Spiralling cost of AA Battery

[Bryanj]

Used lumps are about but then you have to get it to talk to the ecu, if no rust about probably just about worth it

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

Seat Toledo 1.9tdi 110 ps, we had her from new in 2003, when I took the engine cover off and peered through all the oil I saw broken ally in the undertray. With high powered light and mirror there’s a great big hole in the front of the sump. I think a big end has given up so it’s terminal as the old girl isn’t worth much money wise. We’ll be sad to see her go

Owned it for 19 years sounds like it's done well - been a good buy - if you divide the cost price by 19 that sounds like cheap motoring per year even with adding maintenance costs !

Just inconvenient I guess.

[K2-K6]

It's usually associated with oil failure Ted. The sintered rods are very strong in  compression load, don't rev that fast in a diesel and so dont' require huge levels of tensile (extending forces)  performance at max revs, but are comparatively week for bending loads. Any failure in big end lubrication sees temperature rise in that bearing, the resulting seizure at that site tries to rotate the rod round with the crank pin and snaps it just above the crank end journal.

Pretty terminal quite quickly.

[Cappodimonte]

Agreed she’s been reliable in all the time we’ve had her, I can only think metal fatigue as she was regularly serviced by me,always checked levels before going anywhere and never had any journey mishaps. Pure bad luck😞

[K2-K6]

Obviously of little consequence now it's gone bang, but interesting topic nevertheless. I don't think that sintered construction suffers from fatigue, they manufacture them as a complete rod with fault line at the big end joints, then snap them to produce the two parts (it's this material characteristic that's desirable which gives low resistance to bending) that fit together with the grain structure making a perfect fit when bolted together and make a very accurate big end bore.

Hence the failure mode, any significant rise in bearing friction (threshold lays outside normal operating conditions) and the big end section is broken away from top of rod section. This either through failure of lubricant or supply. Depending on engine code, there were some iterations that had acknowledged oil pump drive failure that resulted in exactly this outcome. With a conventional steel rod it will usually just wear the bearing and you get that knocking that you know what it is but hope you've not heard "that" noise 
A friend has just sold his 1.9 PD engined car with excess of 250,000 miles on it, serviced and new cam belt fitted, it was running really well.

[Laverda Dave]

I find it amazing that you not only know all these high tec engineering methods Nigel but you can remember them as well. I've never heard about sintered con rods that are actually snapped in two to make fit. Considering the high level of engineering and innovation VW use in designing engines the question has to be asked why do they use plastic (or fibre) timing gears that have a habit of stripping their teeth. I know of two people that have suffered with this failure leaving the engine as scrap. Back in the 70’s we were lucky to get 80-90k out of an engine but now the engines last forever and it's the failing electronics that scrap cars. Motorcycles are the same, electrical problems are the reason why modern bikes fail.
Interesting read though, thanks for posting 👍

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

I agree with Dave's comments - until yesterday I had never heard of sintered con rods.
When I was in the car trade in the 60's owners would boast about not breaking down during a journey from Derby to Cornwall.
As a salesman we would tell customers about Opel Rekord C owners who were still on original clutches at 90 k miles!

Times have changed for sure.

[K2-K6]

It's quite amusing that each mind stores all sorts of detail, with varying success in how we recall it and the motivation that drives the search. I joke with my kids that my warehouse of mind-crap is just much much larger than theirs and it may take a little time to find a competent answer which "must be here somewhere" 

I find accurate details of failure fascinating (not from a morbid point of view) but that it informs so much in how to look after that item and avoid potential failure if that's possible. Look at the aircraft industry for a run through of monitoring and knowledge of why things fail as example.

The VW stuff (a few friends share knowledge/labour etc on our own vehicles) and make it interesting to study them in more detail to look after them.  The cam drive wheels, if that's the failure point Dave, are another component that's well made but you have to handle carefully to avoid compromise in their structure. You can never even tap them, only using specific puller to remove if necessary too, that's absolutely vital. Some of those aren't even keyed to camshaft and just driving on a long taper joint (cams locked, belt installed, tension applied while all drives can move freely to distribute overall tension, then tighten the cam to drive bolts to set everything in place) some of these routines people don't understand the reason why they are that way by design and fall foul of loadings running out of range for component. Some (vauxhall i believe had a period of them) have plastic based idlers on cambelt that failed because of not being replaced at correct interval.
Another problem is with cambelt driven water pumps, originally they were plastic impeller that would fail in the event of frozen coolant, being a sacrificial component (perfectly logical) they are often replaced with "real metal" one's, but if they do freeze the system the result is a shredded cam belt/missing teeth and  catastrophic failure.
Engine life has improved hugely in cars though, principally I feel because of fuelling not being to excess (not diluting the lubricant is paramount)with very good control of this, along with "synthetic" oil. It's not because the oil is fundamentally better lubricant, but far more consistent flow characteristic can be achieved for optimum supply, but that's been enabled by the fuelling being better. A circular achievement but far reaching in terms of engine wear.

[Bryanj]

Used to be common to hear from the escort cvh owner " its only done 28000" when there 6 year old belt broke

[flatfour]

I believe that fibre timing gears were originally introduced to cut down on noise. In many cases, metal gears were an aftermarket "mod" in the day to improve durability, however that did come at the expense of considerably more noise from the gears.

[McCabe-Thiele (Ted)]

The old Ford Corsair 1600E had fibre can gears iirc.

[Bryanj]

And the Essex V 4/6 engines

[Johnny4428]

And the Essex V 4/6 engines

Ooo! Had one of them Bryan, in this.  Lovely grunt! 3.0s

[gary123]

^^^^^^^^^^
Beautiful, still got it?  My first car was a 1600 gtxlr and my first brand new car was a 1600 laser. Always regretted not having a 3.0.

[Bryanj]

Had bikes then vans and my first car was a Jan 70 3.0 Capri GT XLR, had it for years till i bent it