Engine Blow-Ups

[lynx42]

Some of us have had the misfortune to have an engine destroy itself. BUT none as bad as this one. Can you imagine the noise when the bolt let go.

Maybe we can share some stories about our misfortunes. (I've had a couple.)

Regards Rick

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by lynx42

Some of us have had the misfortune to have an engine destroy itself. BUT none as bad as this one. Can you imagine the noise when the bolt let go.

Maybe we can share some stories about our misfortunes. (I've had a couple.)

Regards Rick

Hi Rick,
That would have been a big bang!

I have dealt with a good number of destroyed engines in my time. Most numerous was the Jaguar 4.2 engines in the CVR armoured vehicles. Many is the time I have seen a big part of the lower crankcase missing as a rod had departed. I rebuilt a few large AEC diesels where this happened and the blocks were rewelded and linered after a rod had broken.

cheers Richard

[Lynn Eades]

On a much smaller scale than a ship, I remember a VW generator.
We (the N.Z Army) inherited them from either the British or Australian Army, when they pulled out from Singapore around 1974 - 76.
The unit was a hand crank arrangement with a Scintilla magneto. (5 kva?)
I can't even remember if it was a 1500 or 1600 cc.
If I recall they ran governed at 3600 rpm. (at night the complete exhaust system became incandescent and could be seen for miles.
Anyhow because they were so noisy, they were sited as far away as possible, from the camp.
On this particular night with no EME pers. around, this one consumed its oil and ran a big end.The infantry lads finally noticed the "knock". They left it running though because they still had lights in camp. I was called in from another camp to check it out. I shut it down immediately. It had been sitting on governed revs until then.
Back at the workshop when I pulled it down, one of the con rod eyes had amazingly stretched to a rough circle about 7 inches in diameter.
The damage was so bad that there was nearly nothing left of that engine.
It was either number two or number three cylinder that failed. The journal had rubbed off about 1/4" off one side, and the heat mark (blue) had gone down the other end of the crank.
That conrod had smashed the skirt off the opposite piston and carved a track through both halves of the crank case, along with the bottoms of both barrels. I have to this day never seen a conrod do that, to that extent, or seen so much damage in a motor that had to be physically shut down.

Rick, I made the assumption that that is from a ship engine.
Richard, there must have been a lot of Jag engines blowing up at one time. Our little army went through it's share of them.

[motto]

The airline I worked for had Hobart Ground Power Units (GPUs) to provide electrical power to the aircraft when on the ground for any length of time. They were powered by six cylinder Cummins diesels that ran at fairly high revs for many hours at a time.
One night when we were about to go home the steady, constant drone of the GPU just outside the hangar suddenly developed an accompanying knocking sound that rapidly got louder until there was a very loud bang followed by silence.
We went down to have a look and couldn't help noticing the large pool of oil underneath the unit with a liberal amount of engine fragments scattered about in it. We released the hand brake and rolled the vehicle aside to have a closer look at the debris and were surprised to see a con-rod bent into a U shape laying there. The puzzling part was that the gudgeon pin was still in-situ, through the small end. I guess that the piston must have completely broken up.

David

[Keith Webb]

I've seen some flathead V8s and also a couple of Chevs with this problem. I can remember going to look at a Ford blitz once and commenting to the owner it looked like a good buy for what he paid - then he said go and have a look underneath the engine... sure enough it was totally wrecked.

Here's a good example of a failure on a 216 engine:

[Richard Farrant]

David,
Thinking on about your generator story, the army had some new trailer mounted gen sets with automatic monitoring systems. This particular one was about 30Kva and powered by a Perkins V8 with the inline injection pump in the valley. It came in to workshops with the pump broken and laying at a strange angle, seems a rod had detached from the piston and gone straight through the cylinder wall in to the pump. Investigations found that this pump did not have a mechanical governer, but it had an electronic one, and it failed. So much for technology.

The more I think, the more instances I can now recollect.