Engine gone pop.....
Discussion
Well, my worst nightmare has come true, looks like my engine has gone to V8 heaven....
Was out for a drive on Saturday, enjoying the sunshine, when all of a sudden "Bang!!!", no power, engine stalls, and I find myself trying to negotiate onto the hard shoulder without being flattend by the lorry bearing down on me!
So, fearing the worse I called the RAC and left it to cool down. When they turned up, much to my annoyance, the first thing he did was start her up. Strangely enough it started fine, no noise, no bangs, and idled away quite happily. One thing that was noticed before startup was that 3 of the HT leads had come loose, so this was put down to the cause of the problem. I still wasn't convinced, so took her straight down to LevenTech who were just down the road and had offered to stay open for me
They're initial reaction was the ingition system (ht leads, dizzy, etc..) which considering my first thoughts of new engine certainly put a smile on my face!
This smile has been wiped away today though
.....
They carried out a compression test, and it turns out that cyl 1 has ZERO compression Now I know b*gger all about engines, but even to me this sounded bad. The only good news was that the other cyl's all came back with results of around 230 (at least I think that's good anyway!)
So anyway, to cut a long story short, she's currently on a low loader on her way to Ian at Torque RVT to tinker, toy and basically turn her back into the beast she once was!
I'm trying to look on the positive side of this, it could have been a lot worse (I could have been flattened by a lorry for a start!), and hopefully when she's back she'll be stronger than ever!
Just got to say also hat's off to Leven, who took my car in with no notice at all, and somehow managed to fit it into their schedule, so top marks there
Ian will get his praise when I get her back
sorry for the long post, hope you're all still awake out there!
>> Edited by grif500 on Tuesday 14th February 15:40
Was out for a drive on Saturday, enjoying the sunshine, when all of a sudden "Bang!!!", no power, engine stalls, and I find myself trying to negotiate onto the hard shoulder without being flattend by the lorry bearing down on me!
So, fearing the worse I called the RAC and left it to cool down. When they turned up, much to my annoyance, the first thing he did was start her up. Strangely enough it started fine, no noise, no bangs, and idled away quite happily. One thing that was noticed before startup was that 3 of the HT leads had come loose, so this was put down to the cause of the problem. I still wasn't convinced, so took her straight down to LevenTech who were just down the road and had offered to stay open for me
They're initial reaction was the ingition system (ht leads, dizzy, etc..) which considering my first thoughts of new engine certainly put a smile on my face! This smile has been wiped away today though
..... They carried out a compression test, and it turns out that cyl 1 has ZERO compression
Now I know b*gger all about engines, but even to me this sounded bad. The only good news was that the other cyl's all came back with results of around 230 (at least I think that's good anyway!) So anyway, to cut a long story short, she's currently on a low loader on her way to Ian at Torque RVT to tinker, toy and basically turn her back into the beast she once was!
I'm trying to look on the positive side of this, it could have been a lot worse (I could have been flattened by a lorry for a start!), and hopefully when she's back she'll be stronger than ever!
Just got to say also hat's off to Leven, who took my car in with no notice at all, and somehow managed to fit it into their schedule, so top marks there
Ian will get his praise when I get her back
sorry for the long post, hope you're all still awake out there!
>> Edited by grif500 on Tuesday 14th February 15:40
mrsmadmark said:
I'm gutted for you Karl
and it was sounding so nice on that last run
lets hope it gets sorted soon, and ready for the nicer weather
If you need a lift to Leven to pick her up, let us know, I'm sure we can be persuaded to take a drive down there
yeah, was sounding nice wasn't it, didn't sound quite so nice when it went bang though Thanks for the offer of the lift, let you know soon as she's ready
In the meantime I'll be pootling around in my Dads motor, so if you see a nutter in a Pug waving at you that'll be me
lig said:
Hi Grif500,
Can you find out why it went bang?? I assume you keep it serviced etc? What would cause 1 cylinder to lose total compression? Were there any telling signs?
lots of questions here, hope you can find some answers!!
Oh, and very sorry to hear about it!
Lig.
Hi Lig,
At the moment we don't really know what's caused the problem. I had a replacement cam fitted end of last year, and after that the car was running fine. I had noticed though over the last few weeks that the top end power was lacking, so had plans for the car to go on a rolling road to investigate in the next week or so (typical!). As far as maintenance, it's serviced twice a year, and oil, etc, is checked at least twice a week. It hasn't been going through oil any more than normal, no discolouration in the oil or coolant, so I'm at a loss!!
Once I find out what's happened I'll post on here, might be useful to someone else and prevent them from having this wallet draining event happening to them!
To try and cheer myself up I've been having a look at the TVR power uprade options. I've already got the upgraded Cam, solid rockers, adjustable push rods and a few of the other bits, so might see about getting the other parts fitted to complete to Taraka upgrade, anyone think this is worth it?
Very hard to see what the problem is without looking at it iyswim. It's tempting to put the gradual power loss down to a worn cam. The sudden power loss is strange and not obviously something that the cam would cause. One possibility is that you had a backfire. Conceivably caused by the worn cam, if the cam had worn away completely and left you with a cylinder's worth of fuel dumped into the intake manifold, or perhaps caused by loose HT leads that dumped the fuel into the exhaust and then lit the exhaust, if it just happened to catch the overlap on #1. The backfire could even have been the reason why the plug leads fell off. A good backfire can put the whole engine out of commission for a while, but may not have done any permanent damage though - but worth a very careful check.
Start by looking at the current symptoms. A leak down test would be the first thing to do, this would quickly tell you where your compression has gone.
Start by looking at the current symptoms. A leak down test would be the first thing to do, this would quickly tell you where your compression has gone.
Funny you mention that dingg, that's what a few places have said today, which as you said won't be as disastrous as initially thought, fingers crossed
GreenV8S, I'm pretty sure the cam's ok as it was only replaced 2 months ago, and has in general been running ok. The gradual lack of power has been in the top end, between about 4.5 - 5.5krpm it would just run out of puff. The HT lead theory sounds about right though, it had happened before where I noticed a slight loss of power which was the result of a loose HT lead. This time 3 leads had come off, which I guess would mean such a sudden loss that it would stall, yes? I'm hoping that because it stalled no serious damage has been done internally, but saying that it was driven to Leven afterwards, so who knows..
Oh well, thanks for the pointers, should have some more info later this week once Ian's had a good look over it, will keep you updated...
GreenV8S, I'm pretty sure the cam's ok as it was only replaced 2 months ago, and has in general been running ok. The gradual lack of power has been in the top end, between about 4.5 - 5.5krpm it would just run out of puff. The HT lead theory sounds about right though, it had happened before where I noticed a slight loss of power which was the result of a loose HT lead. This time 3 leads had come off, which I guess would mean such a sudden loss that it would stall, yes? I'm hoping that because it stalled no serious damage has been done internally, but saying that it was driven to Leven afterwards, so who knows..
Oh well, thanks for the pointers, should have some more info later this week once Ian's had a good look over it, will keep you updated...
shadowfax said:
Leave it with Ian. He's good. Bluey's going there in two weeks when we're back from hols for shox, service and general tlc.
PS What you doing with a Griff in Middlewich when you're in Essex?
Yeah, it is a bit of trek, the RAC were a bit suprised when I asked them to low loader it all the way up there!
I heard about Ian last year when I needed my cam replacing, he has such a good reputation on pistonheads I thought I'd take it up there. The amount of time and effort he puts into all of the jobs (even down to staying at the garage till 22:00 at night for a car to turn up - sorry ian! 
) is superb, so now anything that needs doing goes straight to him (think that also answers your question seasider ) Boosted, pretty sure I haven't over revved it, don't tend to go over 5-5.5k as an absolute max (the noise of the straight thru's tends to be a bit much by then!), but again I wouldn't mind if it was that for an easy fix!
chances are it has broken the piston where the valve releifs are and the noise is the bit of broken piston bouncing around in the cylinder, it is actually not that rare on a 500 motor, so i would say worst case is both heads of to clean the debry out new piston and maybe a couple of valves, and some welding in the chamber
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