Thats how my evening went, PMSL

Me and my mate Biscuit decided to give the 3 door a bit of a going over to get the engine bay tidy again as its started to get a bit grubby, then because im planning on building a new engine this winter for it anyway, it might be fun to send it out in a blaze of glory.
This a YB I built from random bits of a couple of dead ones with the intention of it seeing me through last summer (2006) for a few months if it held together with the abuse I give it, and then when it died I would build a new one a bit more properly when I had the time, but depsite a 32psi+ boost spike and as much boost held as the T34.48 could cope with the bastard thing just hadnt given up the ghost, its smoked a bit on over run, its rattled a little on startup, but its just kept going and going, and its started to feel like the old smoker was never going to die.
So we nitroused it to hurry it along msl:
Then we cranked the boost up as far as it would go with the extra exhaust gas from the nitrous kit (was holding nearly 2 bar for most of the rev range, LOL)

Feck me was it going well, I guess it was probably making about 500lbft of torque and over 450 bhp, as it was on 120bhp jets and should have been about 350/350 ish anyway without the gas.

Absolutely monstered round to 170mph a few times (guestimate based on rpm getting to the limiter in 5th and I think thats about what its geared for)

Sadly though, on the last run up an off road track that looks somewhat like the M5, it just decided it had enough, it started to splutter a bit, I kept my foot in anyway to see if it would pull through, and that was it, nothing more after that.

Coasted about a mile or so to the service station with the clutch dipped, and rolled up to within 10ft of a petrol pump where it finally ran out of puff, I checked I had fuel and a spark, no problems there, but from how fast it was turning over, it seems to have lost compression. So a mate of mine came and fetched me back in his works recovery lorry.

Going to either yank the head off or pull the engine tomorrow I expect to see whats going on, but given that its so blatantly lost compression its either pistons melted or head gasket blown I guess, Im thinking head gasket as there wasnt the plume of oily smoke I would expect from the exhaust if it was pistons melted.

Fair play to the old girl though, she did me proud for the last 18 months or so, and I have to say that a reasonable shot of progressive nitrous on a stage 3 cossie engine is PERFECT for the road, the difference in lag is massive, felt more like driving an N/A car from that point of view, and the extra torque through the rev range was very noticeable in terms of acceleration.
In fact on some reasonabley grippy yokos, it was braking traction on a good condition dry bit of tarmac in 2nd as soon as the gas came on hard just through sheer torque.

Quite impressed the T5 gearbox took the punishment all evening.



Couple of quick shots from biscuits phone of the bay as we tidied it up and chucked the nitrous kit off my nova into it: