Turtle has been a little unhappy of late.
Running out of poop on the long highway hills (revs dropping off with speed) not too mention pinging it's fool head off, stumbling off idle, smoking intermittently, oddly fluctuating engine temps and then the last straw, smell of burnt clutch when climbing those long hills on the 400.
Once the engine was out, I was quite surprised to find 5 deg play at the crank ( can't believe it ran at all ) , gobs of melted rubber on the tensioner (from a previous repair no less, as the current belt looked pretty good) clutch not worn out but glazed with engine oil as the rear main has obviously been leaking for a long time (took nearly 2 hours to clean out the bell housing with varsol).
So, now we have new belt and tensioner and spring, new cam and crank seals, water pump ( I was right there, after all), OP sender, clutch assembly, release and pilot bearings and all the mounts. Also ran an engine flush through it just before pulling the engine so it had cleaner sitting on the rings for the better part of a week.
Once all back together, smoked hard for a wee bit then cleared right up.
Now back to running just like new. No more pinging, in fact just about all of the ills it was suffering from are now gone. As for those long hills, I can now accelerate up them without down-shifting and after 3 tanks of 91 octane gas she is averaging almost 7L/100km with mostly highway driving at 120-130kph. (now if only I could keep my foot out of it...)
1000k since and the oil is still the colour of honey and no leaks. Yeah!
Truly amazing.
Long live the mighty turtle.