Hi all,

 

Purple Rain came to its demise on the 12th of November 2015 after it was hit at 5am on the hard shoulder by an HGV.

 

The reasoning for stopping in the first place was because I had complete loss of oil pressure and then a full stall of the engine.

 

Bummer !

 

Anyways as the insurance was luckily a complete pay-out I wasn't too worried.

 

Over the last week I've been stripping the zed and today I drained all the fluids from the gearbox and then the engine.

 

Gearbox went great and out came nice new looking oil.

 

The engine on the other hand gave me a bit of a shock as when I removed the sump plug out came at least 2 litres of water. :(

 

 

At this point I can categorically say that this engine won't be sold after discovering the root cause of my breakdown. (SORRY)

 

I do plan to use the engine myself and fully dismantle it to see what actually happened.

 

Not being technically minded i'm thinking this is a head gasket failure or could it be something else ?

That sounds rotten, hopefully you can salvage some of the engine upgrades (injectors, fuel rails, chrome intake, coil pack brackets etc.) to put on the blue (soon purple) one.

 

Either way you will have yourself a nice shiny v6 coffee table :biggrin:

Wow thats bad news and that's a lot of water bud can you see any water in the spark plug hole or when you take the plugs out

Not got that far yet in the break down.

 

Weather permitting I will be over again tomorrow and i'll start stripping the engine bay.

 

I was planning to start it today but it started raining again.

 

 

 

Wow thats bad news and that's a lot of water bud can you see any water in the spark plug hole or when you take the plugs out

When I broke down the water temp was sitting around 80 which is normal.

 

And the oil pressure went to nearly 5 psi in just under 5 minutes followed by a stall.

 

Can water pass to the lower plenum via a faulty water pump ?

 

As just a month before the incident happened we had what we thought was a crank knock but after stripping the belts

we quickly came to the conclusion it wasn't that.

 

If the noise was the water pump and it just somehow failed a gasket or something ?

 

Can't check levels of the rad or other areas until tomorrow now but i'm sure it must be something dumb hopefully not as dumb as me putting a water pipe on a vac hose, :)

Hopefully nothing major, are you using oversized pistons? Could be a cracked block

 

our apprentice did that too his car, somehow connected the washer hose to a vacuum, still hasn't lived it down.

Everything on the engine was standard.

You had no issue with the engine driving to JAE so was there any engine changes after that?

Nope

 

You had no issue with the engine driving to JAE so was there any engine changes after that?

Most likely a failed head gasket, water and oil jacket mixing. Was the coolant normal?

That's a HUGE amount of water for a blown HG!

 

I'd second the theory of a cracked block.

 

Shitty news for you fella

Don't forget it's been sat, it may have been gently filling the sump up.

Yeh,

 

It's been sat for a few weeks so even the smallest of leaks would have worked it's way through.

 

Although a small leak wouldn't account for the sudden stall would it?

 

Don't forget it's been sat, it may have been gently filling the sump up.

Don't forget it's been sat, it may have been gently filling the sump up.

 

Mine was sat for two years with a head gasket this badly warped, had a TINY bit of emulsified oil in the block, certainly not two litres!

In truth until you split that block its guess work.... I've seen cars still running with a sump that's like brown milkshake. Every case is different, size, placement etc. Interested to see what's happened though. I recon there will likely be further damage than simply a blown gasket if I'm right though.

Mine was sat for two years with a head gasket this badly warped, had a TINY bit of emulsified oil in the block, certainly not two litres!

 

I wonder why it did that specifically. Was the head warped as well?

Mine blew due to det. Nope, head was a straight as a straight thing. Sod knows how!

And it took 112c water temp and 120c oil temp to do that.

 

For such a drop in oil pressure, you'd be looking for a failed oil pump, a significant oil leak, or an internal failure of an oil way.

Wow - that's certainly a lot of water.......

 

.......I know there's been a lot of rain and flooding north of the border mate, but I wouldn't have guessed it could all find its way into your engine!!!

 

Be interesting to know what you find though

 

Richard:clover:

Still haven't sourced the actual issue but managed to strip the engine down a bit today.

 

before draining the coolant I did notice the level had dropped to the mid section of the radiator.

 

Also it went from clear to a musky brown.

 

 

Surprising how spacious the bay is with the upper plenum removed isn't it.