Who has had a real engine failure?

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1988 Pontiac 6000, 2.5 Iron Duke. Tooling along the highway, it ate the plastic camshaft gear at about 90,000 miles. Not that unusual of a problem, they often let go. Thankfully it was a non-interference engine. Dad and I had the engine out in a few hours, and took the camshaft to a shop to have a new gear pressed on. Changed the oil to get the shredded teeth out of the oil pan, and the engine ran fine for another 90,000 before the body rot got to the point the car had to be retired.
 
Originally Posted By: Marco620
Think Arco Graphite has lost a few engines. ...
How? My Mazda had no complaints with it. I used three (24-quart, back then) cases of the stuff.

That car suddenly started leaking coolant into a cylinder at about 476K miles, due to erosion of coolant passages in the head near the head gasket. A rebuilt head revived it for another 130K, when the same (or similar) thing happened to the second head. Rest of engine was still good.

At about 250K, my sister-in-law's 1996 Camry inexplicably (as far as we know) went immediately to high revs on a cold start, as if stuck at WOT. Something, I assume a rod, promptly punched a big hole in the oil pan.
 
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Originally Posted By: CR94
Originally Posted By: Marco620
Think Arco Graphite has lost a few engines. ...
How? My Mazda had no complaints with it. I used three (24-quart, back then) cases of the stuff.

That car suddenly started leaking coolant into a cylinder at about 476K miles, due to erosion of coolant passages in the head near the head gasket. A rebuilt head revived it for another 130K, when the same (or similar) thing happened to the second head. Rest of engine was still good.

At about 250K, my sister-in-law's 1996 Camry inexplicably (as far as we know) went immediately to high revs on a cold start, as if stuck at WOT. Something, I assume a rod, promptly punched a big hole in the oil pan.


Arcographite the user, not the oil. He's often complaining about mysterious sounds in relatively new engines.
 
1978 Honda Accord, 1.8 CVCC steaming pile of dog poop, Honda should of been thrown out of the American market for foisting this turd on America and I believe was car of year LOL

Cam failed at 20K, Headgasket blew at 30K and by 70K the rings were shot and it chowed oil. Note oil was changed every 3K milas and all these CVCC engines on these turds exhibited the exact same pattern failures of bad cams, headgaskets and rings.
 
I have been most fortunate. I have not had a major engine, or trans or diff also, failure in over 45 years. Many personal vehicles taken to over 200,000 miles. And several commercial heavy trucks to well over 1 million miles. Now that I have said that, the Detroit in my current semi truck will blow up!
 
1965 Mustang w/289. Changed oil using QS Super lend. Prev owner must have been using ND oil. It cleaned up so much crud at once that the shaft driving oil pump snapped and engine had to be rebuilt.
 
4.0 reman engine. Oil pressure showed at valve area but unknown condition was no oil to bearings. Oil galley had not been cleaned properly during reman. Engine was replaced after having been run for only 15 min.
 
I was in the car but not driving.
30th of June 1991, my dad was driving on the autobahn outside Karlsruhe,Germany at 100 Mph or so... all of the sudden he notices the engine has lost all oil pressure, we stop and let it cool down, then we drove the car very gently to a Ford dealer.
They pulled the engine and stripped it and found the hexagonal rod that drives the oil pump has failed, the engine is ruined.
They managed to find a second hand engine for the car, they put it in and within 10 Hours we were back on our way to Finland.
That engine is still in the car and runs like a champ...
 
I had a brand new 1982 Monte Carlo with a V6 in it.
Diving down the street at 25 MPH, the crankshaft snapped in half. This was with 3000 miles on the odometer.
After many issues with the vehicle (this was pre-Lemon Law,) I unloaded it at 13K. A family friend kept after me until I sold it to her. She bought it with full disclosure. By the time this car hit 21K, it had a new motor and transmission in it. This car was absolutely not abused, it was just that bad.
However, the check engine light worked flawlessly.
 
My '99 Corolla lost a valve at 295K...my current Corolla (an '04) has already surpassed that and is at 297K and counting...
 
Originally Posted By: Tdbo
I had a brand new 1982 Monte Carlo with a V6 in it.
Diving down the street at 25 MPH, the crankshaft snapped in half. This was with 3000 miles on the odometer.
After many issues with the vehicle (this was pre-Lemon Law,) I unloaded it at 13K. A family friend kept after me until I sold it to her. She bought it with full disclosure. By the time this car hit 21K, it had a new motor and transmission in it. This car was absolutely not abused, it was just that bad.
However, the check engine light worked flawlessly.

How did it just snap in half?
 
Originally Posted By: FordCapriDriver
Originally Posted By: Tdbo
I had a brand new 1982 Monte Carlo with a V6 in it.
Diving down the street at 25 MPH, the crankshaft snapped in half. This was with 3000 miles on the odometer.
After many issues with the vehicle (this was pre-Lemon Law,) I unloaded it at 13K. A family friend kept after me until I sold it to her. She bought it with full disclosure. By the time this car hit 21K, it had a new motor and transmission in it. This car was absolutely not abused, it was just that bad.
However, the check engine light worked flawlessly.

How did it just snap in half?


GM was just that good back then.

This is one of the earlier V6's, probably a 200 or 229. Split journals on the throws I think. To make a 90 degree V6 (reusing the 90 degree V8 tooling) with even firing a split journal gets used. But that leads to weak throws.
 
Originally Posted By: FordCapriDriver
Originally Posted By: Tdbo
I had a brand new 1982 Monte Carlo with a V6 in it.
Diving down the street at 25 MPH, the crankshaft snapped in half. This was with 3000 miles on the odometer.
After many issues with the vehicle (this was pre-Lemon Law,) I unloaded it at 13K. A family friend kept after me until I sold it to her. She bought it with full disclosure. By the time this car hit 21K, it had a new motor and transmission in it. This car was absolutely not abused, it was just that bad.
However, the check engine light worked flawlessly.

How did it just snap in half?



What I was told was that it was a defective crankshaft and that it snapped. The mechanic at the dealer where I purchased said that he had seen several of them on the Buick V6's at the time. I'm guessing that QC was not on the job the day that motor (and car) was built.
 
Originally Posted By: supton
Originally Posted By: FordCapriDriver
Originally Posted By: Tdbo
I had a brand new 1982 Monte Carlo with a V6 in it.
Diving down the street at 25 MPH, the crankshaft snapped in half. This was with 3000 miles on the odometer.
After many issues with the vehicle (this was pre-Lemon Law,) I unloaded it at 13K. A family friend kept after me until I sold it to her. She bought it with full disclosure. By the time this car hit 21K, it had a new motor and transmission in it. This car was absolutely not abused, it was just that bad.
However, the check engine light worked flawlessly.

How did it just snap in half?


GM was just that good back then.

This is one of the earlier V6's, probably a 200 or 229. Split journals on the throws I think. To make a 90 degree V6 (reusing the 90 degree V8 tooling) with even firing a split journal gets used. But that leads to weak throws.


If I remember correctly, it was a 231.
 
231 used to be odd fire, then it went even fire. I think... wasn't alive back then. It likely... oh the heck with it, just google it.

Wikipedia

Didn't realize 231 was a 90 degree, thought it was 60. Nope, it's a 90.

Quote:

The first engine in this family was introduced in 1961 for the 1962 model year Buick Special with Buick's 198 cu in (3.2 L) engine, the first V6 in an American car. Because it was derived from Buick's 215 cu in (3.5 L) aluminum V8, it has a 90° bank between cylinders and an uneven firing pattern due to the crankshaft having only three crank pins set at 120° apart, with opposing cylinders (1-2, 3-4 and 5-6) sharing a crank pin in, as do many V8 engines. The uneven firing pattern was often perceived as roughness, leading a former American Motors executive to crow "It was rougher than a cob."

In 1977, Buick redesigned the crankshaft to a "split-pin" configuration to create an "even-firing" version. The crank pins associated with the opposing cylinders were offset from each other by 30°. The relatively small offset did not require flying arms to be incorporated, however a 3.0 mm thick flange was built in between the offset crank pins to prevent the connecting rod big-ends from "walking" off the crank pin bearing journal and interfering with the adjacent big end. The 3.0 mm thick flange effectively caused the connecting rods on the left-hand bank of cylinders (forward bank for FWD applications) to move 3.0 mm forward relative to the right-hand bank, but the engine block remained unchanged compared to the odd-fire engine. Since the cylinders center-lines were no longer centralized over the crank pin bearing journals, the connecting rods were re-designed with the big-ends offset from the piston pin ends by 1.5 mm. The engine in this configuration became known to have "off-centre bore spacing".
 
The 231/3.8 was the t-type and Grand national engine. I turned my boost up to 25psi. Others were doing that and other tricks to run low 11 second quarters.

This was not a weak engine.
 
Originally Posted By: Tdbo
Originally Posted By: supton
Originally Posted By: FordCapriDriver
Originally Posted By: Tdbo
I had a brand new 1982 Monte Carlo with a V6 in it.
Diving down the street at 25 MPH, the crankshaft snapped in half. This was with 3000 miles on the odometer.
After many issues with the vehicle (this was pre-Lemon Law,) I unloaded it at 13K. A family friend kept after me until I sold it to her. She bought it with full disclosure. By the time this car hit 21K, it had a new motor and transmission in it. This car was absolutely not abused, it was just that bad.
However, the check engine light worked flawlessly.

How did it just snap in half?






















GM was just that good back then.

This is one of the earlier V6's, probably a 200 or 229. Split journals on the throws I think. To make a 90 degree V6 (reusing the 90 degree V8 tooling) with even firing a split journal gets used. But that leads to weak throws.


If I remember correctly, it was a 231.
Same thing happened to my elderly aunt's hardly ever driven Buick of the same vintage. And let us not forget the famous "Minimopar oil filter study" started by an engineer who lost his MOPAR engine to an OCOD. First site I was aware of whose owner did oil filter cutting and posted the results.
 
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