are seeing 120+ in the hot bits. Early R500's had a 9,000 rev limit. As Peter has said, the false initial economy of using standard bearings caused some blow ups, and they recalled them to fit proper race big ends. At the same time they also retricted revs to 8,600 RPM (which is where max power is developed) and reliability was improved enormously (unless, like me you decide to keep to 9,000 and discover that crank harmonics can cause them to snap at those speeds...) Graham has always been concerned about oil (and water) temperature though - he says you need to see the 'system' as a whole. At first they fitted the apollo tank (at the time saying that the extra oil capacity helped keep the oil temp down, though I am sure de - airing the oil was something they thought desirable), and upgraded the water cooling to the triple pass rad (mine came with the smaller item). My car has been fine except when driving in France in the Summer, when at Dijon for example I was seeing temperatures far too high. So I also fitted the oil cooler and it has stayed withing limits ever since. I presume the oil you are using is the Shell 0W/60. Graham is pretty insistant that Mobil 1 Motorsport 15W50 is the stuff to use. I don't know how much difference the '0' makes in summer temps, but I didn't feel it worth varying from his firm advice

I always thought people who said this were making a fuss about nothing. Until a jubilee clip came off a car I was following and went straight through my rad!

My R500 has a conventional (round) 290mm Momo. Works just fine for me