Near as I could tell, it was the oil/road-dust "gunk" that collects on older engines.
You can believe it or not, as you like. Regardless of your (dis)belief, it's fact. Same as it's fact that I managed to limp the thing into Grayling, and actually collected 50 bucks for it from the junkyard, simply because it rolled in under its own power.
That was the same thing that was set off the BS alarm for me on the story. I helped replace an engine in a car that had an outright casting failure in the block. Some tiny subcompact. Of course that hole was much smaller, more the size of an old silver dollar or so as I remember. (badly designed mounting boss without sufficent rounds and ribs. it cracked around the boss and where the boss was became a hole) It just let the oil out of the engine, it didn't actually cause any parts to come unglued.
If the engine in the car in question was turning at lesst than 5K at minimum I'd be shocked. I just don't see parts flying out of the engine and on to the street at anything lower than that.
A smaller hammer hooked up to a cycling machine wacking it several times a second until it breaks :)
The problem is, an idiot was driving the car. It could be the idiot tried to drive a camry with an 8000rpm engine speed, or something did break under normal driving that the idiot then decided to push it so it became catastropic. Rod starts knocking, power goes down, so moron puts his right foot to the floor just to drive 45mph. Meanwhile the casting is getting hammered several times a second or something just plain jams and something just has to give. Any way I slice it, there had to be some stupid driving done.
On 2008-10-03, Don Bruder wrote:>
You were at expressway speeds, not 200 yards from the shop on an around the block drive. It makes a big difference when something decides to jam up how much momentum is there to force it through the block. I still don't see how an engine block can have a basketball sized hole (when the engine block isn't that much bigger than a basketball volume wise) caused by something trying to exit it and then still idle let alone limp to the salvage yard. I suppose if the jamming part broke off clean it might not cause intereference. But on a little transverse 4 cylinder, a basketball sized hole in the block is like half the block gone.
Which was just about what it looked like - up toward the head end of things, most of the #2 and #3 cylinders were open to daylight, and down toward the oil pan, if the steam/smoke were gone, you'd likely be able to look in and see the crank. The steam/smoke kept me from being able to see for sure if I'd busted a rod, like I expect was probably the case, and it was too damn hot for me to even consider sticking my hand in and groping around to find out.
It idled (if you can call it that) rough before I shut it down, and restarting it was difficult (to put it mildly), but eventually, with much cranking, pumping the gas, and utterance of more than a few words of a slightly less-than-polite nature, it fired, sounding like an asthmatic lawn-mower trying to mate with a trip-hammer. Made it into town at a whopping 10-15 MPH by keeping my foot on the floor, playing with the gears (mostly second and third, though I did take advantage of a downhill to punch fourth for a short time) to keep moving, and cussing a lot. Eventually arrived in the junkyard chased by a cloud of smoke that looked thick enough to drive a nail and hang your hat on.
Yeah you take a chunk the size of a basketball out of that size engine your not just talking crankcase wall but a large cross-section cutting into several cylinders and the water jacket. Now if he had said something seized and took out half the bell housing. That might leave a pretty big hole, but the block just doesn't have a wall section that is anywhere near that big.
Yeah it sort of conjures up the image of some guy with most of his head blown off saying he has a headache.
-jim
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Likely you would be able to look in???? You mean you forgot to look?
And what were the pistons doing in the cylinders that you could see inside of? Can't wait to hear your story about that.
-jim
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I don`t really have any input on the automotive part of this as these guys know their stuff way more than me..But this might be a good question for the misc.legal newsgroup. I`ve always gotten lots of great legal advice off there.
Couldn't get an angle to actually look into the crankcase - Radiator, fan shroud, and the various other stuff that's at the front of a car's engine bay is tough to see through, and if I remember right, my X-ray specs were packed up in a box in the back end of the car.
What I could see of them through the steam and smoke, it looked like they were just sort of sitting there. Should they have been doing anything in particular? Maybe dancing a tango, or some such?
Look, Jim, facts are facts. You may not believe them, you may not like them, but the reality is this: The engine broke - BAD. It did so while the car was rolling down the freeway turning something in the neighborhood of 2500 RPM. The resulting hole in the side of the block would have passed a basketball with little or no difficulty. It ripped open the #2 and #3 cylinders. Despite that, SOMEHOW the #1 and #4 cylinders were (barely) able to drag me to an actual town, instead of leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere with a good old-fashioned northern Michigan snowstorm tuning up to become a blizzard. Yeah, the car ran like a crippled piece of shit. But whether you care to believe it or not, it *DID* run long enough to get me someplace out of the weather, and amazed me beyond words by actually managing to drag itself to the junkyard under its own power.
So you actually didn't see this hole the size of basketball? It's interesting that the fan shroud survived the explosion that took out half the engine.
If the con rod had gone flying out of the engine then at least one of the pistons should have dropped down and been ground up by the crank. But more importantly you have two cylinders that are just sucking air from the outside. You can't create that big a vacuum leak and expect the engine to run. The piston rings need to be contained by the cylinder walls - they aren't going to play nice when part of the cylinders is composed of broken shards.
Really how did facts get to be facts. Even if you yourself believe your story that doesn't make it factual. You think that by adding little irrelevant details like the Grayling Burger King that makes the story more believable. But it is the details that make it unbelievable. Take the fire, for instance. There is nothing in your story that would cause a fire to ignite. what you have in your story is a sudden catastrophic loss of the entire contents of the engines cooling system into the engine compartment, creating a huge cloud of steam and soaking everything with antifreeze. The fire in your story, under those conditions, is as much a miracle as having the engine still running.
Well if the story had been "I was driving and the engine broke" - I would have believed that. Engines do break.
This got me thinking about 30 years ago a guy was telling me about a Vega where the whole side wall of the coolant passages blew out on an engine when it over-heated. This left a big gaping hole in the side of the casting that allowed you to view parts of the casting that no one normally gets to see. He said that you could tell that due to core shift the wall had been cast way to thin and that is why it blew out.
-jim
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It is not so stupid if you are able to convince the owner of the car that what happened was just "bad luck". If you can get the owner of the car to buy that argument, then that means you can do pretty much anything you want to the car. Drive it over curbs, take corners on two wheels or wind the engine up as high as it will go. Anything that might break is going to be just "bad luck" and sometimes even good luck for the owner of the shop when it gets to make the needed repairs.
-jim
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If the con rod had gone flying out of the engine then at least one of the pistons should have dropped down and been ground up by the crank. But more importantly you have two cylinders that are just sucking air from the outside. You can't create that big a vacuum leak and expect the engine to run. The piston rings need to be contained by the cylinder walls - they aren't going to play nice when part of the cylinders is composed of broken shards.
Even if you believe your own story that doesn't make it factual. You think that adding little irrelevant details like the Grayling Burger King makes the story more believable. But it is the details that make it unbelievable. ______________________________________________________
My favorite detail was the ten-mile drive to the junk yard with a blown engine.
Rodan.
Heh, I have seen that done more than once... Have had more than one come driving to my place wanting an opinion on the big hole too. Have even seen liquid aluminum used, with success mind you, on more than one hole too....
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 'New' frame in the works for '08. Some Canadian Bush Trip and Build Photos:
Heh certainly! That would have made a so much better story. Instead of driving it to the junk yard - he could have driven it home and rebuilt the half of the engine that was missing with liquid aluminum. And could have said the repair has held up for 200k miles so far. Yup nobody would have doubted that one.
-jim
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Since it's clear you know better than I do what the situation really was, I'll give you the "win" on this one, hand you the "don't bother me with facts, my mind is made up" award, and walk away.
By the way - would you mind telling me what the winning numbers are going to be for the lotto drawing tonight? That should be child's play for someone omniscient like you apparently are.
Have a day...
Don Bruder wrote:
Some of your "facts" made sense others were clearly fabricated. For instance the fire in your story was clearly a fabrication. The oil/road dust gunk on the engine doesn't spontaneously ignite after being drenched in coolant. If you hadn't included that obvious embellishment the rest of your story might possibly fit with what is possible in the real world. But since you chose to add that from your imagination rather than from reality it's impossible to tell how much else was also added for effect. There is not much fact in your story anyway - it is mostly your own conclusions and embellishments. There is no good reason to believe that you had an engine that threw a rod even if we believe what you report you saw. You arrived at the conclusion that you would be able to see inside the crankcase if nothing had obstructed your view. That was by your own admission just a guess on your part. You even said you could have reached inside, but you didn't - you chose to just guess that would be possible. But yet you want others to accept as fact that the crankcase was damaged based on your guesses. It seems likely that if anything at all was factual about your story it was that a large portion of the outer wall of the water jacket on the front side of your engine had for some reason become separated from the engine. That means the mechanical parts of the engine would all still be intact and that would explain why the engine was still running despite a large piece of casting was missing. Driving 10 miles without coolant in cold weather is not impossible. The engine might have been running rough simply because the antifreeze had soaked the electrical system or the air filter. There is no reason to believe that the engine was running on cylinders 1 and 4 other than you let your imagination get carried away and guessed that was what was happening.
-jim
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Please review the following Ford Recalls;
89V075000 89V139000 89V150000You're not as smart as you think you are.
Wow, what a fool 'and' a liar no less.
He had a big hole puking 'oil' all over the place which 'does' catch on fire when it hits the hot exhaust or other hot parts.
He made no mention of antifreeze or coolant leaking.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 'New' frame in the works for '08. Some Canadian Bush Trip and Build Photos:
Most fires need both fuel and air to burn. When the engine compartment is soaked with a sudden release of the entire contents of the cooling system very little can burn. Assuming we can believe the part about the huge cloud of steam that was released when he opened the hood it is a pretty safe bet that even if the grease on the engine had somehow managed to stay dry and somehow managed to catch fire as he says it did that the steam which was displacing all the oxygen would have smothered the fire.
I wasn't able to find any detailed explanation of the recalls you refer to. As near as I can figure out those recalls are about a ford cruise control switch. Apparently leaking antifreeze on the cruise control linkage eventually led to some of the fires in this switch. Maybe you could explain how you think these recalls are relevant to the current discussion.
-jim
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No he actually you have it exactly backwards. He made no mention of oil all over the place. The part of the casting he said he could see contains antifreeze not oil. So if you believe what he said he saw there is no doubt that antifreeze was everywhere. The part of the engine that contains the oil he said he could not see and he admitted he was only guessing that there was damage down there.
-jim
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I will repeat, you are a Liar and Fool, there, better order?
I have read everything he wrote and you are a liar, and a fool for thinking the rest of us can't read. He never mentioned coolant, he mentioned a fire and smoke.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 'New' frame in the works for '08. Some Canadian Bush Trip and Build Photos:MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.