Cracked Cylinder Liner!

[craigbunyan]

Hi

Had my Griffith500 for two weeks, all seemed well until....

during a short run I noticed a power loss. water Temp and oil pressure were good.
The car refused to start in the morning - sounded like it had hydraulic'd (wouldn't turn over)

On suspicion of a head gasket failure we took the heads off - and had the usual fun with the manifold bolts!

Gaskets were found to be good as new, but the drivers side exhaust manifiold wa full of water. Then we noticed that the front piston on the drivers side had to perfect chunks missing from each side of the valve recesses - but the chunks were nowhere to be seen (probably mashed up and spat into the pre-cat).

Fearing the worst we took the engine out last night - which proved much easier than removing the manifold bolts!

On inspecting the stripped block it was easy to see a crack in the cylinder liner in the bore where the piston was broken.

The has only done 8000 miles since it had a 'taraka' upgrade from TVR power.

My question is has anyone else had or heard of problems like this one? The clyinder can be rebored and lined and a new piston fitted, but the fear is that whatever caused the original problem may cause the same problem again.

The liners look very thin in the block, but having never seen a 5.0l block before I assume that this is standard.

Are there documented problems with the 500 cracking liners?

Is the Taraka upgrade to fault? - inspection of the heads reveals that some cyliders have been running lean and some rich...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Craig.

[ray_von]

Don't think the taraka upgrade does anything to cylinders so may not be that. I'm sure TVR power can tell you exactly what the upgrade consists of

[350Matt]

I'm afraid there have been a few cases of dropped and cracked liners with the 500's

There is a fix of a 'top-hat ' liner available from V8 developments and a few others.

Best of luck with the fix

Matt

[ray_von]

Was just going to edit for the slipped liner syndrome but was beaten to it

[The AJP Griff]

350Matt said:

I'm afraid there have been a few cases of dropped and cracked liners with the 500's


Matt

Dropped and cracked liners aren't necesarily specific to 500's,before you start a panic!Agree that V8 Developments are a very good source of help

[ray_von]

The AJP Griff said:

Dropped and cracked liners aren't necesarily specific to 500's

No that would be the knackered crankshafts

[GreenV8S]

craigbunyan said:

Is the Taraka upgrade to fault? - inspection of the heads reveals that some cyliders have been running lean and some rich...

Uneven air/fuel distribution could be the result of a cam problem, or a problem with the engine management system. If it's been lean under load this can cause heat related damage, particularly if the lean cylinders are at the rear of the block (traditionally the ones that run hotter). If these cylinders have been overheating and detonating this could have caused piston damage. Bits of piston flying around inside the cylinder could perhaps have lead to the liner damage. It sounds as if you were lucky not to have had a catastrophic failure. Sadly the root cause may turn out to be something very mundane and easy to fix, but I'd want to be sure I'd found the root cause before putting it back together.

[Tom55]

agree with others, go to V8D for top hat liners

[craigbunyan]

Thanks for the advice guys,

I'm looking at both V8D and a company called 'ACR' - Automotive Component Remanufacturing Ltd
for a block with top hat liners.

ARC do an exchange block service for £875 plus vat. - am yet to get a price from V8 dev.
Next thing I need to look at is mapping - Funds are tight, as you can imagine, so i'd rather not go down the OMEX route. The problem is getting the car mapped correctly. Does anyone know of anywhere in scotland I can get this done?

Thanks again

Craig.