Engine gone boom + smoke, yippee!

[flyingtele]

So the old engine in my car finally gave up today, all of a sudden while on the open road started to detonate wildly and started pinging, then followed by loss of power and a strange metallic tapping sound from the engine lol. Pulled over and engine died, and upon inspection it had smoke streaming from any hole, and it had blown the dipstick out of its hole. So I'm assuming that the ringlands in one of the pistons at least are pretty smashed up. Car can be started when cold and driven but the det and pinking gets worse as it warms up. Incidentally, I did an error code check and it came back with error code 43 which turns out to be "STA    No starter signal over 800 RPM starting"

It comes as no major surprise, and I had already started planning a motor swap, using the bottom end of the motor from my donor car, and a head that has recently been re-cond and fitted with hks cams and performance springs. So now I have all the motivation I need to pull finger and make a start lol. Will post my progress.

[Jeff]

Wish I had the bottle to thrash mine to pieces!!!!!
i HAOPE YOU WERE PRE-PREPARED )WOOPS CAPS LOCK( Off
Not to worry then....need any bits? postage will be a problem in the UK as the daft fookers are on strike!!!

[flyingtele]

Hi Jeff, no thanks, Im pretty good for parts and other bits lol. got a whole other car for parts on blocks in the drive

[Driveby]

Good luck with the swap mate, at least youll have nice weather for it 

[silverspeed]

yup could be worse.. could be cold and raining.   

[Chris_de_Bear]

If it were me I'd want to know why it suddenly started detting as it's most likely a control system failure - otherwise the new engine will last minutes at most.

If it went that quick & blew the dipstick right out it's quite possibly a melted piston.

[flyingtele]

Yeah, if I let the engine cool down a bit it would start and drive okay, and start pinging lots as it warmed up. The ECU threw error code 43 IIRC. The engine has always run rather rough with much lower power output than it should have, so thats why I am not overly surprised, and also because I knew of the engines condition thats the main reason I bought the donor car, which has turned out to be very handy for all sorts of bits n pieces.
The fueling system on the donor is in much better condition, and if you remove the oil cap while its running it will chug out and die, as its just causing a big air leak via the pcv. But the engine in my car that just died had no change when the oil cap was removed. I also did a compression test and all cyls were within ~5 psi of each other.
And what sort of power is the factory clutch good for? If its in good condition then I might keep it, but i would like to replace it with a puk clutch.

[Coyoteboy]

Mines perfectly healthy and it doesnt chug out and die when the oil cap is removed, that would suggest it's running a bit unhealthily to start with to me. Mine dips slightly in revs but is fine otherwise. Im not sure its a good indicator of much TBH.

[flyingtele]

yeah, its by no means a way to indicate if the engine is good or bad lol, i just stated it more as an observation. Just out of interest, is your car still using the afm or is it using a map sensor?

But still, I didnt mean for it to sound like its an indicator of good or bad, but it is still a good sign. Also, whenever i removed the plugs from my old engine they were always black and fouled, the new motor has nice clean plugs with a light brown colour on the insulator, which is a better indicator that its in a better state of tune

I will be removing the head before I remove the block. The heads off both engines are coming off anyway, as my current engine has arp studs that I want to use again. And I have another head that i will be using. Also, it will make removing the engine far easier.