Complete mechanical failures

[stripped fred]

I had a friend with an Alfa GTV, one of the old models. It was meant to have the 2.5 engine but instead had a 3.0. He replaced the radiator but forget to tighten a jubilee clip and managed to cook it on a track day at Donington. He had it rebuilt by a specialist but it was never the same again.

[Forty-two]

I have a feeling that all my stories now start with, about twenty years ago...

 

Anyway, taking my mum to work using her car, pulled away from a junction, bang, she thought I'd stalled it. Turns out the cam belt snapped which it was later discovered took a few valves with it. G Reg 1.6 Fiat Tipo. Engine got rebuilt, all was well again.

[Alan_Green]

Not mechanical, but was speeding along happily in a mint MK1 Renault 5 (1400cc automatic in bright red) when there was a little clunk and it started seriously pulling to the left. Quick look and the chassis had snapped in the place where they always snap. Straight to the scrapyard. First guy didn't want it as he had two already with the same problem. Next guy gave me a tenner.  From hero to cubed zero in 30 mins.  Still hurts that I never got a pic of that car. USB361T.

[JayW]

Me and the lad were running late for (viewing) banger racing at Wimbledon a few years ago. Took the company van instead of my car (coz free pez), hammering flat out down the M3 on a Sunday morning, gracefully holding a solid 90mph when a clattering appeared from beneath my arse (nope, not gas). No sooner had I glanced down at the screaming red temp gauge did the engine explodeth in glorious style all over all 3 lanes.

 

Sadly I've long since lost the photos, but pistons (plural) through the crankcase just doesn't do it justice, it was fucking destroyed!

 

This chariot of choice? A Suzuki Carry van... A13UPP (pp) IIRC

[Eddie Honda]

Killed a 1622 B-Series in a Wolseley by running it with a rattly bottom end. Despite it sounding like a construction site I soldiered on turning the cassette player up.

 

Just outside Balfron heading back home it went bang. Rod stayed in the block, but rounded off the big-end, the cap let go and got bent jamming between the crank and camshaft.

 

Melted a hole in a piston on a Honda H100 ten miles short of Stirling.

 

Dropped a valve on a Kawasaki GT550 because it spent 80 miles tapping off the piston. (My fault, tooth out on timing)

[dollywobbler]

I've never had major mechanical fail, but Mrs DW has. Austin miniMetro 1.3HLS. She phoned me up to complain of an odd noise. All I could hear over the phone was a vague tap. Told her to drive home. She did. Over ten miles. Turns out it had dropped a valve!

[dollywobbler]

.

[smellypoo]

Mk1 Ford Focus, was a lovely car, well specced and looked/drove great, owned from new. I knew the interval mileage for timing belt replacement was coming up, but I hadn't got there yet. It was a stupid move on my part as the interval in the manual was/is bollocks. That, and there was a faint squeal from the engine bay for a couple of years.

 

Anyway, driving home work, just out of the Dartford tunnel and on the first slip road off towards the A13, everything goes quiet, no power, nothing. Thought 'thats strange, I can't have stalled it?'...

 

Coasted to the shoulder and the starter would spin but nothing else happening. AA came out and suspected timing belt, towed home. Turns out the tensioner failed. Valves met pistons, so new (breaker) head assembly was needed with new belt, tensioner and water pump.

[dave21478]

At the other end of the spectrum.....years back my father was on the waiting list for a kidney transplant. One day he got the call....donor found, good match, get to Edinburgh ASAfuckingP.

He got me to drive him down in my mkIII Astra Sport. It was a long, high speed run down the road and about 3/4 of the way there it started sounding terrible and power was surging in a weird way. Of all the days when you really dont need a breakdown....

It kept going though, and after he was admitted, I nursed it home that evening. Terrible rubbing and rattling noises from the engine and it would hesitate badly to the point of almost stalling, then suddenly pick up and run ok, then hesitate again etc etc.

Next day I took it in to work and had one of the mechanics look at it. Turned out that the timing belt tensioner had failed and the belt was running pretty much completely loose. With the covers off he could lift the belt up off the cam pulleys. 

Fuck knows how that kept running, but it did, and with a new tensioner and belt it was perfectly ok afterwards.

[michael1703]

I tried to see if my mk10 jaguar could do its claimed 110mph top speed, at 100 it went clatter and bang, it had a gold top engine which are now fetching £3500 alone, it's got a standard silver head worth Fuck all now. Dropped valve, holed piston, lots of shrapnel

 

100 in a mk10 is a weird sensation, it's feels like it's ripping up the tarmac, must have felt like space travel in 1962

[bub2006]

I've never known what happened with my first legal car but was also the first good ftp for me too. Ford orion ghia on a M plate. Bought from t'other side of Nottingham and test drove lovely. Got back onto Gamston bypass and it started to hiccup and stalled. Dragged it onto hard shoulder and it started again. Just coming over Clifton boulevard it coughed again. I slowed down and pulled over and it went with an almighty bang and never ran again. Had a cambelt snap on a vectra B auto and audi A4, gearbox ftp on a kia

[fordperv]

Oooh i can play this one, on the way to fordfair last august, i was travelling along the M1 at a steady 70mph, all of a sudden i heard a disturbing rattling a plume of thick black smoke from the exhaust so pressed the clutch and it died, i was near a services entrance so rolled into the sliproad, the engine was locked solid

 

Onto the tow truck

 

 

I purchased an engine the same day, when i fitted it i did a post mortem of the old engine, no 1 piston was missing, so was the exhaust valve, there was a hole in the cylinder wall as well as a sump full of shapes of chewed up metal, safe to say it was fecked

 

 

[AMC Rebel]

Took flywheel off my 1500 Maxi.  Put it back but didn't tighten bolts enough (total idiot).  Limped home one evening but never ran again - bolts had come loose and chewed the end of the crank.  After putting in a 1750 replacement with later rod change, failed to tighten wheelnuts after changing a driveshaft - wheel fell off, shredded the wing. managed to limp home on the spare - but car never moved again under it's own power as I had no money left.  

 

"working" Maxi and the 1750 donor were collected by arrangement with the scrappers made by my Ma.

 

Actually had to do without a car for a few months after that.  No pics as it was in the early 80s and despite having a camera, I didn't tend to take pics of mishaps then.

 

More recently, the final expiry of my KV6 via OMGHGF on the way to Stoke.  Theoretically repairable but cheaper to buy a secondhand replacement (actually - time will tell - haven't got it going yet so we'll see).

[Anthony]

205 Mi16 - big-end bolt sheared at 7k rpm resulting in the conrod and piston going through the block, oil filter and radiator. Unsurprisingly, not much engine wise was salvageable.

 

Mk2 Mondeo - temperature gauge dropped away whilst driving and a few minutes later the engine started losing power, pinking very badly under any sort of load. Pulled over and the engine cut out, spinning over with little compression when I tried to restart it. Turns out that a radiator hose had split and the engine had cooked itself to the point I'm assuming that the rings seized, as it was showing only about 20psi on the compression tester. I'd only had the car a week and ended up scrapping it.

[captain_70s]

I've never completely grenaded an engine (yet). Although I did drive my 1300 for about 5 miles running on three cylinders with a snapped rocker arm!

 

 

Lashed it back together with 2nd hand parts and she's still running that engine several thousand miles later, a small bit of rocker arm was never found, presumably it's in the sump somewhere...

 

Only proper "car will no longer drive at all" breakdown I've had (aside from running out of petrol and crashing) is the Civic snapping it's driveshaft, apparently "they all do that, sir" according to the Honda garage that serviced it two days prior.

 

[Supernaut]

1997 Peugeot 306 XLdt - I lost the clutch cable on it once, and got towed the mile home by a friendly off-road nutter in a Mk1 Land Rover Discovery. He even handed me a cig lighter powered beacon to use while I was being towed. I used my sister's Punto to go to the motor factors the next day and get a new clutch cable. Took two hours of fucking about to replace. About a year later it went bang, big time. All the warning lights came on including the big red STOP light on the dash. No oil on the road, so I suspect it was either the timing belt or the camshaft itself snapped (that's something that XUDs do, isn't it?). That happened in August 2013 and it ended up being recovered by a hiab.

 

2001 Peugeot 306 HDi - This was the replacement for the other 306. I was using it to commute about 15 miles each way. On the way home one day, the engine got really, REALLY tappety, then I heard something flapping off the underside of the bonnet. Turns out the HDi has a stupid 'damped' crank pulley which is a rubber donut type of thing, instead of the pulley just being made out of solid metal. The rubber deteriorates on these then the whole pulley goes eccentric. The flapping was the aux belt slapping off the underside of the bonnet. I was incredibly lucky it didn't take out the timing belt. I drove it to the parents' farm (30 miles) with no PAS and just the sidelights on. Luckily it had a fairly recent battery. Fitted a solid metal pulley and a new belt, and all was well. I replaced the alternator too as it was a bit borked (the headlights would dim whenever I lifted off the throttle).

 

1999 Audi A4 1.8T quattro sport - I replaced the front left CV joint on it. Turned out I got the wrong one. It fitted, and it drove for a few days. Then, less than a mile after I left my friend's house in Huntly (I was still in Huntly itself when it happened), it made a horrible grinding noise and lost all drive. I peered in behind the front left wheel to find the CV joint dangling about. It had come out the back of the hub. I got another one from GSF this time (the first was from Euro Crap Arts, say no more), and it had slightly longer splines to fit into the hub properly. I got recovered by a friendly passing teuchter, who towed me back up the street with a scabby Daihatsu Fourtrak and a tow strap. Replaced the CV joint on the street in Huntly and it was fine again. This was late 2015, I think.

[sierraman]

Blew a hole in the side of a gearbox on a Transit, no idea what happened internally other than there was a problem with the selectors on it.

 

Also in the same van had an FTP due to unusually the DMF going but actually suddenly 'going'.

 

Later it caught fire outside work due to a fire in the wiring for the fuse box. Other than that I had no trouble with it in 120,000 miles.

[M'coli]

Not mechanical, but was speeding along happily in a mint MK1 Renault 5 (1400cc automatic in bright red) when there was a little clunk and it started seriously pulling to the left. Quick look and the chassis had snapped in the place where they always snap. Straight to the scrapyard. First guy didn't want it as he had two already with the same problem. Next guy gave me a tenner.  From hero to cubed zero in 30 mins.  Still hurts that I never got a pic of that car. USB361T.

That reg. suggests it came from Rankine's garage in Helensburgh!

[Guest Hooli]

olopengine004a (1).jpg

 

When the water pump on a 1.3 Polo engine hasn't been fitted properly and the belt skips.

 

Looks exactly like mine did after a snapped cambelt bent a valve. I put a new belt on & drove it, the noise got better for a while & then the head fell of the valve.

 

They don't run very well like that do they?

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

1987. A 1960 Mini fitted with an 1100 Clubman engine. Drove it from Newbury 4 up at an indicated 85 along the M4.

 

On the way back, same scenario. 'What's that smell'? Looked in rear view mirror - clouds of blue oil smoke. Oh fuck. Eased off the gas and it mellowed a bit. Stopped at the services at the A34, allowed it to cool for 20 mins. Checked the oil - down a bit but not bad - but black and 'horrible. Added some coolant from the coolant tap in the Gents. It was okays after that but used lots off oil. Took the head off and one bore had chickenpox. Ran the glaze buster up and down all four bored, fitted new stem seals and it was acceptable after that.

 

1988. Red Mark 4 Cortina 1.6L on an R plate with a recon engine. Drove from Oxford to Newbury and it was running on three upon arrival. Engine bay absolutely soaked in oil. A position ring had broken, scored the bore and pumped most of the sump contents out of the oil roller cap breather. Sump and head off, secondhand piston with good rings, new rod bolts and gaskets, fixed.

 

1990. Mini Cooper S. Lost 3rd and 4th gears at Saxondale Services near Nottingham - selector fork to shaft pinch bolt had come loose.

 

1992. Mini 1275GT. Primary gear bush decided to weld itself to the crank resulting in a horrible drop gear whine. Caught it in time and repaired it. The fucking thing then jammed in reverse in a car park. Piece of shit.

 

1998. BMW E23 732i, torque converter oil seal blew, dumping a lot of ATF very quickly. Scrapped it after that.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

However - a tale of woe involving the ultimate* driving machine and legendary* German reliability*. 

 

2011 118i with the lovely, advanced and economical N43 four cylinder 2.0 engine. 39'000, FSSHHH, one previous.

 

Misfire - coil pack gone down.

 

Another misfire, another coil pack.

 

Misfire - an injector.

 

Misfire continues - a set of four injectors and coils plus coding.

 

EML light comes on, drop in power - ah, the NoX sensor. We're up to £1500 in repairs so far. Not bad for a quality* car.

 

EML light comes on again, rattling noise. Timing chain cartridge has disintegrated, chain jumped. Major job - front Xmember off, sump off, clean it out, replace chain assy, new pick up pipe.

 

Oil light on, knocking its bollocks off. Didn't catch above in time - crank bearings must have been starved momentarily when pick up clogged with shards of plastic.

 

Currently remains fucked. Arguments with mnfrs along the lines of 'this fucker should last more than 5 years and 40'000 miles. Mnfrs remain disinterested.

 

£2000 plus fitting for a good* used engine. Ouch.

 

Thank fuck it's not mine.

[RayMK]

1972: Riding my CZ 175 from Lincolnshire to Southampton to meet with a friend then set off for a camping holiday on our bikes.  In the evening, somewhere near Winchester, the CZ gradually began to lose power.  A few stops to check all the usual bits failed to find anything wrong, so I continued at an ever decreasing rate towards my destination.  Soon, 10mph was a struggle and an elderly couple on a tandem overtook.  Shortly afterwards, in the middle of nowhere and no 'phonebox in sight, the bike stopped, only able to tick over.  It was now dark.  I was well dressed for the trip and decided to lean the bike against a farm gate and have a kip until the morning.  Morning came and I pushed the bike a few miles to civilisation.  A phonecall to my friend got him on the way out to see what could be done.  I carried on investigating, eventually finding that the dynamo armature which also carried the points cam at the end of the crankshaft taper, could be waggled around 1/4 inch, making the points gap vary from nothing to a huge gap.  The cause was a fracture of the crankshaft  next to the location pin on the taper.  My friend arrived on his Honda SS125, and both being young and foolish/daring, we decided that he should tow me back to his place.  This was distinctly hairy but managed without falling off.  We then transferred all my camping gear to his SS125 and set off on a grossly overloaded bike to Wales.  One night's camping near Hereford made us feel brave and a bit meh about Wales, so we set off for Scotland and had a wonderful 10 days holiday based in Glen Nevis near Fort William.  His SS125 did not miss a beat.  My CZ was rebuilt with a new crank and soon after part exchanged it for a Reliant 3 wheeler: see next. 

 

Early 1970s on the way to work in my 1967 Reliant Regal.  Turned on to the A41 for the final few miles of commute, then a sudden, strong smell of petrol, followed almost immediately by a simultaneous pop and flash from under the engine cover.  I stopped as quickly as I could and my wife and I bailed out and retreated to a safe distance as the front of the car billowed black smoke.  Other motorists stopped and the A41 was blocked.  One brave soul rushed to the car with a fire extinguisher, but the bonnet is a lock and key job and was rather hot.  He tried directing the powder up under the car which had no effect on the fire.  An ambulance in the queue radio'd for the fire service.  As the car burnt, strange things happened.  First, the wipers came on, then the horn briefly sounded and the lights came on.  Firemen arrived very quickly from a  few miles down the road and extinguished the fire in time to save my tools from the boot.  Third party fire and theft settled quickly, enabling me to clear the hire purchase balance and put a deposit on a brand new Citroen 2cv6.  Traumatic, but a favourable ending!

 

About 10 years later, my Renault 12TS which I had had for several years suddenly lost power after a bang from the engine.  After getting it towed home and removing the head to investigate, an exhaust valve head was found broken off and embedded in a piston.  The bore was also damaged.  At 153,000 miles, I decided that it was beyond economic repair and bought a rusty Renault 20.

[xtriple]

Honda S800 is a car, lovely little thing.

 

Thought of a couple involving my second favourite make - Mercedes.

 

First one was a 123 saloon 230E auto in dark blue that I bought from a dodgy bloke in Plymouth (everyone in Plymouth is dodgy    ) with a bit of a rattle and no mot. I was busily sorting it for the MOT but still using it (I think it had a bit of ticket left) and driving back towards the garage for the re-test, lots of rattles, a few clanks, then it stopped. I had three dogs in the car and no leads, no mobile phone and no money. It was fun... Cam chain had snapped and did nearly all the valves. Cheapest place to get the parts was MB main dealer!

 

Dogs were sorted using my belt on one, trusting another and a bit of baler twine from a farm gate post for the third.

 

Other one was a 126 560SE that had a gearbox fault. I had the local gearbox specialist turn the internal pressure up a couple of times to keep it going while I flogged it, but liked the damn car so didn't and one night running three lasses around it dumped all its ATF out of the front oil seal which had cried 'surrender' under the extreme pressure... New gearbox for that one.

 

I knew someone (not me honest) whose Kawasaki Z650 ran a big end while we were out on a run ( a fast run at that) and fortunately that was stolen from the pub car park that night. It took hours to get the bastard to the carpark as well.... It was in a friends garage being stripped when 2 gentlemen of the law stopped by for a chat... they never noticed! They were also about 50 feet away from a set of 'Dymag' wheels that had been liberated from Silverstone circuit by a friend that just picked them up and walked off with them!

[danthecapriman]

I've never destroyed a car myself.

I have however absolutely annihilated a very large mobile generator set at work!

 

These things are big. The one I wasted was a 500kva set mounted to a big rigid truck chassis cab. It was a Scania V8 diesel engine powering it, we set it up to run a bit of the grid while we took out a substation for maintenance. For a little while it worked, then it began smoking a lot more than it should, we went to investigate but as we did it began it's death rattle, that awful metallic 'tinkling' sound!

I climbed up onto it to have a look wtf was wrong but as I did there was a huge bang, followed by the engine stopping and the sound of running water and metal dropping and rattling around, then a big cloud of smoke and steam.

I opened up the engine access hatch and found a rod through the block, one on each side of the block! They'd punched a huge lump of the block out, shards of which were on the floor of the generator set and it was pissing out oil and coolant. We had full on spill kits and all sorts out around this thing trying to stop all the fluids escaping down drains etc. On top of this the power was off to the entire area!

The worst thing was the generator and it's truck were only about 6 months old at the time but the damage was so bad the whole vehicle was left sat out of use for nearly a year while the company and manufacturer fought over whose fault it was. It must have cost a fortune!

[The_Equalizer]

My still current Land-Rover series 3 petrol. It was noisy when I bought it. Why I convinced myself it was okay at the time of purchase will remain one of those great mysteries, however, I managed to drive it for about three years without problem. That is, until one time I was driving back from the Mourne Mountains (by the Northern Irish border for those that don't know) to Belfast when it made an almighty racket. I turn the engine off, give it a minute's thought, and tried starting it again. Oddly the 'death rattle' disappeared as quickly as it had appeared so I drove back home without any further problems.

 

Fast forward at least another 1000 miles when I'd moved back to my parents' house in South London/Kent way. As I was 'resting' from employment I thought I'd rope my dad into looking into what was causing the noise. We took the head off and immediately saw a crack through the whole of number three piston. On dropping the sump, I then found lumps of metal. When the pistons came out half the skirt of number four was missing - the metal in the sump. The aforementioned noise must have been these bits of metal letting go and then dropping down. It transpired that the previous owner had had the head converted to unleaded and the garage had proceeded to fit the head gasket round the wrong way blocking some of the water ways at the rear. The temperature gauge is at the front of the block hence the rear half of the engine cooking itself without any sign on the temperature gauge. It wasn't some two-bit garage, but a well-known Land-Rover specialist. Anyway, Dad and I rebuilt the thing after Turner Engineering machined and honed the block. Pictures of the mess below including a couple of rebuild shots.

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest Hooli]

Just remembered my best one.

 

1976 T140v Triumph Bonnie..

 

Tanking it up the M1 at 85-90ish, heard a big bang & it got rough & slowed down a lot. Smoked a lot too and my mate following said it spat flames as it happened. Turned out the top edge at the back of the RH piston had snapped off, made a bit of a mess of the head etc. Ended up needing new pistons, rods, barrels, cams, followers etc - about £1,800 of parts.

 

[derskine]

Diff exploded on Volvo 360.

I was driving onto a roundabout when I heard a bang, no drive at all. 

A guy came to help but kept shouting put it in neutral (it was, the diff was just fucked). Eventually whatever was locking it freed off and we managed to push it out of the way.

 

I started the engine and tried to drive in the hope that it might - it did! I thought I would chance driving 10 minutes to the unit, where I could swap for my Volvo 340 instead. About 5 minutes in, doing about 40mph, I hear another bang, engine stalls and car coasts to a halt. This time it was royally fucked and Nisfan had to tow me to the unit.

 

Usually, changing a diff would be fairly easy. Not in a rear mounted gearbox Volvo though... 

 

Cam belt also snapped on Renault 18, coincidentally also whilst driving onto a roundabout.

[Vince70]

I really needed to buy an early mucked about with XR3 for £600 as I was young stupid and wanted a car which had an RS interior so I bought a smokey joe version of the car telling myself it needed valve stem oil seals and had most probably been owned by the local vicar lol.

I changed the oil or should I say sawdust and grease and afterwards I needed earplugs as the thing was knocking so bad but seeing that I spent the pot of money on insurance it just had to do till I saved up more money.

 

It knocked for about a month till one day I decided to open it up along a straight and then it locked up and a big hole appeared in the side of the block.

 

It wasn't all bad though as it was in the days that an XR3 engine could be bought at the bar of your local and apparently I got an engine out of a crash damaged 30000 mile example XR3i for £100 which most probably translates to someone just went out and liberated it from someone else's car.

 

On the plus side though the bodywork was absolutely spotless and the interior was immaculate but I had to sell it in the end as my car then started to become a target for car thieves.

 

My car was registered on 1st August 1981 so was really early car but my mate had one which was a very late C plate mk3 XR3i and it was just rust on wheels which he just couldn't sell but all he did was visit his family in Liverpool and it was stolen within 5 minutes of being parked up so at least he got the insurance money and the thief was quite generous as he left the fiver in change in the ashtray as he was in a hurry to dump it after a police chase.

[Supernaut]

I was driving onto a roundabout when I heard a bang, no drive at all. 

 

Cam belt also snapped on Renault 18, coincidentally also whilst driving onto a roundabout.

Ban roundabouts! My first 306 went bang while approaching a roundabout too.

[HMC]

Cornering hard ( is there any other way?) in a 2cv somehow the inner part of a driveshaft came adrift, flailed about causing carnage and then the front wheel locked, almost ended up going a long way down a rocky hillside, but fortune was favouring me and I lived to be recovered by the AA ( 400 miles!)