Hi All,
Not everything going entirely to plan with XLK 467S at the moment. Sprint engine experts advice needed! When I purchased the car I was shown a video were the owner had the car running for a few seconds from an external fuel source. I have only had the engine running a couple of minutes myself since in order to move the car, it has never ran well and was shaking on the engine mounts when running and idled very low at around 500rpm. Today I did a compression test and found the following:
Cylinder 1: 125PSI
Cylinder 2: 1PSI (Yes 1, like nothing)
Cylinder 3: 135PSI
Cylinder 4: 145PSI (Yay I have one 'good' cylinder!)
When replacing the plugs last year, Cylinder 2 plug snapped in the head (this should have been my warning that things were far from good).
Anyway today I grew tired of the guessing games so whipped the head off to take a look. What a mess (I almost cried). Engine work to this extent really frightens me, due to its very precise tolerances etc. With my minis I would just throw a £100 good second hand engine in and be done with it inside a weekend, I fear this is not an option with the dolly though
Anyway I will let the pictures do the talking.
My working theory now, is that some point fairly soon after the last MOT in November 1996 the head gasket failed on cylinder 2, letting coolant into the cylinder (weirdly I can’t see coolant mixing with the Oil), the car was then laid up from that point until my purchase in August 2021. Unfortunately all that coolant has caused serve corrosion to the piston and the cylinder head. The only saving grace looks to be the piston was at the top of its stroke so the cylinder wall is not mega corroded. There is scoring, but non that I can feel with my nail (it don't look fab though), the other cylinders look fine, with light honing marks visible. The engine has 79k miles on it if history/speedo to be believed. Does this diagnosis sound plausible?
I cleaned up one of the pistons and could see 0202L> stamped on it? Is this standard size/original?
Im at a bit of a loss, I was hoping to re-commission and start enjoying the car this summer! this has thrown a massive spanner in the works. Having looked up prices of pistons etc tonight, I reckon this is going to be prohibitively expensive to rebuild! I do have a very good engineering firm around the corner, however I can see this getting very expensive very quickly.
I did have the mad idea that perhaps I could find a used good piston (does anyone have a good used sprint piston on here?), and somehow fit this to the engine while it is still in the car via the sump? is this even remotely a possibility? I appreciate this engine will never be very good that way, but may have more compression than 1psi on cylinder 2!
I have a used cylinder head on its way that I will get the local engineering place to go through and check for me (With perhaps the lightest of skims if necessary).
Ultimately it may be best to just replace the engine, however I imagine sourcing one will be neigh on impossible. I wan't a totally standard engine ideally.
Finally, if it comes to removing the engine, is it possible to remove just the engine (Without the gearbox), if so how would I go about doing this, I do have an engine crane that will help im sure. I don’t really have room to have the gearbox kicking around if removed with the engine (car on driveway and very limited room in single garage).
Thanks so much in advance for you advice.
Olie