Re: Re: Re: Re: 1.8 Engine Required
Daz, there is no helping some people, let him spend £1000's having it re-con'd and discover it still rattles.
Anglo, I've taken apart more engines than most of the other members on this forum. Engines wear, old engines rattle. If it was my car and I was worried about it I'd take the sump off, plastiguage the big ends and mains, check if any of them are particularly worn and at the same time you can manually move the pistons to check for bore wear. If you have a cracked ring it will show as a scored bore.
As you said yourself, the cams are in good shape which indicates the oil system is healthy and has been kept filled with the right oil. Cam lobes are always the first to go if there is any sign of oil problems.
Broken rings are amazingly unusual, I broke a ring on my imp cos I thought the bores were good enough (only had 20k on the clock) but they wern't and the step snapped the ring on the very first run. A friend broke a ring on his highly tuned rally car as he was totally thrashing it.
Taking the head off, even if you have it skimmed perfectly still puts you at much greater risk of gasket failure and oil problems. Modern engines to not like being taken to bits. A collegue's Audi has been back to the garage about every 5k miles as they cannot get the head gasket to seal properly. Its even had a new head and the block has been skimmed. That car is less than 3 years old.
My 1.6 makes a rather nasty ticking noise on really cold mornings but its over 6 years old and has 75k on the clock. My sisters uno has had a big end rattle for the last 2 years and now the gearbox sounds a bit rough but its 11 years old. You can hear the hydraulic cam chain tensioner on my mums 12 year old Saab taking up the slack when it starts but 110k miles is good going.
None of this is beacause they have been badly looked after, I do all my own servicing and have yet to have a car fail an MOT. (and no, I do not bribe the MOT tester)
All I'm trying to do is save you an AWFUL lot of money. You have an old car which will probably need new lower suspension arms at £100 each, wheel bearings at £40 each, the gearbox is probably well worn too and thats ££££ to fix, rear bushes, shocks, brakes, you name it.
And there is no guarantee that a) it will solve the rattle and b) you won't be in for a whole host of problems a few 1000 miles down the road.
