Jaguar F-Pace Non Runner

[Escy]

Mikebentley said:

Would a new lump not be the best way of salvaging something from this?
You and the wife both really like the car and as you say everything else work. New engine and keep forever would be my plan. Good luck with whatever you do.

This is what I'm leaning towards. Suck it up and spend the money.

Gtom said:

The cheapest 2016 F pace R-sport on eBay at the minute is £13k, surely it’s got to be worth chucking an engine in it even if just to punt it on?

I might have been undervaluing it, based on seeing a few cheap ones come up for sale, I hadn't read the adverts so maybe they had issues. When looking around my car is a better spec than most I see (pan roof, heated rear seats, larger sat nav screen, digital dash). Plus it's got fairly new tyres, new battery, wheel alignment done recently, all the potential DPF trouble taken care of, recent gearbox service.

sdh2903 said:

That would be all well and good, but that engine is a turd, any replacement engine would just be another unknown turd. You would always be listening for any slight noise or be paranoid it's going to go pop again. You don't need that from a family daily. Swap the lump to punt it wouldn't be a bad idea, but not to keep.

Am amazed the Op and his wife still maintain their love for the thing. I hate it and it's not even mine

Most of our family cars have been 10-15 years old and in the 3-5k value. This felt a significant step up.

Church of Noise said:

That's horrid Escy...

I'm in the 'find another engine, install and sell on' camp...
As much as your wife and you like the car, even with another engine, I'm not sure you'll ever be comfortable with the car again (but that's just an assumption based on how I would feel about it - I surely wouldn't have had 'my' company car F-pace back after it self detonated...).

Good news on the BMW though indeed.

The problem with fixing it and selling it on is I crystalise the loss. Once I've sold a car we both like that's running perfectly I'd buy something else, likely older and an unknown quality in the hope it proves more reliable in the long term. I'd probably be looking at around a 10k budget, I don't think I'm going to find something I'd prefer over the F-Pace for that money.

[Escy]

I don't know why you keep banging on about the DPF, you made your point a year and 40 pages ago.

[Escy]

The original engine had a blown turbo which ended up causing further damage to the bores and pistons. The second failure looks like it was down to the previous owner partially blocking an oilway with silicone. Those 2 aren't related and this failure looks like it might be down to out of JLR spec repairs made to the block, or possibly the faulty fuel injector theory posted above. It's also 10k miles later on.

The DPF has been removed so there are no longer any possible re-gen issues which I think lead to the original turbo failure. The re-gen stuff is now coded out with the re-map.

The car wasn't a dud but the engine was. I should have just bought a used replacement the last time around rather than attempt a repair.

If I can find a nice low mileage engine and I replace the chains on it first I'd be confident in it. The original engine did 110k before the turbo blew.

I haven't made any decisions either way yet.

[Escy]

I've got what's left of the engine out this evening.

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There's loads of replies about what I should do moving forward. I've got a plan. I've found an engine from 2019 F-Pace with 30k miles on. It's 3k so it's the best priced engine I've seen, especially when you take into account the mileage. What really sweetens the deal is this comes with the gearbox (8 speed auto, same as mine), all ancillaries, turbo, even the front diff so I'll have a load of bits to sell on. I've been sent a video of the engine running before it was removed, it sounded as good as a diesel can.

I don't want to count my chickens before it's in my possession. I've got someone going up to collect it for me first thing in the morning tomorrow. Getting that lot into my garage is going to be quite the task as I've got a broken Jaguar in the way!

Providing it has no oil leaks and shows no signs of having been opened up before, I'm leaning towards leaving it all alone, I won't touch the chains, I'll just put it in the hole as is and live happily ever after.

It could be back up and running by the end of the weekend.

[Escy]

Today has taken the wind out of my sails.

The advert for the engine I'd seen was a picture of a nice shiny engine, clearly low mileage. I'd been sent a video of it running.

I wasn't going to give a deposit or anything in case I got ripped off. I can't get any time off work at short notice so I'd organised for someone local who I use all the time to go grab it for me. I'd asked him to send me some pictures when he got there. He sent me these. It looked alright but I had my boss moaning about me being distracted, the seller asking me for payment and the driver messaging me all at the same time. I didn't look at these as closely as I should have and didn't compare it to the advert photos. It looks decent.





We got it unloaded at my end, this was a total nightmare. My garage has a steep slope. I need the engine in the back of the garage but I have 2 other engines in the way and the car in the way. The plan was to connect the battery, release the handbrake, roll the car out on the winch, put the handbrake on then use the winch to drag the engine in on a skate. That plan got scuppered, the Jaguar went into melt down with all the control units not connected and it wouldn't let me release the handbrake or steering lock. Plan B was to put the rear wheels on skates, slide the car as far over as possible and see if we could squeeze the engine through the gap between the car and the door. The wheel on the skate broke which wasn't ideal but it was far enough over at that point. That worked just about, we had my engine crane holding the engine and we had to use the winch to drag crane in.

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The engine was in but I had other stuff in the way, which had to be put anywhere we could. It's total carnage. I was glad the guy who collected it helped me do all this, I would have been bang in trouble on my own.

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Once the engine is in I had a look at it and the penny dropped. It's a Jaguar XE engine, 2015 vintage. No front diff, different sump, different gearbox (less valuable).

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I could make it work by putting my sump on, and swapping over any other parts needed. I'm worried they'll be lots of small differences which become a pain in the arse. It's also an unknown quantity, I don't think I've got the appetite to take a chance on it in the long term as an ownership proposition.

The seller is making out it's an honest error and says he has the correct engine. He's said I can go back and swap it (it cost me £300 to get it collected today). If I hire a van and go on Friday it'd probably cost me about £150 but it's hassle to load and unload it, especially on my own.

There were more than a few red flags with the seller so I think this is a blag anyway. they've probably done it on purpose. Apparently he'll do video call tomorrow showing me the right engine. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now but if they've done me over, I'll go into a bit more depth on it, it's quite interesting and seems dodgy. This thread could go off on a crime thriller tangent.

But to sum it all up, I've been working my balls off the last few days and I'm thoroughly deflated now. I'm just sick of constant drama, everything seems to be a struggle lately.

[Escy]

I stripped down the old engine. The sump is fill of metal pieces and thick gunge. The cylinder head was clean and the bottom end bearings look decent enough so it's not made it's way through the whole engine but it doesn't look like an instant failure.



The bores from underneath. Only one was replaced when it was repaired before I bought it. I'm not totally sure which one. I think it's cylinder 1 which has failed. If you look at where the clearance notch for the rod is on bore 2, it looks like that liner has rotated in the bore.



Closer photo of cylinder 1. You can also see on the side the notch I'm talking about on cylinder 2.



After the fuel injector theory mentioned a couple of pages back I took them to get tested. The injector for cylinder 1 had the return rate too high so that cylinder would have been running lean. I'm not totally sure what that means with diesel engines so I asked a guy who knows. He said "running lean isn't bad in a diesel engine but it's common for a failed injector to destroy a piston or liner". That was also on the link posted the other day but was about too rich rather than lean. The guy I asked went on to say "bad atomisation causes bad combustion, hot spots and even hydraulic erosion of the piston."

I don't know what to make of it all. One liner has dropped, one looks like it's rotated in the bore - this might have been the reason the engine was locked up rather than the one that dropped. Then add in the fuel injector. I'm kind of glad the failure doesn't seem related to my work on it.

[Escy]

This was the advert I'd seen on the engine. I ignored loads of red flags and probably come across naïve. It did seem too good to be true.

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He'd confirmed it came as shown in the photos, he sent me a video of it running. He gave me a reg number for the car he said it came out of. I was weary right from the start as it was a Facebook profile with no picture (although did have 120 friends). My main concern was he'd be looking to do a deposit scam or something similar. I could clearly see the engine was removed at a proper garage but he said it was a private sale so I put a lot of the red flags down to him trying to cut little Rishi out of the action, he had asked if I could pay cash (I said I can't).

I wanted to get it collected pretty quick so sent someone to get it. For the collection I was passed onto a different phone number for his brother who'd organise it all. The one thing that stuck out was he kept ignoring me asking for his bank details (so I could set it up on my phone the day before). The collection place was a 24/7 storage facility, B7 5DR.

The guy collecting said he thought it was dodgy (stolen) and messaged me this video (click on it to open). He later told me that the guy just walked in like he owned the place and all the staff there didn't speak English well. Having searched now, I can't find a storage business listed at this postcode.

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I saw that video the same time I got messages from both the seller and the guy collecting showing the engine loaded up on the back of the truck and asking me for payment. I also had my boss moaning at me so didn't really have time to process it all.

The seller gave me payment details for Hamza Khan who was a whole new name. The Facebook profile I'd initially contacted was Hamid Khan. I paid the money but didn't realise I had a 2k limit on the bank transfer so needed a Paypal address for the rest. He gave me one that had SJ Autosport in the name. I knew this company from years ago

The engine arrived, I got it in the garage, noticed it was different and then started looking into it all a bit more.

When I was into Toyota's, SJ Autosport were the go to engine supplier for 2ZZ's. It was run by 2 Asian brothers, Sam and Jam. Everyone loved them and their reputation was bullet proof, if anyone ever complained (on forums or Facebook groups) there was an army of friends who'd shout that person down. I wasn't so sure about them, they had a ever present listing on Ebay for a 2ZZ-GE engine swap, the listing said 60k miles and it all looked nice and shiny.

I'd often see them buying cars for stock that were high mileage, 150k,180k, etc. Their business model was to list one thing and sell whatever they had sitting on the shelf which is exactly how I'd been done over with this engine. I knew people fell for it as you'd often see adverts of 2ZZ swapped MR2's where they'd say the car had an engine that had done 60k miles, it was like the magic number, it was a running joke between me and my brother. They'd also done me over on a cylinder head. I initially thought I was dealing with these 2 brothers using different aliases but I'm not totally sure. I know that Hamza Khan who took the money is their mate as I asked someone who knew them.

I knew instantly there would be no come back. My boss said call my bank about it. I did and said it's fraud as I was purposely mis sold something but they said as I'd had received an engine is was a civil matter. I called 101 for the Police to ask if they I gave them an engine number, could they tell me it was from a stolen car, the person I talked to said no. I'm sure they must be able to so but they were no help. I asked Jaguar if they could give me a reg or chassis number based off an engine number, they said no.

I tried to play their game of seeing if I could swap the engine for the F-Pace one they'd advertised (knowing it doesn't exist). I expected to be ghosted by them both but they did reply but I knew I was being strung along. I thought they were going to do nothing but I did eventually get a video walk around of a different engine they had in a container. This was also an XE engine but with a manual gearbox. That was Thursday evening. After that they have ignored me.

I did some looking into it it all, I know this should have been done before I paid but I was working in the garage until 12pm removing the engine the night before so I was busy. This is the reg they gave me for the F-Pace, it's a car that's currently for sale so it proves they were lying right from the start and me getting the engine I got wasn't an honest mistake.

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I didn't have much info to go off but I googled the phone number of the guy who arranged the collection and it came up with an Ebay business account. I could see on their listings they are breaking a blue I-Pace so that boot lid in the video is probably theirs and suggests they own that whole storage yard as it's nowhere near the unit the engine came from. I also looked on the SJ Autosport ebay page and he's got some Jaguar parts listed that look like they are from the same cars.

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Looking on their Ebay listings I found this front end. I thought maybe that's the car the engine was from.

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A search of that reg came up with this, a white XE that's currently on the road.

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I called SJ Autosport on Thursday to ask about it all. He tried to be helpful whilst at the same time not being helpful, he made out he didn't really know the guys he accepted £1000 on behalf of but said they owed him money from work he'd done for them. I said what's their company called and then he suddenly wasn't sure, I asked what their name was and he said he only knows them by a nick name. All clearly bks but I didn't expect him to drop his mates in it.

He said he'd contact them about it. A couple of minutes later I had some WhatsApp messages saying "I'm sorting the issue, I'm going to get pictures to you but if you keep phoning SJ Autosport I'm not going to bother, he has nothing to do with this transaction so pick which route you want to take". I'd tried to phone him 5 minutes before I called Jam at SJ Autosport and he'd not replied to my last message for 2 hours.

I'm not sure if it's all Jam gaslighting me or they are 2 different people. When I asked to pay the last £1000 via PayPal he provided the Paypal address quickly while it took ages to get a bank account from him. If you run a business surely you wouldn't accept £1000 on behalf of someone else as you'd need to account for it. I wouldn't accept £1000 for a mate on a business account. I did send a few photos to the guy who collected to see who he delt with, he thought it was Jam on the forklift who loaded it up but he wasn't sure.

All very dodgy.

The XE engine will work in my car, I need to change the sump over and I'm going to swap the chains also. I'm just hoping it's a decent engine.

[Escy]

Megaflow said:

Given that the injector on cylinder one was running to lean, which does not affect diesels at all, they run lean by design. I suspect this failure is related to the original failure and the repair work to replace the liners. IIRC it had 2 cylinders done, give number 1 has dropped and number 2 has rotated, I am going to say those are the ones that were done. I also suspect we have got to the bottom of why it has also sounded noisy.

Yeah, it would make sense.

M4cruiser said:

but with your skills, .... 3 hours!

It's taking me 3 hours to walk from the sofa to the garage, I just can be arsed anymore. Totally deflated.

[Escy]

leglessAlex said:

agent006 said:

Escy said:

It's taking me 3 hours to walk from the sofa to the garage, I just can be arsed anymore. Totally deflated.

Have a break from it. Go do something else for the weekend, have a week at work, watch the telly, just ignore it all for a while. You've got a replacement stopgap BMW, you don't need to tear into this full pelt like it's part 4 of this week's car sos.

I agree with this, Escy.

That's absolutely rubbish news about the engine, I hope what you've ended up with can be used. It may well be stolen, but you've at least tried to check that, I'm not sure you can do more.

Have a weekend trying not to think about it, if possible. Or are you worried that if you lose momentum now that'll be it for the whole thing?

I won't lose momentum, the car cant stay where it is long term so I need to get it fixed fairly quickly. Providing this new engine is alright, it'll be running by next weekend. The BMW isn't all roses, the brake servo seems to have an issue so the response isn't always what you expect it, I want to get the girls out of that as quick as I can.

Monkeylegend said:

Well for a start OP could put the old engine "back together" and ask to return the one he bought for a refund.

He just needs to make sure he sends the right one back.

There's no chance of returning it. If the new engine runs alright I don't need to seek any re-dress as it is still a decent price for an engine and gearbox. I'm just disappointed they've purposely misled me. If this new engine is a turd, any negations would probably need to be conducted with a baseball bat.

Mikebentley said:

All those warning signs and buying anything from Nechells. I echo others sentiments, take time and don’t do anything hasty.

I'm not aware of the area so that didn't flag up as a warning but I'll be honest, just being in Birmingham was a bit of red flag.

[Escy]

That's just me tracking them down afterwards. They didn't mention they had stuff on ebay.

[Escy]

skwdenyer said:

Do I recall from earlier in the thread that this engine came in two different variants, with different castings? I’m assuming this is the correct one?

Yes, it's the right block.

I started swapping bits over. The plug for the gearbox is different so I needed to take the wiring loom off. It's interesting to see all the little clips and brackets my old engine was missing.

Sump off. One difference on this engine is there is a tensioner on the chain for the oil pump, my old engine didn't have that. Oil in it looked alright, no nasty surprises in it.

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I'm replacing the chains with the ones off my old engine. Which are a couple thousand miles old. This one had all Jaguar stuff, I don't think it's been apart before. All the plastic chain guides looked mint. It's all dirtier than my engine but nothing crazy for a diesel. It wipes clean easily, it's not baked on. No alarm bells so far.

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[Escy]

Thanks for the all the nice things said and the general good will. I'm really hoping this new engine is a good-un as I'll be a broken man if it's not.

HughG said:

Like many others have said I’m full of admiration for your fortitude and perseverance. Is there any way you can check the stretch on your chains to see if the other engine seizing has overstressed them ?

For the sake of a set of chains it would be infuriating if there was a hidden issue with them and they caused another failure in the future.

In an ideal world I'd change them again but I don't want to spend the money as I don't know if this engine is any good yet.

When the old engine failed the crank wouldn't rotate all the way with the cylinder head off as the conrod was hitting the cylinder liner so I figured the chains wouldn't have taken any extra strain.

[Escy]

I worked on it over the weekend. I didn't really take any pictures as it's all been seen before a few times on this thread.

I did use my new favourite garage toy on it, a vacuum filler for the coolant. It takes a lot of the hassle out of it. Before I ended up changing the charge cooler pump due to a fault code which I'm pretty sure was due to an air lock and not a faulty pump.

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I got it running on Sunday. The new engine sounds quieter. It all runs fine, no fault codes, no leaks. I've made a YouTube video documenting this latest disaster and it has a clip of it running.



I'm not sure what the plan is moving forward. If I decide to get rid of it that will probably happen in the summer holidays.

I feel like I'm stuck in an abusive relationship, I've got a bruised wallet but it's telling me it's changed.

[Escy]

interstellar said:

mercedeslimos said:

I saw an update and thought "OK he's stripped the engine out". I didn't expect it to be back up and running. Impressive. Is it a full front-off job or can you hoik it out from above?

He shows it in the video. Take wheels off to drop it lower and drop it in - simples

I've got a beam in the roof and a block and tackle so I lift it as high as it'll go, take the front wheels off the car, drop as low as it'll go then take a deep breath and slide it past the wing. If the engine was an inch taller it wouldn't work.

I took a picture when I removed the first engine the first time which shows how close it is. It saves taking the front end off though.

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[Escy]

So many replies, especially considering it's a mundane car.

I-am-the-reverend said:

Excellent result. Well done!

As an aside, you have an XE gearbox and sump to sell on Ebay plus the useable remains of the old unit - head, crank etc. There must be a grand's worth there.

With lots of oil changes, I suspect the replacement engine will be alright. A tough call though.

I've got some bits to sell to lighten the blow but the head was scrap. There's an abundance of XE gearboxes as the weak point is the engines. It's up for £100 sp basically worth less than the oil that goes in it. That's part of the reason why I was annoyed they lied about it being F-Pace stuff, the F-Pace gearbox and front diff would have netted me the best part of 1k back.

Stick Legs said:

I think this car is perfect for a YouTube channel.

The Jaguar F-Pace content creator, every week a new adventure.

Mat Armstrong needs to buy 3 supercars to generate a similar level of interest.

Maybe it'll eventually pay for itself if it keeps breaking down and I keep making videos on it?!

I've hit over 1000 subscribers on YT and apparently my channel can be monetized now. With the views I get I'll probably owe them money for hosting.

Muzzer79 said:

I'm pleased you got it going again

But I note in the video that you say it's still running quite noisily, coupled with the fact that the engine came from Dodgy-ville.

Please, for the love of God, sell it now. They're nice cars to drive but it's a ticking timebomb.

I'd say it's normal noise wise, I'm just mentally scarred from the old engine and wishing it sounded like a petrol.

Jhonno said:

It's now no more or less of a risk than any other F-Pace for sale. Given that his 2nd engine failure was another JLR issue, just goes to highlight.

I agree it represents no more risk than any other F-Pace with 130k on the clock. I'm pretty sure this engine is lower mileage than 130k.

The failure on the last engine is down to the modifications rather than JLR. I don't know for sure but I assume it was the replacement liner(s) which failed but even if they didn't, they were all over bored which is out of JLR spec. The only part of the original engine I kept was the block, what a bad move that turned out to be.

Austin_Metro said:

I’m on Team Keepit because this is an excellent thread and Escy’s YouTube presentation skills are top notch too.

Thank you. I can't do the hyped up happy YouTube thing so I'm giving off Eeyore vibes.

Muzzer79 said:

The OP must have pumped, what, 16 grand into it including the latest new engine?

There's a 2016 R-Sport in the classifieds, 3 owners, 110k miles up for 13 and a half.

Maybe it is worth keeping and just stripping it for parts if something else goes.

Yeah, I'm at 16,500 now. Not quite the 10k I was optimistically aiming for at the start of the thread.

silentbrown said:

Not *entirely* unknown. It runs well, it's quieter than the old one, it's had new chains fitted, the sump's been off and apparently it looks like it's never been apart before.

I'd have cut my losses and got shot of it rather than stick another engine in - but now it's in and running, it's a different matter: Selling now just crystallizes the losses, and switches you into another moon-mileage car that's truly an unknown.

That's kind of where my thinking is, I had no concerns when looking over the new engine so I'm fairly confident in it. More than I was with the last engine which I said didn't sound right. I always felt a failure was on cards but when it didn't happen after the first few thousand miles I did hope it was just going to be noisy but go on forever.

Anything I replace it with is likely to have a few unknown issues lurking.

With all that said, if my life depended on it and I needed to jump in a car and drive 2000 miles across Europe right now, I'd probably take the £1500 BMW 330i which is quite damning for the Jaguar.

mercedeslimos said:

By the skin of your bks. Well played sir. I am very happy to work on my cars, but you are a whole other ball game. Also, your Mrs must love you dearly, mine hates my many buckets of ste (though she is happy I don't waste it on booze or drugs) and accepts that you love cars or not. At this point, there is something so undeniably satisfying about having a car where you did all the work and no job can beat you. Very firmly in the KEEP camp, you've learned so much about this car (and F-Pace, etc in general) that you know it well. I'm the same with Passat B6s, and if I'm ever in need of a cheap daily, there's only one car on the list I know so well (and having a huge parts horde also helps)

There's no job that can beat me providing I have a bottomless pit of money!

[Escy]

A.J.M said:

I’m currently using my dad’s E pace with the D180 engine.

It’s a 2019 year and has just over 29k, serviced 1000 miles ago.
Can get a video of it running with bonnet up if you wish to compare noises from an engine with no issues to yours?

Thanks for the offer. It sounds strange but, once it's warmed up fully, I wouldn't mind a video of the oil cap unscrewed but resting over the hole. I would like to see if it bounces around with the crankcase pressure or not.

Heaveho said:

Andy86GT said:

it sounded terrible, like a Transit or something

How dare you diss the Transit, my 2018 Transit Connect is a paragon of loveliness!

The only time I'd be at traffic lights and hear a diesel louder than my last engine, it would be an old Transit.

Mad Maximus said:

The value would be in the life lesson for me and the fun of doing it although I appreciate second time round probably wasn’t much fun.

Get shot it’s a bad engine with a when not if countdown. No matter how good the car is it’s a massive thorn to live with although I suppose if anyone can live with it it’s gona be you as you can fix it yourself.

There has been a few life lessons learnt.

1. Don't try to repair something that's someone has already had a go at.
2. Don't rush into decisions. I decided to re-build the old engine based on the fact I didn't want to wait for a suitable donor car or used engine, that was a mistake.
3. Maybe just don't fix broken cars at all, some work out alright but I've had a few I end up upside down on. I enjoy it but it's not always a good use of my time.

[Escy]

ThingsBehindTheSun said:

Also they always have way more problems than he thought when he initially bought it.

I find this is fairly common, if someone sells on a car that's broken down there's usually a couple of skeletons in the closet. I once got royally tucked up on an Alfa 156 Selespeed I bought. Cambelt snapped, fixed it only to find out the gearbox was dodgy. I was lucky with this Jaguar in that regard, the rest of it was good, had no issues other than what I bought it with.

andburg said:

How long until you trust the engin? every noise would fill me with dread before we acknowledge it's not had a new chain and tensioner so that will already be on the list and weighing heavy

I fitted the chains that I used on the old engine which were a couple of thousand miles old. I don't know if I'll ever be truly relaxed about it, I'm always going to be listening with a keen ear.

Court_S said:

Fair play for getting it back up and running OP. Your skills and determination are certainly to be admired.

What to do with it next is a tough one; your £16.5k deep into but the fact that you’d choose the cheap BMW for a long trip shows you don’t really trust it (this might change in due course). I guess you’ve got to give it a bit of a shot now.

That's as much down to n/a petrol vs turbo diesel as anything else. I've always had diesel for the family car as the economy is better. It's a false economy if you spent 3k replacing the engine. The point stands for the amount of people that end up spending thousands chasing DPF and EGR faults which is common across all diesels. I wouldn't expect to jump into any diesel car from any manufacturer if the car is 7 years old and has over100k under it's belt and expect no issues over the next few years.

If I do replace the Jaguar I might go for a decent size n/a petrol and just accept the extra £25 a week cost in fuel. It would be nearly 3 years before I equalled the cost of what I've just spent on this replacement engine. Petrol cars tend to be cheaper than the diesel equivalent.

With all that said, I've already sunk the money in now.

[Escy]

Thank you, I've just sent you an email.

[Escy]

Just waiting on another recovery.

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The wife drove it to her sisters, stopped for 5 minutes. Went to restart it and it's doing nothing. You hear a click from the relay for the starter but it doesn't crank. I'm getting the same generic non start fault code it had when the engine had blown up. As it was turned off willingly and sounded fine I'm hoping it's not a serious mechanical fault, just something silly like a bad connection on the starter motor.

The diagnostics show the high and low side on the starter are activated and the engine start parameter is enabled which makes me think that's all fine.

It all feels very much like last time, symptoms are exactly the same as when it was physically locked up with the cylinder liner so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned.

[Escy]

I have had a quick look at it, I removed the starter motor so I could get a pry bar in the flex plate (can't get a socket on the crank pulley). The engine isn't locked up which is good news.

I fitted the spare starter motor that came with the replacement engine but that doesn't work either. I connected the original starter motor that was on it when it wouldn't start this morning to plug on the solenoid and power and ground and tried to crank to see what would happen. The pinion comes out but it doesn't spin.

IMG_20240514_212056630

I need to check what the starter motor that's currently fitted to see what it does when it's not bolted up, I'm expecting the same. Then I need to check the wiring.on the plug for the solenoid, it's different to all the other starter motors I've seen, this has two wires rather than just the ignition switch. I've checked the fuses shown on the diagram and they are fine.

Screenshot 2024-05-14 235725

drdino said:

How's the battery?

I think it's about 8 months old.

Austin_Metro said:

Escy - fingers crossed for you mate.

Mrs Escy - you must be the most patient wife.

She was crying this morning.

eliot said:

you are going to be on the wrong end of a divorce at this rate that’s going to cost a dam sight more that this stinking turd.

It's her car so I'll let her decide.what she wants to do. She really likes it.

M3333 said:

You're polishing a turd mate. Hopefully this is something simple. But for your sanity take it straight to WBAC!!

They are offering 7k, so that's never going to happen.