Kind of getting lost in the details again and spending way more time on this project than required I wanted to prime the oil circulation system and inspect the variocam operation before I put the engine back in the car. I have a spare pump that I was not gonna reuse so I rebuilt it into a pump that can be driven externally with a drill.
I removed the hexagonal drive shaft to disconnect it from the IMS.
And attached a drive shaft onto the other side (and the other gear).
Drilled the housing through.
Here`s how it looks.
Besides filling the system with oil, it also allowed me to get an insight into how much the oil level drops in the engine when the oil pump runs. After driving the pump for about a minute and re-inserting the dipstick the change in the level is only a few millimeters (on the dipstick). So I`m pretty confident now that the fully opened IMSB won`t be starving oil.
As for the variocam, I`ll upload a new video soon.
Happy Sunday!