Club 80-90 Forums

I was coming back from Glastonbury festivals on Monday evening and accidentally over revved it to silly in 2nd (van was packed and the music was on loud so didn't notice I was in the wrong gear) and felt the engine die in power. Realising my mistake went to 3rd but the oil buzzer went off so I pulled over and saw the oil was a bit low and noticed a fine jet of water from the water tank. This must only appear when really hot, tank was full though.

Filled the oil and added some water and drove off again but noticed that the engine was lacking power and the oil buzzer went off again so decided to stop and get recovered.

Once I got it home it sounds fine. The recovery man suggested the bottom end and that it was better to just fit a new engine? I was listening and I thought it was the fan belt squeaking? Power felt OK.

People have any thoughts before I get it looked at?

What sort of engine? petrol or diesel? engine capacity? engine code?

skell wrote:What sort of engine? petrol or diesel? engine capacity? engine code?

Sorry, its a Autohomes Kamper Water cooled petrol 1.9 from circa 1989.

The first thing to do is take to a reputable garage and get a hot oil pressure test done.
This will tell you for sure if anything is majorly wrong with it and should not cost you much at all to have done.


.

Thanks for that info.

If nothing else, I'm going to give it a spin 1st. See how it feels and if the buzzer comes on. I'm hoping that over revving it and being in slow moving traffic for over 5 hours made it a bit hot and the oil got too thin and the pressure dropped off causing the <15psi buzzer.

I'll then see if I can get it into somewhere decent to replace the pressure tank for the water. Its got a tiny hole in it at the top, so even though I was losing water it was never empty.

Finding a decent garage round here (Central London) that knows what they are doing and answers the phone is quite difficult. Might have to just bite the bullet and get the VW garage to do it at stupid price per hour and ask them to check the oil pressure.

Sounds foooked to me I'm afraid. Low oil, excessive heat plus over-revving

Ian

I've just started it and it runs very cleanly. There is a little knocking from the big end, but its nothing it wasn't doing before.

The rev-limited kicked in, so it wasn't ever revved too hard for very long < 5 seconds and there was plenty of oil at all times, just perhaps a bit hot.

Sunray wrote:
Finding a decent garage round here (Central London) that knows what they are doing and answers the phone is quite difficult. Might have to just bite the bullet and get the VW garage to do it at stupid price per hour and ask them to check the oil pressure.

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Hi
That tiny hole in header tank sounds familiar mine did it. Unfortunatly the tank is much lower than the radiator and part of the engine. this alowing your engine to run with insufficient water and overheat. If it was already knocking personaly I would'nt waste any money trying to fix it and would go streight for a recon motor. These motors are a nightmare to rebuild and should'nt be tackled by just any old grease monky!!

Best of luck with it...

Just to make sure we are talking about the correct tank here (and for any newbies reading this in the future) the left hand tank is sealed, but the one behind the number plate (the "top up tank" or "burp tank" as I have seen it called) is supposed to have a small hole in the top.

ghost123uk wrote:Just to make sure we are talking about the correct tank here (and for any newbies reading this in the future) the left hand tank is sealed, but the one behind the number plate (the "top up tank" or "burp tank" as I have seen it called) is supposed to have a small hole in the top.

Its the left hand sealed expansion tank.

andyspanners.21 wrote:Hi
That tiny hole in header tank sounds familiar mine did it. Unfortunatly the tank is much lower than the radiator and part of the engine. this alowing your engine to run with insufficient water and overheat. If it was already knocking personaly I would'nt waste any money trying to fix it and would go streight for a recon motor. These motors are a nightmare to rebuild and should'nt be tackled by just any old grease monky!!

Best of luck with it...

Eh? It has a water pump to pump the water around the engine. Its actually got a new water pump and it was down about 1/2 a litre out of the 15 litre's it takes, so it wasn't even close to empty.

If I was going to replace the engine, I'd get a re-manufactured part from Vege.

Will give it a bit of spin on Sat morning to see how its holding up with the power.

My original question is really related to how much of an over heat can these engines take? It was just running a bit hot, normally the temperature guage is just to the right of the line, this was 1mm further over.

I'm going to record the engine noise with my iPhone and post it up somewhere, so you can all have a listen to it.

Sunray wrote: My original question is really related to how much of an over heat can these engines take? It was just running a bit hot, normally the temperature guage is just to the right of the line, this was 1mm further over.

If the gauge was only that much over, then it ain't overheated at all

Overheating means either =

Off the scale to the right

or

No water left in the engine, resulting in the gauge not having any hot water around it to "measure", so it drops to the the cold end ! (by which time the engine is often so hot it is damaged).

Thanks for all the help.

I've been listening to all the 'big end' failures on youtube, plus some informative videos of what a big end failure actually looks like when the engine has been dismantled.

I will record my one and post it on you tube. I'm hopeful its not bust as I need to use it on the 20th of July.

I'm not saying this is your case, but a noisy tappet on WBX engines can sound scarily like a failed big end and tappet noise is common on these.

As I mentioned an oil pressure test will provide the information you need.
Worn big ends will drastically reduce oil pressure, esp at tick over.