Engine failure on wife's car.

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OK so I went on a drive this evening with my wife's little Punto. After some spirited driving out of the sudden car lost power, working on three cylinder. Pull out on a petrol station to buy cigarettes and open bonnet. I was hoping to see some bad HT lead, but instead I found oily engine and bay. Dipstick out of its place for few centimetres, lots of oil on exhaust manifold and pretty much everywhere. Took it home and found oil in intake manifold also. What is weird is that engine sounds like it's only burnt valve (obviously it isn't) without any noise from engine except working on only three cylinders. Car is 16V DOHC belt driven with 217000km (135K miles).
Sorry for long post, but I would appreciate your opinion.
 
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Going to have to tear into that to see what blew up, how low on oil was it. If it was near empty I'd count on that engine being scrap.


BTW: I had no idea Fiat made a "punto" model of car... googling punto comes up with a term thats NSFW.

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Run a compression test, you never know.

Seems like there was way more crankcase pressure/ blowby than the PCV system could handle. But not necessarily a death knell.
 
Yeah, tomorrow I'm off so first thing in the morning I'll check compression numbers. I really like this car it's so fun to drive , but this engines are quite expensive for an old car.
 
Originally Posted By: chrisri
It was full on Shell Ultra 5w-40, car had no issues before.


so after this problem it was still full on oil, but there was oil all over the engine?
 
No, it was full before this, I think it's half a liter below full mark now.
 
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Originally Posted By: chrisri
No, it was full before this, I think it's half a liter below full mark now.


still not bad, might be something repairable.

is there scrapyard engines available for transplant?
not sure how that works in your country.
 
Spun bearings? Cracked piston?

Some people I know like to remove all spark plugs, the look inside the cylinders with a boroscope.

Some engines would have a valve seat fall out of the cylinder head, then the old seat either made the engine act like it had a burnt valve, and other times it would cause the death of the engine.
 
Yeah, I will go scrap yard route if this engine pull out to be beyond economical repair. No engine numbers nonsense here so that's good. Still this will set me back 500 € this way or another.
 
Originally Posted By: artificialist
Spun bearings? Cracked piston?

Some people I know like to remove all spark plugs, the look inside the cylinders with a boroscope.

Some engines would have a valve seat fall out of the cylinder head, then the old seat either made the engine act like it had a burnt valve, and other times it would cause the death of the engine.

I get you, but engine sounds normal, surely with spun bearing there would be some knock. Boroscope sounds like a good idea.
 
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For 500€ you might as well look for a 1.4 16V from a Fiat Stilo/Idea or Lancia Y/Musa.

Are you sure that it's not the HT lead or ignition coil plus backfire into the crankcase?
 
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Originally Posted By: kozanoglu
You could have used synthetic instead of cheap oil...


Yeah, because engines always blow up when running dino
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Originally Posted By: kozanoglu
You could have used synthetic instead of cheap oil...


Car had always full synthetic, I had last OCI with Ultra 5w40 less than month ago.
Did compression test today, no compression on second cylinder so I'm thinking of pulling head tomorrow to check cylinder for marks. It's probably broken piston ring from detonation or bad injector running lean on this cylinder. If cylinder is in bad condition I have to find new engine. No point in re boring.
Oh yeah, plug tip was melted!
 
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Originally Posted By: kozanoglu
You could have used synthetic instead of cheap oil...

Shell/Pennzoil Ultra is cheap oil? How so?

What would you suggest he run in his econobox instead? Redline?
 
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