I am a donkey

I tried moving around an oil hose recently and that required me to first drain the oil. 

I ended up having to do that twice and each time I did not bother to use a new copper crush washer on the sump plug, also I was not using a torque wrench on the sump plug and have been over tightening it as a result - made much worse by the use of an old washer which provides no 'feel' as to the torque as it does not have any crushing properties once it has been used.

So I ended up stripping out the thread in the sump!

What a donkey...

I discussed the possible fixes with Jonathan the UL Power agent here in the UK and decided that a new sump was the best fix - particularly as it ended up being cheaper than a Helicoil type kit to fix the thread (the best versions of this coil - TimeSert - are very expensive).

So I've had to put a new sump on. In doing so it gave me a chance to see inside the engine. 

I noticed the cam lobes had a bit of wear on them which did not look right to me - the engine has just over 300 hours on it.

I consulted Jonathan about this and he shared it with Patrick in the factory too. This was his response (I also asked about the exhaust valve pic below too).

"Morning Andy

Feedback... 

1. Wear on cams nothing to worry about.  A bit more than normal.. but OK.  (Always check your oil filter mat and magnetic plug for material tho!)

2. Your valve picture... apart from evidence of a tiny leak due to uneven bolting of the exhaust manifold the rule of thumb is 'uniform burnt pizza is good'.

Here is an unofficial  guide to valves..

White deposits from lean  / hot

Black deposits from rich / cool

Brown/reddish burnt pizza is Goldilocks  zone 

With the caveat of 'uniform distribution '

Green is bad. Holes are bad. Uneven is bad.

If your compression/leakdown us good and CHT / EGT good you are a winner! 

Normally all 4 exhaust valves should be similar in appearance.

I wonder if this wear was caused by all the Swarf that was present in the engine, when it was new, after machining? - as evidenced in the first few oil filter changes when checking the filter element (if you remember).

Anyway some lessons learnt. Particularly about always using a new copper crush washer and using the correct torque values - 25nm for the sump plug. All the torque values can be found in the Illustrated parts manual from the UL Power website.

Thread stripped out by Mr Donkey - me.

Old sump coming off - took a few 'love taps' with the rubber mallet to come away.

Oil pickup in the old style iSA engine. The long threads limit movement of the pickup.

A chance to look inside the engine.

This cam lobe wear did not look right to me so I asked.

Another lobe with wear. Strangely the front No.1 Cyl lobe did not appear to have any wear.

Overview of the cam.

Wider view of the above.

No.1 Cyl exhaust valve - even 'burnt pizza' is good. The other 3 looked just like this one.

New sump in place.