Up at 6:30am to get Cassy's engine steam cleaned by a local chap called Garerth, very nice bloke he is too.
Originally he came over during the week while I was working in London and had a go, but wasn't happy with the amount of oily water that was running down the road, so not wanting to upset my neighbours said about going to a truck depot where he has access to a pit this morning.
Now remembering that my fuel pump has been leaking veg (making the BP spill look like a drop in the ocean according to Jim) coating the sump etc in a thick gel like substance which as Jim found out is nigh impossible to remove, the steam cleaning has actually managed to get quite a bit of it off, I can see some of the metal of my sump for instance
While steaming the engine as it was running, I noticed the aux belt wasn't turning, then got a spray of water as it kicked in, so that would explain why the battery light had been glowing slightly over the past couple of weeks, with the battery running down slowly.
The rev counter was bouncing around all over the shop even though the engine was idling stably.
Once the steaming was done, and a good chat about running on veg (Gareth has a '51 Fiat belingo type van with I guess a DW8 engine and wanted to know if it could run on veg, so if anyone knows please do tell) I headed off to Weatherspoons for a proper breakfast, then off to get new tyres, Bridgestones this time (Jim they're quiet and grip really well) as after 4 months of driving on the Arrows they're down to cloth on the inside edge! So alignment was done too.
Then off to Chez Jim to start work on Cassy's pump.
With Jim's instructions, I removed the hydraulic pump for access and then the pump sprocket cover which can be removed without removing the engine mount.
Being Cassy, removing everything was pretty easy, although the use of Jim's pump extractor was needed.
Jim spotted that the pump had been worked on before, as it didn't have anti-tamper bolts on the armour.
Cleaning the pump up was not an easy task, the thick veg gel resisted brake cleaner and petrol.
We'd suspected that the issue with the seals was that as they age and harden, the veg is pushed into the cracks, then as it cools and polymerises over night, it expands enlarging the cracks until it gets around the seal.
Jim scraped off a lump of gel by the seal line and it started weeping from there, giving more credence to the theory.
Eventually cleaned up, Jim opened the pump and the old seals were hard and compressed as expected from their age.
Jim's replacement seals are vitron so shouldn't suffer the same fate in 10 years time.
Meanwhile I refitted the pump, adjusting it using the imprints of the nuts and washers as a guide.
Refitted the aux belt and made sure it was tensioned properly.
With everything in place and the timing bolts removed, it was time to test
Cassy sounded sweet as a bell, but the K light was flashing rather than being constantly on, and the rev counter was bouncing around again.
Disconnecting the needle lift or TDC sensors made no difference, so time for a Lexia session!
It took 3 attempts to get it to talk to the ECU, which reported the engine was doing 1488rpm even though it plainly wasn't.
Jim went to get an old ECU to test while I removed the old one and spotted straight away what the problem was.
Blue gunk by some of the pins and a bit of water.
Blasting with contact cleaner and Jim's airline cleared it up, and the test gave a working rev counter and constant K light
I took her for a spin on the way home, and she is sooooo smooth, but I think the fun screw needs tweaking
It had been leaking over an extended period and was covered in a coat of polymerised veg. It was almost like it had been powder coated and baked. Nothing would touch it and I was reduced to scraping it off 
