i've spent the last few days trying to think of another pun but i'm stumped, haha.

Well what an epic story, i'll give you the short story... ended up getting it all together ready to start then the battery was flat. #OOPS#. next morning i came out to start after a charge up and after a plugless fuelless crankup to try and get oil pressure the light on the dash was still on but i decided that that might not mean anything. strated her up and she fired but with a big knock knock knock and then died WTF? tried again and same thing. ok back to get some oil pressure into it pull the plugs and crank her over. knock knock knock.

Pulled the oil filter off and it was dry. Decided to drop the crossmember and all the steering and take the sump off. checked oil pickup, pulled big end caps off, turned over by hand a million times to see if i could spot anything and checked flywheel all checked out fine. then checked the head, thinking maybe it was a pushrod with massive clearance all good in the head. Gave it a crank with no rocker cover or sump and noise was gone.

oil pickup was a slightly different length so changed that over cleaned all the sump and block surfaces again and reinstalled the sump. tried a crank just to check... knock knock knock. had a mate crank it while i held my hands either side of the sump... tap tap tap.

the moral of the story after a painstaking search for the problem is that an a15 sump has to be used with an a15 as otherwise the extra stroke takes the rods out to ever so slightly touch the upper side of the sump!

will be hopefully back out there tomorrow to make it run!

yes a15 does need an a15 sump, htey have a slight difference but hard to spot unless you put a12/a15 next to a15 one. good that nothing major though

From Lagwagon to Tapwagon, what a stroke of bad luck. If one of us thought that youd use
another sump they would have pointed it out. Thank goodness nothing detrimental.

yeah i used the sump from the a14 as i knew it fit and didn't want any issues... little did i know! it would have saved me a day and a half of pulling everything apart to check and hunt for the mystery noise. glad its an easy fix from here tho :)

Did you get oil pressure though?

Pack the pump with grease to get things started, sometimes they're a little hard to get going.

I hate knocks.

oh so thats what all the extra humps along the side of the A15 sump are for

yup, found that out the hard way! i was using an a14 sump, didn't think the extra 2.5mm stroke would matter.

Well its been a massive pain in the ass but its back on the road. Finally got some oil pressure this morning so kicked it into life. once the oil that was in the bores burnt off she was breathing beautifully! I then checked timing, plugged the wideband back in and went on a little run in drive. the cam is supposed to not be over revved for the first 2 hours so I was bound to loading it up but keeping under 2800(ish) rpm. Timing has been would back across the board and an extra 3% fuel across the board while running in then off to the dyno. The motor feels strong and is like a switch when the throttle is cracked to the cam seems still to be not robbing any low down torque.

some pics mid drive...

Good to hear its all back running again, quads definitely look great and so does the wags with the wheels, very nice!

got the walking stick crank case vent...
but don't have the 1000 oil filler to let the air in...

picky I know..


awesome work... !!!!

nice day for a drive up the dandes. glad its all running nice.