SLR refresh

[Paul Bowden]

Caterham have a SLR for sale with 10,000 miles on the clock. The ad. says it has had a refresh at 8,000. Now I do not want to buy this car but I am thinking of buying new. But a refresh after 8,000 miles puts me off big time. Would this be normal and if so what would the refresh involve. I am aware of the refresh on R500 but not SLR's. I take it a SL would not need this sort of work.

[oilyhands]

I'd be surprised if an SLR *needed* a refresh at 8,000 miles. However for the fastidious owner it might be something desired in light of the R500s maintenance schedule. A refresh would normally be rings / liners, shells , thrusts, clutch and a thorough going over of the head replacing valves, guides, springs and followers as necessary together with re-shimming the cams. It's interesting that a comment designed to attract you to the car has had the opposite affect.

 

I've seen a number of VHPD engines following 20 to 30K hard miles and the engines seem pretty robust. Certainly not in need of any rebuild major or minor.

 

SL engines are relatively understressed and would normally be expected to do very high mileages with few problems, the only common problems I have seen are head gasket or piston related.

 

Oily

 

Edited by - oilyhands on 8 Mar 2002 10:08:05

[EFA]

The SLR racers have a reccomended refresh interval of 11 hours running.eek.gif(info from a SEMSEC SLR Racer!)

 

Guess thats why the R500's dont have series of thier own.. (Engine refesh lap 12 anyone??)blush.gif

 

Retired safe distance from Jules.....teeth.gifteeth.gif

 

Fat Arn

The NOW PROVEN R500 Eaterid=red>

See the Lotus Seven Club 4 Counties Area Website hereid=green>

 

[Peter Carmichael]

Race mileage is a rather different matter compared to your on-road pottering, Arnie.

[New Barbie]

"on-road pottering" teeth.gif

 

 

[Jason Plato]

I guess the SLR 11hour refresh would just be follower shim check ?? and possible liner protrusion check ??

 

Anyone confirm ?? .

 

11 hours of trackday running is only about 5 events or less ...... Hmmmmm

 

Dave

[Paul Ranson]

If you're going to treat your car like a race car should you maintain it like one?

 

11 hours seems a little short for a full refresh of a low stress engine, Swindon suggest 1600 race miles for my Vauxhall (146BHP/litre).

 

But 11 hours between tappet checks and a leak down test might be sensible advice.

 

Of course race cars need to consistently perform at the top of their performance envelope, a track day car can suffer a performance drop off.

 

Paul

[Petrolhead]

I also saw this and thought that it would put people off.

 

Would you be suspicious?

 

........... Obviously not ........

 

Aha - Just checked the Caterham Web site and it seems it's gone. Now there is a blue R plate for £24K

 

Edited by - petrolhead on 13 Mar 2002 19:23:44

[clarkey]

The blue one is fine, I owned it until saturday.....

[Petrolhead]

So what did you get as a replacement then?

[dino ferrana]

Race engines do need refreshing remember how hard they are used! Even the Roadsports have engine refreshes about once a season and how often do you here of a 1.6ss needing a refresh? Racing is change light every change with competetive lap after lap! Evena hard track day driver is unlikely to put the engine under race stresses. Also in Caterham racing which has become very competitive in recent years the teams and drivers are looking for any advantage possible!

[V7 SLR]

After 14,000 miles consisting of around 10 track days and the rest hard road use (Se7ens list tours can be considered... ahem... "fast road" usage), V7 has immeasurable wear in the cam journals and liners. I've not taken the bottom end apart to inspect but as it's dry sumped I'd not expect there to be anything other than a brand-new-looking set of bearings down there judging by the rest of the engine's condition.

 

Yet... (there's always a "yet" or "but"), if it hasn't got a dry sump and had been used anywhere other than on the road, I'd say it was likely that the engine may have at least heat damaged bottom end bearings resulting from oil surge.

 

Seen a few like that recently. Those owners now moving to dry sumps.

[clarkey]

Petrolhead, I've got an R500 turning up in May...

[Andrew Dent]

I run a 215bhp SLR with a wet sump. Done a lot of track days on slicks and have rebuilt the engine over this winter. Can happily report that the bottom end was in mint condition. I was going to go to a dry sump if there were signs of oil starvation, but am not bothering now. I do run an an Appollo tank

 

Andrew