Best engine failure experience.

[peterperkins]

You know out for a drive/race/rally give it some clog and bang blue smoke, cue pick the engine bits up off the road/track/stage in a cardboard box

Picture 1987 A17 ring road roundabout onto A47 at Kings Lynn just driven 150 miles fron Yorkshire in my Hillman Imp Rallye 105bhp 998cc ex-works screamer, (Nearly deafened by this point) close ratio box, 998cc full race wills ringed Reg Patten engine, R23 Cam, twin 40's etc etc. pulling hard 8,500 rpm in second and bang rattle rattle, clutch in coast to stop. Open up boot and cam cover in bits with camshaft in three pieces flapping round. Cue AA and recovery to Norwich

Cam carrier appeared to have failed leading to cam flailing round at high revs :shock: Replaced with Ge3 Cam and solid carrier for those in the know Luckily didn't damage head, valves or rest of engine.

[gsx600]

Mine was gong down the M4 by Bristol a couple of years ago in a Supra 3.0l Turbo.

Giving it some welly going up a hill past another fast car - possibly going over 70 - when putting my foot down for more reserve power it normally had it just slowed down.

Looked out the mirror and could see a cloud of smoke, so pulled in as engine had now died on me.

Transpired that the turbo had gone and then continued to suck all the oil out of the engine and deposit it on the M4 in the process of wrecking both turbo and engine

cost me a few pennies getting that fixed, and then promptly sold it vowing to never buy another turbo car

[Markh]

Blew the side out of my MG Midget about 40km south of Paris in 83, chasing a 604 peugeot, just got passed him at 90+, big bang, lots of smoke and oil over the road.

[350Matt]

Best one was had an engine on the dyno that let go during an endurance test, it broke a piston which seized the engine at about 17,500Rpm. This in turn broke the dyno drive shaft which smashed its way through the drive guard ( 1/4" steel) and ricocheted around the test cell about a dozen times smashing the carp out of the air inlet, roof panels, floor panels and the engine.

Quite scary at the time


Matt

[Foolish Dave]

Driving south on the M6 north of Manchester the gear box on my Mini 998cc goes bang - loosing 2nd and 3rd by sheering most of the teeth off the cogs. Then I enter a 10 mile traffic jam with just 1st and 4th to drive in for 2 hours - 4 up with luggage... that was fun.

New years day - A14 East right at the end of the road, I lift off to start changing down coming up to the junction and the engine sounds... loud. Pull over and wait for 6 hours to get a tow car, wearing every piece of clothing I had with me - as it was a fancy dress party, that got some interested looks. The valve seat on cylinder 3 had gone, the valve had dropped into the cylinder and welded to the top of the piston and the top piston ring, and some of the cylinder head. The diesel engine carried on running for at least a mile after this had stated and would have carried on - in fact I started her up a few times to show my parents - who popped by on their way - and the breakdown man. I was quite amazed.

[//j17]

A friend was driving from London to Bristol having just picked his Triumph Spitfire up from having a bottom-end overhaul. Not pushing it at all when at 3,000RPM a spectacular cloud of white smoke initially fills the cockpit - then the M4.

A cam bearing had failed (not part of bottom end rebuild), overheated and friction welded it's self to the cam shaft and block. Cam shaft didn't like it and split clean in 2. Queue some valve/piston/con rod/crank action that the con rod lost. Conclusively.

Part of rod made an exit stage left, the other an exit stage right. Hole right through the block you can put your arm through - and I have.

Queue friend's nickname being changed from '2 engines' (original + bottom end rebuild) to '3 engines' (+replacement). Never heard of anyone with his luck with Triumph engines - he sold the car when we started calling him '6 engines' (+new full engine that eat a cam follower after 3,000 miles +warranted replacement that did the same +sympathy replacement as engine builder was feeling sorry for him/embarrassed by quality of new cam followers).

Edited by //j17 on Wednesday 5th September 14:19

[tribbles]

Driving a VW beetle based kit car - fan belt snapped, taking the the temperature sensor with it, so I didn't know (alternator sense light was not wired either).

I drove for about 10 miles at 70. I was driving past a landrover, and I thought "That's noisy", and booted it past them. I then got to a roundabout and decided it was actually my car making the noise. I had about a quarter of a mile to the office, so continued and parked.

I then turned off the engine - except it kept going. I then disconnected the battery (after working out what had happened) - it still kept going. For another 5 minutes it kept self-igniting until it cooled down enough.

Got it taken on a flatbed home that evening to a mate of mine who builds engines. He started it up, and I drove it for another 9 months before I got a new engine (under warranty too!)

[davebell1984]

First car, at 20 years of age, clio 16v, due to me not checking the oil and relying on the in car gauge decided to take a corner rather hard, resulted in the oil light blinking once.. oil temp shoots up, must of spun a shell, i continue home because of that time there was no abnormal engine noises, went to get petrol, stopped on forecourt, engine locked up solid... Great! Im more one for blowing up gearbox's now due to me owning my 4th clio 16v and i have forgotten how many gearbox's i have been through!

Dave

[Ranger 6]

Mk1 Golf Gti - put my foot on the clutch which resulted in big scary noises, changed gear quickly and the noise went away.....

Drove home carefully with the noise getting worse on the way, rattles started and generally got a bit rough

Figured it was pretty much f*cked after the 10 miles home so the next morning I phoned the recovery people who shipped it to TSR

When they stripped it they found the crank thrust bearing had gone which meant every time I pushed the cltch down the crank was trying to escape out of the front of the engine. I'd bent all the rods, scuffed the bores from the pistons trying to run at an angle etc etc.

Good excuse for a 1.9 I thought

[HiRich]

We lost a JAP motor (that's JA Prestwich, a pre-war 500cc single thumper) in a big way a couple of years ago. Saw a flash as Drives crossed the line at Mallory, and he pulled off at pit exit.

Wasn't pretty. The cooling fins were pulled out like broken shellac records, revealing quite a large fragment of the bore missing. The con-rod had snapped and melted at both ends, and we never found about an inch of it - impressive as there was bodywork on all sides but the top. Drives pointed out that that probably explained the thump in the back of his seat.

[Matt1986]

Citroen AX 1.0 having only had it for a few days i was heading down the A1 with my car full of luggage I didn't think i was stressing the engine too much at 87mph when it suddenly let go F1 style, smoke and noise and mess and a buggard car. and if you read the thread below i have just buggared up my first gearbox too.

[love machine]

Tring to break the downhill record at haldon hill in my 803cc morris minor (1956) got it to about 7000 rpm, knocked it out of gear to see if it would still accellerate. Stuck it in second instead of 4th. It shat itself bigstyle. I think it went to about 13000 rpm, lunched the engine which "just exploded". Got the needle all the way around to the other side of the stop though.

Replaced it with a hairy 1293 midget engine, coupled with the silly gearing of the Morris, it used to wheelspin in 3rd.

I couldn't seem to disengage the gear at all..... It just got stuck and went weeeeeBANG

(It was running my old set of slotmags at the time) not the 5.20 crossplies

Edited by love machine on Thursday 6th September 13:50

[dern]

Oil light failed on my old diesel bx at the same time as it dumped all the oil. Drove on having not noticed and one piston seized at the top of the cylinder leaving the conrod flailing around. Still got me home on the 3 cylinders though (20 miles).

[Mr2Mike]

Markh said:

Blew the side out of my MG Midget about 40km south of Paris in 83, chasing a 604 peugeot, just got passed him at 90+, big bang, lots of smoke and oil over the road.

Would that have been a 1500 Midget by any chance?

A friend of mine suffered the classic "electrical failure" in his Mk2 Escort rally car, i.e. the rod that came through the side of the block smashed the alternator

[Munter]

MK1 MR2. Castle Coombe action day. The car had used about a liter of oil/coolant in my 1st session on track. 2nd session they were waving the checkered flag as I rounded the last corner, I put my foot down and....nothing. Check rear view mirror and I cant see anything as the white smoke is in the way.... Bugger.

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/philbell/detail?.dir=ee37&.dnm=df20.jpg&.src=ph 

Heres the reason...

[sharky55]

Maybe not the most exciting- I used to share the journey to work with a mate so we used to buy "disposable cars" with only a few months tax and test. One of these cars was a toyota carina, can't remember the age maybe about c to f registration, and when winter came the engine froze due to a severe lack of anti-freeze. We decided to kill it as the heater didn't work and it only had two weeks tax left. Once we finally got it going it only took a matter of seconds at 6750rpm (rev limiter) to smoke the fan belt off because the water pump was still solid, then we went for a drive. 5th to third flat out, 1/2 a mile flat in second the toyota lump took it all and was up for more so we took the final drive to the workshop where the carina would lie until scrapped. A bit miffed we hadden't killed it there was only one thing left to do, a brick on the throttle pedal. With no load on the engine we thought it would only last a few minutes, if that. After five we opened the bonnet to watch. By this time the "coolant" had thawed and the guage was in the red, any time now we thought. After ten we wondered if it would run out of fuel before it let go! A couple of minutes later the top hose exploded with brown "coolant" going everywhere,then number two piston poped out to say hello but was still attached to the conrod, flailling around like mad the conrod was destroying the block even more as the toyota lump was still tryng to run! Then his buddy, piston 3, made an appearance but on it way back down managed to lock the engine, stopping it for the last time. Not the most exciting story but we couldn't believe how much the engine took untill it let go, we've had a toyota erver since.....