Blown Camry Engine - need suggestions

To be entirely fair, a fire, and smoke/steam. It could have been "just smoke". It could have been "just steam". It could have been some mixture of both. At that point in time, I didn't much give a damn what it

*REALLY* was - The only important thing was that it got in the way of clear vision until the wind blew it away.

Oh, and as to the fire: Once discovered, it was my *ABSOLUTE NUMBER ONE MAIN CONCERN*, since, as noted, I was making my seasonal move to "winter quarters". Which meant that almost literally everything I owned at the time was crammed into the car - clothing, books, computer, tools, cooking gear - basically, name something a 20-something year old semi-nomadic guy leaving the site of his job at the end of the season to return to what passed for his permanent residence might have, and it was probably shoehorned into that car somewhere. Needless to say, as I scrambled to get it put out (by scraping up as much snow and gravel from the shoulder as I could and heaving it into the engine bay) I was rather strongly motivated by visions of losing everything if I didn't manage to snuff it.

But Jim is so convinced he knows absolutely everything that he's probably going to call *THAT* a lie, too. That's OK, though. I know the reality, and if he doesn't like it... That's his problem, not mine.

That is pretty much confirms what I was saying - You don't know if it was smoke or steam. I can assure you that if there is any truth to where you claimed you saw the damage, then what was rolling out the engine compartment was steam not smoke. The hole you described was a hole in the water jacket and all of the engine's pressurized coolant was released in one instant.

If you are mistaken about the fire you wouldn't be the first person who thought that the engine was on fire when they saw massive amounts of steam rolling out. Lots of people have made that same mistake. But whether there was fire or not was beside the point. There is nothing in anything you said that indicated there was a thrown rod. The only physical damage you actually reported seeing is damage to the exterior shell of the water jacket.

-jim

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You are assuming BS and you are 100% wrong!

I have seen many holes blown in blocks that didn't puke out coolant.

So you just made up Lies to back your lack of knowledge solely to give him a hard time. That shows real character.

Sure there is, it freaking caught on fire! LOL! Coolant doesn't burn well, oil does.

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:

I read your story clearly about smoke/steam and a fire. If the coolant had of puked out, it wouldn't have burned. Oil burns.

Anyone who has to make up lies to back his imaginary BS just to give someone a hard time , well... liar and fool are maybe too nice of words....

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:

That means nothing. He described where the hole was. Just because you can't tell the difference between a hole in the water jacket and a hole in the crankcase doesn't mean no one can.

They only appear to be lies to you because you don't know what the inside of a block looks like.

-jim

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That is exactly right.

-jim

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ROTFLMAO!

Wow, foole is more the word now....

So who do we believe, the guy who blew a hole in his block and who said 'something' caught on fire which I for one have seen and had happen to me or the LIAR making up stories about mythical coolant that just 'must' have leaked to give him a hard time?

I will tell you one thing for sure, both times 'I' have tossed a rod out through a block, I had piles of smoke and one caught on fire just like Don's. It even steamed big time just like his did when I tossed snow on it.

Same for those other poor souls that drove their oil soaked 'holey' engine over to my place for an opinion. They must have miracle engines that didn't leak coolant also.

By now, I only have so much patience for Fooles....

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:

Yes you seem to begin to grasp the truth. His story doesn't add up. He did describe a huge hole in his water jacket in fairly accurate terms. It is is pretty hard to deny that. And then in the excitement of opening the hood to a huge cloud of steam maybe he thought he had a fire. Or maybe he didn't and he just made the fire up in an attempt make the story more interesting - who cares? The point is he didn't have the same kind of hole in his block as you did when you throw a rod. That much is pretty clear.

-jim

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Mythical coolant? Do you think his Honda Civic was air cooled? And it didn't just leak a little it suddenly left the engine through a basketball sized hole. He described the hole as being at the top of the block near the head. He said he could see the cylinders. Just because neither he or you know what he was describing doesn't change the fact that he was describing the inside of his engines water jacket.

Anything you have done proves nothing at all. He described exactly where the hole was located on his engine. Trust me if he has a hole near the top of the block and he can see inside the hole and see the #2 and #3 cylinders he has a massive hole in his water jacket. There is nothing he said that indicates a thrown rod. That was just a bad guess on his part.

Since you seem to wreck your engines so often, the next time you do that take a sledge hammer and knock a hole in the water jacket. Hit the block with the sledge hammer in the middle of the engine just below the head. If you make a hole where his hole was, you will be looking at something similar to what he was looking at. That is, you will be looking at the insides of the water jacket. Then maybe you will understand.

-jim

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Regardless of the level of excitement, I didn't "think" I had a fire. I

*KNOW*, with ABSOLUTELY NO ROOM WHATSOEVER FOR DOUBT, that I had a fire.

While I'm incapable of saying precisely *WHAT* was burning, I can say with absolute certainty that SOMETHING was. There was nothing in that engine bay that could have been mistakenly identified as fire by anyone with functioning vision - The entire engine bay was your classic melange of grimy black, brown, and grey that can be found under the hood of almost any "I don't give a damn whether it's pretty, as long as it gets me from point A to point B faster than walking" beater - The brightest color in the engine bay was the red and blue on the battery label, and that was nowhere near the brilliant orange/yellow flames that were crawling up the front side of the engine.

No doubt you'll claim to know otherwise, but I'm one of those people who tend toward excessively CALM in emergency situations that don't happen so suddenly that no reaction is possible. While it's in progress, it seems as though I "time shift", for lack of a better description - The entire event may only take 3-4 seconds of real-time, but while it's happening, I perceive the event with almost painful clarity in a sort of slow motion that, to me, seems very much like stepping through a film one frame at a time, with (subjectively) huge amounts of time between frames for me to decide what my next move should be. It isn't until AFTER the emergency that I flake out.

Now, having said that, I'll tuck you and this topic into the bozo-bin and call it a night. Your idiotic insistence that somehow, coming up on

20 years after the event, you, a person (and I use that term loosely) I've never knowingly encountered in any way, know better than I, the person who was standing there on the side of the road looking at it, what the reality was, has earned you a solid place in the "Too stupid to bother conversing with any further" category. Have a life.

You know if you had an ounce of intelligence you would realize that the fire is not the thing that is most unbelievable in your story.

OK so let's say you had a fire. As someone else has already observed if you had a fire that means you didn't have antifreeze spewed all over the place. And that means there was no hole in your block the size of a basketball up near the head that you could look inside and see the #2 and #3 cylinders. The fire makes that part of the story completely unbelievable. And now you have nothing left that is believable in your story except a fire.

You probably saw the engine with the big hole in the block at the junk yard when you junked your fire damaged car and decided that would be a nice addition to your story.

-jim

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You can't possibly know whether there was a "sudden release of the entire contents of the cooling system" preceding the fire that Don speaks about.

Again, you have no way of knowing the order of events.

Interesting, yet...

Nope, those recalls have nothing to do with "cruise control." They were to replace heater hoses that were leaking and spraying coolant which resulted in underhood fires, the coolant being the flammable component.

The heater hoses are nowhere near the cruise control, it's linkage or anything else related to the cruise control on the effected E-350 van chassis. In 89 and 90, I performed probably between 12 and 15 of these recalls while employed at a Ford-Mercury dealership.

What switch? There was no switch involved.

You are apparently under the misconception that coolant will not burn.

I'd like to know where one locates a basketball sized hole in the engine block of a honda civic that doesn't cause the contents of the cooling system to spew forth. :)

The sad fact is you could probably win in small claims court. So many unqualified shops have ripped off so many people that most small claims courts almost automatically award to the customer, regardless of the facts. Small claims courts can be a joke: rarely a qualified judge, usually a well connected failed lawyer who is too nervous to steal and to lazy to earn an honest buck. Ben

I'd like to know how one determines whether that was the only cause of the/a coolant leak or the result or if it's incidental.

Bottom line, Jim thinks coolant doesn't burn, a 20 year old Ford recall says otherwise.

Sure your absolutely right, I don't know if anything he said was true. He could have been lying when he described the basketball size hole in the side of the water jacket. But if I suppose that he wasn't lying then the antifreeze had to have drenched everything.

I agree. It is impossible for anyone to rely on what he said. But I guess you are trying to say that his antifreeze burst into flame after the hood was open when the oxygen was allowed in?

So you think he had an antifreeze fire? I only read a one sentence summary. It mentioned fire but didn't give the slightest hint that antifreeze was what was suspected to be burning.

Really? I guess the NHTSA must have got it wrong then.

The report I read said the repair was to reroute the heater hose. And you believe that this was done to prevent an antifreeze fire?

Just telling you what I read based on a search of the numbers you gave. And yes it was an ford e30 and the short description said the switch was what caused the fires. They didn't provide a detailed explanation of the chain of events but it involved a antifreeze from a heater hose getting onto the speed control linkage.

It sounded like Ford may have voluntarily moved the heater hose to address a problem with fires. Later, Ford was eventually forced to recall every vehicle that was made with cruise control for something like a 12 year period. This was years after the heater hose thing when the fires kept happening. A suspicious person might guess Ford was trying to claim that the antifreeze was what caught on fire because moving the hose was a very easy fix compared to the real cause of the fires. I can't see how Fords recall proves that any vehicle ever had its antifreeze catch on fire. Ask a fireman who has seen thousands of cars spill there antifreeze in car crashes if they have ever seen one where the antifreeze caught on fire.

If you think it was his antifreeze burning then why do you argue there was no antifreeze spilled. You argued that there was no antifreeze involved because even you don't believe his antifreeze was on fire. Even he doesn't believe his antifreeze was on fire. Nobody believes his antifreeze caught fire, but that is what it comes down to if you want to accept this story as the truth you have to believe in burning antifreeze. And even if after you indulge in the silliness of burning antifreeze you still have no evidence that his engine had a thrown rod. What reason would there be to think that just because the side of his water jacket blew out and the spilled antifreeze caught on fire that anything bad had happened to any of the rods?

-jim

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Not to mention all the Fieros that fried because of coolant fires. Ben

Oh really. The Fiero had a reputation for catching fire but I never heard of them having "coolant fires". But then that wouldn't be the first tall tale I've heard about the Fiero.

Ethylene glycol in its pure form is just barely flammable. It requires very high temperatures to ignite and it doesn't burn very well. Mixed with water it is essentially not flammable. Beer is probably more flammable than antifreeze. If you spray a small amount of coolant onto an extremely hot surface (like a catalytic converter) it will evaporate all the water and then what's left might ignite. But if you dump a large amount of coolant on the exhaust it isn't going to ignite it will just make a lot of steam and the steam has a lot to do with why there is no fire. But let's suppose he did blow out the side wall of the water jacket and lets suppose the antifreeze did catch on fire. That still doesn't mean he had a thrown rod. Nothing in that story indicates a rod broke. The fact that the engine was still running afterwards suggests that it is unlikely that it threw a rod and much more likely the rods all remained attached. It sounds more like he just severely overheated the engine and that cracked the block in a big way.

-jim

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There were a number of documented ways early fieros could catch fire. My guess is what he was refering to was the connecting rod failure that would puncture the block and send hot oil out that would in turn start a fire. I forget if it was hot enough to catch something else on fire or simply would end up on the exhaust manifold and burn on its own and spread the fire.