Hi All,

right, my Alfa 147 snapped a cambelt a few months ago and ive been in the process of putting a new engine in it

I sourced one from eBay and it arrived on a pallet having been removed by angle grinding through the engine mounts and cutting the hoses - a bit unorthodox?

Having spent weeks working on this and lots of time and money i finally finished it yesterday evening, so come the first start up i was quite excited

engine fires after a few turns - dead battery so needed jumping


sounds like a bag of spanners so shut it off immediately - run for no more than two seconds

go round front of car and see a small lake of engine oil sprayed out all under my car

upon further inspection they managed to catch the oil filter with the angle grinder when they were cutting through the exhaust and as such the oil squirted out of the hole and has made a right mess on my friends drive that I spent two hours cleaning yesterday - BTW swarfega oil and grease remover as sold at B&Q is bloody brilliant stuff

so how likely am I to have destroyed this engine too? is there a hope in hell that if i fit a new oil filter to it and refill it, it will work?

I know this is an optimistic long shot to hope it might work but im in a difficult situation here – if the engine is shot im going to have to take it to the scrappers – not least because I cant afford a new engine but more to do with the fact that in a weeks time im going to loose access to the place where the car is stored and I have nowhere else to store it

That means that im probably going to loose the £1500 I could have made by selling this damn thing

Im so pi**ed off right now, even after having slept on it, a large commercial breakers yard that sold the engine as 100% working and tested manage to cut through the oil filter, not impressed!

Cheers

Matt

All you can do is stick a new filter on it and top the oil up.

How much oil was left in when you switched off and was the oil pressure light on?

If the bottom end was dry it is probably damaged. If it is just the top end you might get away with it.


I totally sympathise with you but am a bit surpised you didn't change the oil and filter before starting up.

Having being ripped out of a car [scrappers are never careful in my experience] and thrown about, any loose bits of gunk inside the engine will have been stirred up.


Stu

It's probably ok if it was only running for a few seconds. To be honest I would change the oil, filter, timing belt and tensioners as a matter of course on an engine from the breakers.

As for angle grinding through the engine mounts, there are some absolute animals that work in breakers yards. I once witnessed some monkey removing an engine with an oxy-acetyelene torch from underneath the engine bay whilst the car was a good 6 feet in the air having been chained around the bucket on the front of a tractor with a loader. Said genius obviously rediscovered gravity when the last mount was cut through and the engine and gearbox fell out and smashed on the ground, narrowly missing him. He then examined the smashed sump and discussed with his knuckle dragging boss whether the chap buying the engine was likely to notice it...

If it did only run for 2 seconds then it'll be fine, if when you fill it with oil it still sounds knackered then send it back to the breakers.

But you spent £1500 on an engine but didn't spend an extra £10 on an oil and filter change????

Cheers
Davie

thanks for the replies,

i know, it was stupid but my plan was to top off the oil oil with some cheap halfords stuff I had spare to check it ran fine before filling it with the mobil 1 I had waiting for it if it was ok on the basis of not wasting £60 of oil on a (potentially) knackered engine, oh the irony ! (you see i didnt see the engine run and as such im not inclined to 100% trust someone on eBay that tells me an engine is working - i had only spent £250 on the replacement engine )

it had had a set of new belts too!!

I'm
Sure it'll be fine maybe just empty hydraulic tapets empty ???


Do the oil and filter then try again

How do you know the 'new' engine is good? If you still have the old engine, you might be able to use both as spares to make one good one. Step back, plan your next steps and go forwards with the plan. From the sounds of it, I doubt your actions would have damaged too much, but there is always a risk buying old engines, in that you are at the mercy of the seller being honest.

Clean up, oil and filter, start again. If its still nackered, then I would probably offer it up for sale with blown engine if you don't have time to repair.

If it was only 2-3 seconds it should be fine. It would have clattered like mad because ther was no oil pressure on the lifters. Stick a new filter on it and see what happens. At the end of the day you have nothing to lose

quote:

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Originally posted by novacaine



it had had a set of new belts too!!

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Maybe when you next start it (post ne woil and filter), you could remove the plug leads so as to get some oil pressure.
I have read that this is always a good idea when the oil level has gone low and things have dried out. It also would have protected you from the above incident.

quote:

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Originally posted by matt_gsxr
Maybe when you next start it (post ne woil and filter), you could remove the plug leads so as to get some oil pressure.
I have read that this is always a good idea when the oil level has gone low and things have dried out. It also would have protected you from the above incident.

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Just prey no grinding dust has got into the oilways, try reverse flushing it through the oil pressure take off point until oil pours out of the filter fitting, hopefully that will get rid of any ingress.

These engines rattle like hell if left for any amount of time. The viariator on inlet camshaft uses oil pressure to alter the variable valve timing and can cause a very worrying racket. Put a new filter on, change the oil and see what happens. Btw well done on changing the engine, they are a complete bitch to do.

quote:

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Originally posted by Davegtst
they are a complete bitch to do.

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Oil filters flow from outside to inside so a cut in the outer casing will not introduce any material into the engine. So long as the breakers didn't cut deep enough to damage the element too then there won't be any harm done.

quote:

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Originally posted by garybee
Oil filters flow from outside to inside so a cut in the outer casing will not introduce any material into the engine. So long as the breakers didn't cut deep enough to damage the element too then there won't be any harm done.

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When I did an oil change on my renault van I removed the oil filter and fitted the new one, but did not notice the old rubber gasket was still on the pump. Oil spewed all over the drive and the oil light did not go out. It ran for about a minute til I turned it off. Fearing the worst I fixed the problem and started it up. Ran fine with no fuss fo many years afterwards. Hope you are as lucky.

Have you tried running it again tonight then?? Is it ok?

Fwiw I once ran my tiptop for about 3 miles under 1 bar of boost with a completely drained sump. Engine is still running fine 50k miles later with fine oil pressure. Ours not always the end of the world.

Did teach me to double check though!

[Edited on 29/5/12 by coyoteboy]

Its actually surprising how long an engine will run with no oil, one of the oil additive company's supposedly drained the oil from a Nissan after running it with treated oil and then drove hundreds of miles across Australia with no oil in the engine.I once had a problem with the plastic oil filter housing on my rover diesel and it burst dumping the full engines worth of oil on the road ,as it was only a few hundred yards from home and I did not want to be associated with a massive oil slick I drove it home with the oil light on and then went and cleared up the oil as best I could before informing the local high ways people about a large oil patch in the road which they ignored.
I replaced the oil filter housing and refilled with 7 litres of oil and it ran perfectly ok.
Paul

well i got it fired up last night


had a bit of a job removing the old oil filter as it was on stupidly tight

refilled it all and i got good oil pressure

i have a blowing exhaust manifold and the power steering pump is knackered - that will teach me not to use the ancillaries on a breakers engine in future!!

i hope to get the manifold changed tonight and to fire it up with the aux belt removed (for a very short period of time) in order to see how the engine sounds without these noises but ive got good oil pressure, not even a flicker of the pressure warning light so im hoping that i have got away without damage, we shall see!!


thanks for all the help everyone!

Matt

Many years ago, before mobile phones or sunday opening I was in the Lakes in a montego 2.0. I managed to drop a wheel in a huge hole while doing a 3 point turn and basically tore the oil filter off. I drove it back to Luton, stopping for 30 minutes every 5 miles or so (took all night to get home) and coasting huge distances with the engine off. Next morning I fitted a new oil filter and filled it up with oil, and just ran it for the next 96000 miles. It had been 'slick 50' treated though.
Regards
Hugh

quote:

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Originally posted by hughpinder
It had been 'snake oil' treated though.

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Slick 50 was mis-advertised and gained a bad reputation - mainly because it claimed some big fuel consumption improvement figures (which it certainly didn't make any difference to in my case) and didn't sufficiently show that it improved engine life as claimed. It also claimed to 'bond' somehow to the metal surfaces, and I think this was shown not to be the case. I know that it made the engine run much smoother when I added it, and it was actually proven to allow you to run for a while with no oil in the engine (I ran about 180miles from the lakes to luton). I also helped dismantle/rebuild/improve(we put in a wilder cam/forged bits etc) a friends engine, which had been treated, and had holed a piston, and all the parts were very 'slick', even after the oil had been cleaned off and everything washed down with petrol.
Regards
Hugh

to update -

I have changed the exhaust manifold on the car as the old one was blowing very loudly making it impossible to tell if the engine sounded broken or not

I have ran the engine without the aux belt as the PAS pump is making a horrendous noise

and the good news is i think i have got away with it - the variator is making noise but these things pack in with the slightest hint of an oil problem - its a service item anyway so im not too worried by that

Im going to stick some oil additive in it (ooo bad i know!), see if I can quieten the variator down at all

Thanks for all the advice everyone! hope to have it back on the road soon - i feel like im living under the car at the minute!!

Cheers

Matt

I just sold a new variator and cams from my 2.0 TS for 45 quid on ebay....they're not too bad to fit if its knackered