SOHC.co.uk Forums > CB350/400

Bored,Raining, Another side to my abilities

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Cappodimonte:
In all my years of motoring this is the first catastrophic failure of a Conrod I’ve ever had, our old girl had covered 180,000 miles with all original running gear, regularly serviced by me at 10,000 mile intervals with Synthetic 10/40 oil along with filters.
Complete piston is up in the bore along with the portion of conrod which snapped about an inch below the small end. If I’d ragged the old girl then I’d expect retribution but she’s always been treated properly. Just pure bad luck which I will have to suck up.
The replacement is. 2010 Kia Picanto with 23,000 genuine miles but as I only need a small car it’ll do me fine.

Sesman:
Sorry to hear about that. It’s a bummer. Happened to me in 1984 just outside Derby in Vauhall Astra. The rod broke just as I lifted off the throttle on final approach to a petrol station following hard acceleration from the traffic lights. I coasted into the  garage and parked by the pump. I became a minor celebrity when the pool of oil was observed under the car; all wondered how on earth I’d driven it to the garage😁 Car had done 10thousand hard rental miles.

McCabe-Thiele (Ted):
In 47 years and well over 800,000 miles of motoring I like you have never had a catastrophic failure of an engine - worst ever incident was a snapped oil pump drive on an 850 Mini back in the 1960's.

Like yourself I've always used the best oil available at the time with regular changes of engine oil & filter.

taysidedragon:
My old 67 VW Beetle went onto 3 cylinders coming home from work after a night shift. I was passing British Airways engineering at Heathrow on the perimeter road, so I kept going the short distance to get home.
When I investigated the problem there was no compression on one cylinder and I could see the piston wasn't moving. On further investigation the piston had cracked right across just above the gudgeon pin and the piston crown was sitting at the top of the bore. The rest of the piston was still attached to the conrod and happily going up and down without doing any damage.
It was a lucky escape, the valves were fine, nothing bent. I put a new set of pistons and rings in it and the engine ran well for several years afterwards,  still going strong when I sold it.

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