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.

[Lynn Eades]

Richard, those motors we good at throwing the front pulley off.

[Richard Farrant]

Originally Posted by Lynn Eades

Richard, those motors we good at throwing the front pulley off.

Never come across that problem on those engines. Had a Perkins 6.354 throw No.6 rod through the side once, crank was seized and unable to remove the engine from the torque convertor as it could not be turned. It was in a loading shovel and not easy to get the sump off as I recall.

[Lynn Eades]

I recall 3 of them doing it.
I was working for Heatons transport. Apart from a few TM Bedfords, the fleet was all Leylands.

[Barry Churcher]

Just last week we had a lady tow her car in for repair. She indicated that the oil light had been flashing the day before but the car ran okay. She told her husband and he told her to take the van to work the next day. Because the van is harder on fuel she drove the Toyota to work in Toronto with the flashing oil light. Driving along at 120 km per hour it started to loose power and then there was sudden shaking vibration and it quit. She said something hot and smoking fell out on the road. Investigation revealed a grapefruit sized hole in the front of the block. When we put the car on the hoist we could see the same size hole on the rear and the broken starter hanging by the battery cable. The plastic shrouding under the car had a big melted hole where a chunk of the connecting rod had gone through.She figured we had done something wrong on the last oil change but when I showed her the oil change sticker with the date and mileage she got a little sheepish.
Checking the oil seemed a strange concept to her and something to be left for us wrench monkeys at the garage.

[rob love]

I was cruising at 60 mph in my M151a2 when suddenly everything started to shake and the transmission jumped out of gear. I pulled over, uncertain what had happened. Everything seemed OK, so I took off slowly and headed to the shop, which fortunately was only about 4 miles away.

Once in the shop, I started to look for what happened, thinking it was in the transmission. That was when I noticed that the flywheel would kind of flop around in the bellhousing. I dropped the pan to find that the crankshaft had broken just after the #4 cylinder, but had broken in such a way that the front part of the crank was still pushing the back half of the crank. With only one bearing supporting the back half, it was a little rough though.

M151 engines came out quickly....I spent the next 45 minutes pulling the pack, caught a ride home from one of the guys, and returned with another engine (I had plenty, I bought 30 of the mutts for salvage), and had it out of the shop by lunch.

[Bob McNeill]

We are currently having dramas with a chinese copy of a 248 cube Perkins, Owner complained of oil lite flashing and dealer said it,s a faulty sender and sent a new one. Problem loader frame prevents removal of sender and actually touches terminals. [cure is to cut 50mm hole in frame ] Owner goes plowing with lite on and under full power several hours later motor self destructs. Reason, the idler from crank to balance weights AND oil pump has a 6mm bolt holding the gear in place. Bolt sheared off. Perkins genuine has bush located INTO housing and locked in by 1/2 UNF bolt. Dealer now has 3 out of 4 tractors fail as has his business, and factory supplied fan to flywheel units require a modification similar to Perkins, but at owners cost. By the way these tractors are a lovely LEMON colour.

[ozm29c]

Attached is a photo of what remained of my Toyota Landcruiser 80 series 1HDT big end bearings. The rest of the bearings were in the sump in tiny pieces. I managed to catch the engine before # 2 and 5 conrods disintegrated. Believe me this engine failure happened in seconds, all was fine then a loud knock knock knock and stop. I was towing my horse float with horses aboard.
I purchased this vehicle years ago second hand unaware that it had not been returned to Toyota in its warranty period to have the bigend bearings replaced.
Apparently 1HDT engines are still prone to bigend bearing problems.
Cheers
John W.

[Phil Waterman]

Hi All

Interesting reading about various violent deaths of engines. I once grenaded engine in my 1969 Jeep plow truck it was equipped with Buick 350 V8, plowing along in deep snow 1st gear, low range when all of a sudden a very loud bang, then near total silence. Only the faint ticking of hot metal.

Turn key to try and restart, hoping it was just a loud backfire, nothing. Open the hood the wrist pin and top half of the connecting rod were laying on one frame rail while on the other side the bottom of the connecting rod was sitting on the other frame rail. A large puddle of oil and antifreeze was forming on the ground under the truck.

When we drag the critter in shop and after stripping the engine of all accessories to be installed on the replacement and engine. Pulling the engine then revealed the full extent of the damage :

• Hole big enough look through from one side to the other.
• Two inch slice cut out of the oil pan under number one cylinder
• When the distributor was pulled as a possible spare the drive gear had been smashed off.
• The cam shaft was broken into four pieces.
• Camshaft timing gear was smashed.
• Number one piston was missing, nothing but little bits of aluminum.

What I surmise happened was that a valve on the number one cylinder had stayed open the following collision with the piston was catastrophic, resulting in the piston disintegrating. Which was followed by the wrist pin and connecting rod making one or more revolutions acting as a sledge hammer on the inside of the engine. Before leaving the engine a low velocity.

The picture which I just took is of the two bits of that engine that I set on the shelf in garage as mementos.

Cheer Phil

The Jeep went on to plow for many more years with a junkyard engine replacement. In fact it was in use up until two or three years ago.

[Lynn Eades]

John W., I have heard those motors should get new shells every 100,000.
Apparently they have some inherent crankshaft vibration. It seems they are known to fail at one particular big end.
A fellow mechanic was telling me about it. I have no first hand knowledge.

[Phil Waterman]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_8Fc9qAZcw

It speaks for itself

Cheers Phil

[David DeWeese]

Hi,

Found this one tonight...not a failure, but can't believe it didn't....gave me the shivers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M1o2rpO_JY

Thanks, David

[Lynn Eades]

Detroit! Running on it's own oil (sucked through the blower seals?)
She has an emergency stop on that inlet.