Crappest engine ever

[chaseracer]

Is there only me on here who's regularly driven a two stroke Trabant?

 

FPB7 will be along presently.  See also: WARTBURG.

 

[cros]

The  250cc BSA and Triumph engines of the late 60's early 70's. Utter wank. Can't beleive they are fetching good money now.

 

I briefly had a BSA Starfire which broke down with alarming regularity, everything from cracked pistons to knackered big end and rod, via sticking slide in the carb, slipping clutch and about 50 false neutrals.

 

∆∆ A fine example of a lightweight ride-to-work engine stretched beyond belief. Even more flagrant was Enfield supplying a 'spare' 4 speed gear cluster with their grenade-like 5 speed 250. I believe the Doncaster built Javelin cars were similarly fragile, but as is often the case, this gets overlooked on niche cars.

MGs which drove the overhead camshaft via the dynamo shaft are a massive ballache, but, as with Ducatis, folks will pay for a good rattle.

[Guest Hooli]

CVHs were good engines (once you fitted the turbot stem seals) if run on the correct oil, no one ever did though so they all rattled & lost power as the tappets collapsed due to no oil pressure inside them.

[lesapandre]

MGA twin cam? Most recalled. Jowett yes - rushed into production and snapped crankshafts galore.  Pity as it really killed Jowett. 

[spike60]

Definitely the LR 2.25 petrol engine. Had one in my series 3 ambulance that thing weighed nearly 3 ton and was so slow you could feel yourself age ungraciously. Not to mention 4mpg ish. Great in snow though

When I worked for the Forestry Commission in the 1980's I was given the use of a 1979 LWB LR 2.25 crewbus when the weather was poor for a about a month, probably early 1987. They were doing fuel consumption checks and this had to monitored and it was expected to average 18.6 mpg. Driven slowly on snowy minor roads in 4wd and tarmac in 2wd it averaged 10.3 mpg over a month. It vibrated like a cheap sex aid and was no better on polished snow than my Renault 12 which had M+S tyres. 

As an aside, shortly after I gave it back it went to auction because the rear chassis was crumbling. It was less than 9 years old.

[Lacquer Peel]

Another candidate has to be that VM diesel 2.5 4 pot used in Jeep Cherokees of the 90's. They had four heads and at 100,000 miles they would warp a head or two. Any taken in at the local Jeep dealership with over 75,000 miles went straight to auction. I believe it was originally designed as a marine engine, not well suited to road vehicles.

I think it's a bit overworked in a Range Rover or Cherokee but it's a strong and reliable engine in a Rover 800.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

When I worked for the Forestry Commission in the 1980's I was given the use of a 1979 LWB LR 2.25 crewbus when the weather was poor for a about a month, probably early 1987. They were doing fuel consumption checks and this had to monitored and it was expected to average 18.6 mpg. Driven slowly on snowy minor roads in 4wd and tarmac in 2wd it averaged 10.3 mpg over a month. It vibrated like a cheap sex aid and was no better on polished snow than my Renault 12 which had with M+S tyres. 

As an aside, shortly after I gave it back it went to auction because the rear chassis was crumbling. It was less than 9 years old.

 

 

And when the Toyota Landcruiser arrived, LR sales in Africa evaporated. 

[bunglebus]

The CVH gets a bad press but I've had a couple (1.6i FWD and 1.8 RWD) and they were both good, especially the 1.6i in my 1600E - changed the usual valve stem oil seals, ran it on on fully synthetic oil and it was a lovely, willing engine that used no oil at all - didn't even seem to get dirty between changes. Would do an indicated 120MPH on the Brentwwod bypass my private test track.

 

The 1.8 CVH in my Sierra smoked slightly on the overrun (not as easy to do the valve stem seals) but was utterly reliable and the cambelt was laughably easy to change - 36 minute ICME time!

 

I do have a bit of a hatred for Pintos though, I'm sure good ones are good but my 1.6 was an unreliable, constantly pinking, overheating, rattling piece of shit. And they weigh a fucking ton. 

[fordperv]

I quite like the cvh especially the turbocharged variety.

[AMC Rebel]

 

 

I do have a bit of a hatred for Pintos though, I'm sure good ones are good but my 1.6 was an unreliable, constantly pinking, overheating, rattling piece of shit. And they weigh a fucking ton. 

Good point - I had to change the camshaft on my Ma's due to the typical oil feed issue - although it was an easy job at least.  I remember an article in CCC that pointed out how ridiculously tall they are - and that they weigh about the same as a Rover V8.  All the ones I've had have been prone to pinking as well.

[AMC Rebel]

Does it have to be motor vehicle engines?

 

Because these, as fitted to canal boats, were utter shit machines that consumed diesel, made lots of noise and vibration but produced no power at all.

 

[rantingYoof]

I cannot say they're 'crap' but a lot of VAG engines in the mid to late 1990s were woeful in power output compared to rivals, and they had the tendancy of being shoved into inappropriate cars. Not that power output is the be-all-and-end-all definition of whether an engine is crap, of course.

 

The 75hp 1.4i petrol comes to mind. While it would have presumably been adequate in a Skoda Fabia and ample for a VW Lupo, I think they put it into a Skoda Octavia, where relatively speaking it would have presumably been utterly useless.

 

Hmm, on reflection this post was probably better suited to the 'underpowered car' thread!

[spike60]

And when the Toyota Landcruiser arrived, LR sales in Africa evaporated. 

I never saw any Toyotas but I saw the arrival of the first LR 90/110's in about 1988, a genuine huge improvement in technology. Wind up windows! Whatever will they think of next? 

[Lacquer Peel]

 

 

I cannot say they're 'crap' but a lot of VAG engines in the mid to late 1990s were woeful in power output compared to rivals, and they had the tendancy of being shoved into inappropriate cars. Not that power output is the be-all-and-end-all definition of whether an engine is crap, of course.

 

The 75hp 1.4i petrol comes to mind. While it would have presumably been adequate in a Skoda Fabia and ample for a VW Lupo, I think they put it into a Skoda Octavia, where relatively speaking it would have presumably been utterly useless.

 

Hmm, on reflection this post was probably better suited to the 'underpowered car' thread!

The 1.4 16v burns oil and is as thirsty as a 2.0 petrol in a Golf or Octavia. Crap.

[GeordieInExile]

I cannot say they're 'crap' but a lot of VAG engines in the mid to late 1990s were woeful in power output compared to rivals, and they had the tendancy of being shoved into inappropriate cars. Not that power output is the be-all-and-end-all definition of whether an engine is crap, of course.

 

The 75hp 1.4i petrol comes to mind. While it would have presumably been adequate in a Skoda Fabia and ample for a VW Lupo, I think they put it into a Skoda Octavia, where relatively speaking it would have presumably been utterly useless.

 

Hmm, on reflection this post was probably better suited to the 'underpowered car' thread!

Did they ever put the old 60bhp 1.4 into the mk1 SEAT Toledo...? Because that would have been epically slow.

 

EDIT: Nope. 1.6 was the smallest. It did get the SDI engine which also saw service in the mk1 Octavia though.

[dozeydustman]

CVHs were good engines (once you fitted the turbot stem seals) if run on the correct oil, no one ever did though so they all rattled & lost power as the tappets collapsed due to no oil pressure inside them.

 

 

I'll 4th/5th/6th/nth the CVH. There were no redeeming features to this abomination of an engine. The 1.1 & 1.3 didn't offer much in power, economy or refinement over the X-flow/Valencia/HCS so were dropped early on. It was poorly designed engine and most owners poorly maintained them. Even well maintained ones which didn't burn oil or have a ticking top end were so coarse running they vibrated harder than my wife's favourite toy in her bedside table. 

[Tadhg Tiogar]

 

The 1.4 16v burns oil and is as thirsty as a 2.0 petrol in a Golf or Octavia. Crap.

The same 1.4 16v was apparently alright in a Polo because lighter car.

 

In a Golf 4, though, gutless. I think they bumped the output up to 85hp for the later Polo 6R but, having driven that, it's still gutless.

[rantingYoof]

The 1.4 16v burns oil and is as thirsty as a 2.0 petrol in a Golf or Octavia. Crap.

 

Excellent.

 

Someone get this bought then.

https://www.gumtree.com/p/skoda/skoda-octavia-1.4-mk1-only-79k-on-clock/1322424530

[JimH]

As you use or work on a particular engine its "foibles" become more and more of an annoyance so you need to be careful that judgement on the worst isn't clouded by familiarity. It is also clear that by any objective measure massively popular engines can be terminally shite. They built plenty of Dub flat fours but at the same time no one who has rebuilt a few would argue that they were anything other than pitiful pieces of aluminium and cast iron which barely held together. The Ford CVH engine may have been very popular but short of replacing it with a washing machine half-filled with bricks it is difficult to think of a more unplesant engine to hear and feel. Other crap engines were crap because they were so laughably badly concieved that the fact they bankrupted their manufacturer could be considered a mercy. In the Museum of Real Badly Thought Out Engines the NSU wankel engine is on a flood lit plinth in the foyer. There is a long list of manufacturers who ballsed up cam chain tensioners, camshafts, cam followers, cooling systems that wouldn't and lubrication systems that didn't . And then there are the dear French who will insist on giving reliable electrics yet another bash. Shabby engineering for sure but you can hardly condemn an entire engine as the worst ever just because the VP (Valve Train Systems) signed off the wrong solution.

 

I'm going to argue that in most cases the manufacturers had their hearts in the right place. Sure there was more than a hint of cynicism in the CVH abortion but at least the car was reasonably cheap to buy and reasonably reliable. They were trying solmething new, they were constrained by cash flow or they just plain got it wrong are all reasons to cut them some slack. 

 

I would argue that the worst has to be judged on the chasm bewteen expectation and reality. As far as I am aware the engines installed in any Citroen DS were not bad engines per se but they were abysmal compared with the powered by some alien space technology that had dropped off planet Moon the rest of the car lead you to expect. For me - and I am forced to declare a slight bias here because I absolutley loath the sodding cars  - surely the worst engine ever made belongs to that Brazilian built Tritec abortion they put in the early MINIs. A more wheezy, rough and downright gutless piece of shit I have yet to experience. Premium. New. BMW. Premium. British. Quality. Fun. Pizazz. BRG. Colour coded roof. Quality. Union Flags. Quality. And then you drive the thing and you would have been as well in something Warsaw Pact.

 

Oh yeah. And anything that runs on diesel. Obviously.

[fordperv]

Good point - I had to change the camshaft on my Ma's due to the typical oil feed issue - although it was an easy job at least. I remember an article in CCC that pointed out how ridiculously tall they are - and that they weigh about the same as a Rover V8. All the ones I've had have been prone to pinking as well.

Poor maintenance and wrong grade oil for the cam and people without a clue tuning them causing the pinking, all my years of pinto ownership I've never had a problem with cams or pinking they are one of the simplest engines to look after

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Pintos were great. The 1600 went well enough in a Sierra, was good on fuel (30 mpg) and given a modicum of easy maintenance, was very hard to kill. I never managed to break one. Easy to repair, easy to remove, cheap parts everywhere. 

The CVH wasn't that bad. Given 6000 mile oil changes and a belt every 20'000 they were reasonably lively and reliable as well. Also very, very easy to work on. Nowhere near as good as the GM OHC Astra unit and they were soon outclassed .

[scaryoldcortina]

I was going to nominate the Coventry Clim..

 

But.... NO

Ha. I'm warming to them a little because it's almost a decade since I last had to work on the hateful little devils.

[D Spares & Tyres]

At the risk of being flamed, has anyone had experiences of the Rover ‘K Series’ as bad as it’s reputation?

Weak head gaskets and a tiny coolant capacity must have caused many a demise amongst other problems. So many otherwise acceptable Freelanders have been ‘bridged’ owing to the failure of this inadequate lump.

Squirrel2

Basically a very good engine but badly built with rubbish parts.

 

I sold a few of 214s when they were still worth a couple of thousand and they were awful. Obviously head gaskets but often problems with the single point injection. The quality of the engine wasn't a patch on other manufacturers offerings but I always thought the rest of the car was better.

 

Typical BL, taking a great idea and fucking it up. The 214 could do easily have been way better than any other car in its class, put together properly the K series is a superb engine but I always questioned the sanity of people who bought them new. Don't these people read reviews before spending £10k or more??

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

They were great when new. If only...............

[barefoot]

FPB7 will be along presently.  See also: WARTBURG.

 

 

 

I was led to believe, back in my two stroke days, that the one litre, inline three in a Warty was as smooth as silk, sounded like a four stroke six pot and had the (something or other) of a two litre. They was smokey little fuckers though, weren't they?

[Squirrel2]

Does it have to be motor vehicle engines?

 

Because these, as fitted to canal boats, were utter shit machines that consumed diesel, made lots of noise and vibration but produced no power at all.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=KVXkfbuTAjg

Another contender for the crappiest so-called ‘marine engine’ ever must be the Petter Mini Twin (and its little single cylinder sister the Mini 6). Petter took an ageing, noisy, hard to start by hand industrial engine and bolted on an aluminium water-cooled block and heads and then thought it would be a good idea to pump salty seawater through it. Unsurprisingly few have survived. Spares are unobtainable now, of course.

 

This one here probably has only because it has spent its life on fresh water canals...

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R5QqKnYIBpI&t=59s

 

Squirrel2 has an air-cooled cousin of this one stashed away somewhere but need ear-defenders on to be anywhere near it when running; just like an ‘80s generator set!

 

Squirrel2

[AMC Rebel]

Poor maintenance and wrong grade oil for the cam and people without a clue tuning them causing the pinking, all my years of pinto ownership I've never had a problem with cams or pinking they are one of the simplest engines to look after

 

 Heh heh - more than likely the cause of the bother I had with them

[AMC Rebel]

 

 

 

I would argue that the worst has to be judged on the chasm bewteen expectation and reality. As far as I am aware the engines installed in any Citroen DS were not bad engines per se but they were abysmal compared with the powered by some alien space technology that had dropped off planet Moon the rest of the car lead you to expect. For me - and I am forced to declare a slight bias here because I absolutley loath the sodding cars  - surely the worst engine ever made belongs to that Brazilian built Tritec abortion they put in the early MINIs. A more wheezy, rough and downright gutless piece of shit I have yet to experience. Premium. New. BMW. Premium. British. Quality. Fun. Pizazz. BRG. Colour coded roof. Quality. Union Flags. Quality. And then you drive the thing and you would have been as well in something Warsaw Pact.

 

Oh yeah. And anything that runs on diesel. Obviously.

 

IIRC the Mini would have had the K series but for the BMW takeover? 

[Rod/b]

 

The 1.4 16v burns oil and is as thirsty as a 2.0 petrol in a Golf or Octavia. Crap.

They eat waterpumps and cambelt tensioners too. We had 3 go on our old Leon. Awful engines.

[JoelIoM]

The worst that I can think of was the 2 litre PD engine fitted to A4s in the mid 2000s. Oil pumps failed within a year or two due to it's bizarre chain driven balance shaft setup.