MySwag.org The Off-road Camper Trailer Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: kalex on July 19, 2013, 08:39:34 AM
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Just wondering how many of you have had vehicles that have experienced non fixable engine failures at lowish km's, ie under 100,000km?
I recently had to put a new engine in my wifes '08 Ford Focus Diesel with 97,000km on it. I have owned it for 2 years and it has a full service history. Mechanics said the bearings were gone due to no oil pressure. Ford agreed and wanted $9000 for a new engine >:( Ended up with a engine with 40,000 on it for $2600.
It seems that engine failures are becoming more common these days and very costly.
Have you experienced similar?
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I have been told that car manufacturers no longer notch the crank bearings, so they can slowly rotate in their journal..blocking the oil hole. (I am not a mechanic so if I am using incorrect terminology I apologise).
The motor I am referring to is a 2.7ltr diesel found in a good number of different brands. For the quantity of these engines in use, the failure rate is incredibly small however if its your $40K car that has a shagged engine, you would be pretty annoyed laying out another $10k on a long motor...as you cant buy replacement bearings, genuine ones at least.
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I have been told that car manufacturers no longer notch the crank bearings, so they can slowly rotate in their journal..blocking the oil hole.
Never heard of that but have been out of the engine game for about 5 years now.FYI they're called locating tangs
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A 2000 model Landcruiser with only 136,000 on the clock. New recon motor and air conditioner total $11,000. The mechanics are stumped why it went.
Mark
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2004 model petrol rodeo, used no oil up to 80k service, after service used 5 litres per week >:(
GMH sealed and monitored oil use for 1 month then replaced the motor, diagnosis was mechanic/apprentice/someone used transmission fluid in the engine at the service as the engine was noisy when I picked it up after the service.
I went back in to comment and the just said "yeah, it's got lots of valves, it's going to be noisy"
Dickheads.
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You're always going to get a percentage of failures in engines.....even for high quality "name" brands...
All components are prone to failure, although the better quality engines are less likely..
That's of course if the engine hasn't got known inherent problems ( like the Patrol 3 ltr time bomb ).............
If you're lucky, and your engine has a weak link ( or part ), it fails while it's still under warranty !
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As fish finder said there called tangs, but should the motor be machined correctly and the bearings made correctly they are not needed. The slipper bearings are made with "crush" which will hold them correctly and stop spinning. You should never rely on the tang to prevent a bearing from spinning. i have seen a lot of motors with "spun" bearings that have had "tangs" .
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We are asking too much of our modern diesel engines. If you think back before common rail diesels they lasted forever unless you skimped on the servicing.
The 3L (2.8diesel) fitted to hilux was a classic. Leave it stock, oil filter every 5k and the thing would last forever. Skimp on the oil or put a turbo on and boom chicka chicka.
Our obsession with wanting a diesel for super economy but as fast as a petrol is biting us on our butts.
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We are asking too much of our modern diesel engines. If you think back before common rail diesels they lasted forever unless you skimped on the servicing.
The 3L (2.8diesel) fitted to hilux was a classic. Leave it stock, oil filter every 5k and the thing would last forever. Skimp on the oil or put a turbo on and boom chicka chicka.
Our obsession with wanting a diesel for super economy but as fast as a petrol is biting us on our butts.
I reacon youve got it in one. There making smaller capacity engines but dragging double the power out of them. Also usually they have smaller filters and smaller oil capacity.
It will be a worrying time for anyone buying second hand diesels.
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And heaven save you if you overheat a modern engine, pretty much assign it to death.
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We are asking too much of our modern diesel engines. If you think back before common rail diesels they lasted forever unless you skimped on the servicing.
The 3L (2.8diesel) fitted to hilux was a classic. Leave it stock, oil filter every 5k and the thing would last forever. Skimp on the oil or put a turbo on and boom chicka chicka.
Our obsession with wanting a diesel for super economy but as fast as a petrol is biting us on our butts.
Yeah I agree with the exception of the turbo, many Diesel engines have lasted lifetimes with blowers on them. Just need to be well built.
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It will be a worrying time for anyone buying second hand diesels.
Which why my Monterey is a petrol engine, although the turbo diesels are reliable, provided they have been rigorously maintained.
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Which why my Monterey is a petrol engine, although the turbo diesels are reliable, provided they have been rigorously maintained.
Funny that - the Jackaroo was the first of the real intro to high performance diesels. They were a sweet powerplant but as you say, turned turtle when given a sniff of the wrong grade of oil.
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Yeah the pins oval out if you are not on top of changes, but they are solid ours will probably hit 300k soon. I always thought the izuzu V6 a POS would crack heads very easily. But here seems to be some who have had excellent runs.
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It wont be the first time I have reard of an engine blowing up, and then finding out that the engine was run without oil, the owner knot being told.
One instance the engine bung had not been fitted, new oil added, taken for a test drive. The survo then tried to cover up the mistake and blame unknower causes.
I heard a story only recently of a rather large mining dump truck this was done to, when it shut down on the shutdown system it was then over riden to start, $500,000 later fixed.
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After the Focus failure, it is making me rethink any further diesel purchases. Even only using 5.8l/100km it takes a long time to recoup from putting a new engine in.
All up the new engine cost me more than my 4wd is worth ('95 Discovery V8) >:(
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There's a D4D Prado currently having an engine rebuild in Kununurra, 100,000 klms $18K.
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There's a D4D Prado currently having an engine rebuild in Kununurra, 100,000 klms $18K.
$18,000 ??? ??? ???
Is that just the engine or was there more involved?
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There's a D4D Prado currently having an engine rebuild in Kununurra, 100,000 klms $18K.
But there are only 4 cylinders....... ??? ???
I like my OLD SCHOOL.....
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$18,000 ??? ??? ???
Is that just the engine or was there more involved?
Long motor, turbo & WA Tax
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People are saying low kilometres, which is a fair comment I guess, but Brad, the owner of Kununurra Diesel Service (yes he is a mate and I would promote his busness unashamedly), told me that every km in my vehicle is worth about 5 km in a city vehicle, as our roads are unforgiving. I guess I wpould wonder what I would therefore conside to be low km's.
Tjupurula
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Yeah I agree with the exception of the turbo, many Diesel engines have lasted lifetimes with blowers on them. Just need to be well built.
I meant aftermarket turbo.
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I've seen a few engines at the drags fail with very little "miles" on 'em.
Always a good look with the rods punching windows into the cylinder block and a sump full o' lumps.
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Always a good look with the rods punching windows into the cylinder block and a sump full o' lumps.
PCV ???...... ;D ;D ;D
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But there are only 4 cylinders....... ??? ???
I like my OLD SCHOOL.....
I come from the same school ;D
GG
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I've seen a few engines at the drags fail with very little "miles" on 'em.
Always a good look with the rods punching windows into the cylinder block and a sump full o' lumps.
Seen that once or twice too.
Shane.
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Young bloke next door to work had a Mazda 7 something junk a turbo real early. Whilst searching for another turbo he found one that was only 35k and junked a turbo and engine.
Saw a Nissan Xtrail, (I think that's what it was) spin a bearing at a little over 100k. Replaced crank, rod and bearings, only to window the block 20k later.
But all in all, when I started as an Engine Reconditioner 20+ years ago, we were reco'ing about 8-10 cylinder heads per day for the local workshops. Only 1 dealership, the rest were small shops. Most workshops today would be lucky to R&R a cylinder head a month, with a lot refusing to do engine work. Engine Reconditioning shops are scarce now and the ones who don't specialise in heavy diesel, are mostly struggling. It's a dying trade due to the modern engine.
As for no locating tangs in modern engines, correct. They don't stop the bearing from spining in the rod. The cap crush on the bearing does that. The tangs primary purpose (as far as I believe) was to make the installation idiot proof for the unskilled worker sitting bearings into rods and blocks, shift after shift after shift. No need to idiot proof the engine assembly line now, just the guy who programmes the robot. ;)
Shane.
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Funny that - the Jackaroo was the first of the real intro to high performance diesels. They were a sweet powerplant but as you say, turned turtle when given a sniff of the wrong grade of oil.
From memory they also had a second oil filter that many mechanics didnt know about, hence often didnt get changed, which also lead to turtlish behavior.
Having said that the previous version 3.1l had a much better reputation and the 2.8l before that was almost impossible to kill. Natural progression though, if you follow this thread, later models = more power = more stress on engines = greater risk = higher chance of failure. However, this is still just playing the odds. Older engines still go BANG sometimes and newer engines can still last for ages.
Play the odds and do the maintenance. Still not guarenteed but doing regular service/maintenance is cheap insurance in the long run.
Having driven older diesels and newer diesels i do know which is nicer to drive though ;D
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There's a D4D Prado currently having an engine rebuild in Kununurra, 100,000 klms $18K.
Sure it aint a ZD30?
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Low KM engine failures are my speciality.
Dad had a pair of Ford Couriers chew their motors at about 35,000kms.
I was driving the father-in-law's Courier one day when it's motor let go at just on 30k kms.
Last week, a Mazda Bravo in Dad's fleet let it's head go in a big way, just on 40k kms on that one.
The reason in all the above cases was short trips, and an easy life. The vehicles were all low-milage, had been used predominately for short, around-town trips, and hadn't been used to tow or cart heavy loads. Mechanic's advice for modern small-capacity turbo-diesels was not to use them for this sort of driving - buy a petrol instead. They said that heat-cycling the motors with lots of short trips leads to the alloy head failures, and babying them in general does more damage than using them hard, putting them under load and doing long trips. Mechanic says they have been seeing steadily more and more TD dual cab utes coming in with blown motors as they've become more popular as "everything cars", vs rattly, old, slow work trucks.
That said, the single-cab TD Hilux ute that has been loaded right up and used to tow a heavy trailer is now on it's third clutch (about 30k kms total) and is in desperate need of new suspension. So while it's motor might be OK, the rest of it is decidedly sad. I suspect this is one of those areas where "they don't make 'em like they used to" applies.
Cheers,
Matto :)
(Who should not be let near a car that you like - it seems I have the touch of death for TD cars and utes)
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Sure it aint a ZD30?
In a Prado ?
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I work in a reliability field for industry, so I feel reasonbly qualified to comment on machinary failure as trying to avoid failures is my job ;D Apart from general design failures that causes the same failure across multiple units, failures can and do occur randomly. This can be for a varity of reasons, manufacturing issues, assembly problems etc...... The more components you have the more chance of failure. The highest chances of machine failure occurs during commissioning (brand new) and after rebuilds (infant mortality), and then again as the machine nears the end of its life (weasr out failures). Everything inbetween is often subjeted to random failures. Google "bathtub curve" and you'll find a heap of info. Generally speaking I find a lot of failures occur after maint has been carried out and machines fail because something was over looked/not done correctly. I think there would be very few engines in the automotive world that would truly reach their end of life wear out failure point.