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Hey, so I’m trying to help my dad out with the eventual impending doom that is catastrophic engine failure. The car has 170k-ish miles on it, and I think it was at maybe 150k – 160k miles that I barely started to notice a faint knock/tap when cold. That slowly progressed to it being heard when idling, but only barely, to the point of what it is now. I have a video that I can try to attach. We’ve kept up on it’s oil changes throughout it’s life, whenever I would change the oil, I use full-synthetic, but when shops have done it while doing other work upon request (like when taking it in for new struts, but it was due for an oil change anyways) I’m unsure what they used. Either way, I hear this is somewhat common. Any way I can slow the progress of this a bit, until around a time where we have 3 vehicles, and have time to change the rod bearings? I’ve added a small amount of Lucas Oil Stabilizer to it, but not too much, as with VVT, which I believe is controlled using oil pressure, I’m not sure how that system would react. I know there’s no “Engine-Rebuild-in-a-Can”, but how do I slow it down until we have the time to drop the pan and get new rod bearings?
Here’s a video I uploaded to YouTube just now, you can hear it there. any tips?
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Once it begins it will progress at its own rate.
You can keep the oil level correct and and baby it along but that is about all.
JMHO here..
With a engine with ~170K do you really believe that repairing it is a viable option?
When you get into pulling piston and / or crank bearings on a engine with that much mileage you will no doubt find other issues:
Worn / damaged crank… etc.
How far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?
It may be more viable to go with a low mileage replacement instead.
As I said JMHO.[quote=”ComputerNerdInside” post=198441]I know there’s no “Engine-Rebuild-in-a-Can”, but how do I slow it down until we have the time to drop the pan and get new rod bearings?[/quote]
The only way to keep things from getting worse is to park the car and not drive it.
At this point the thought of failing rod bearings is just a suspicion. To really find out what’s going on will require a complete tear down, with a lot of precise measuring. And you’re going to find other things that require rectification. There’s no point in disassembling/measuring an entire engine, only to reassemble it half-fixed. Are you up to the task?
Well, I guess never mind on this. A deer impact at 65 – 70 MPH totaled it. Had no time to react, he said he saw a flash of a deer right at impact, as of someone took a picture fractions of a second before impact. (Was early AM, still dark outside.) Broke the power steering hose and neck right off the reservoir on impact, and immediate loss of power steering followed. No airbag deployment, and it looked bad, but didn’t appear totaled upon first glance. But when the repair shop got it apart, they found A frame damage, and insurance wrote it off.
Kinda amusing that when my father got home, he walked into the bedroom with my mother, used the restroom while talking about work (she was half asleep, and just waking up) then as he walks out of the bathroom, says “Oh, by the way I hit a deer on the way home.” Mother says “You’re kidding, right?” Father: “Nope” Mother: “It’s not bad is it? A dent?” Father: “Yea, it’s pretty bad.” Mother: “BY THE WAY!?”
Have to say, he had a sense of humor to it.
Welp, the end.
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