The Webmaster Zone

Last night I was driving up Knight street here in Vancouver, accelerating up a mild hill, when I hear a soft "bang" sound in the engine bay and all of a sudden the car loses all power like its only running on a couple of cylinders accompanied by a nasty rattling sound. I pulled off on a side street and coasted to a stop - called a tow truck and now it's at Octagon awaiting a diagnosis on Monday. I have been driving it in a somewhat "spirited" manner lately, and I'm sure the 2000+ miles I've put on it in the last two months didn't help. While I was waiting for the tow truck I took off the valve cover, and the rockers and valve stems looked OK. I'm pretty sure its something in the bottom end of the engine, I'm just praying the crankshaft and/or the cylinder walls aren't scored. This comes as a bit of a suprise as its always had better than average oil pressure. Stay tuned; I'll update as soon as I get more information. Update - Got some good news today, Octagon did a compression test and there was no compression in #2 so they pulled the head, expecting to find a broken valve or a broken piston (or usually, both). By some bit of luck the intake valve stem broke up high enough that the valve didn't fall completely into the cylinder; the rattling sound was the piston pushing the dropped valve back up on each revolution, so the piston was not damaged. I had noticed that the tappets were pretty noisy and that one was slightly louder than the others, so now I guess I know why. They're going to lap in a new valve (and check if hardened seats were ever installed to satisfy my curiosity) and take it for a test drive! I would like to also take this moment to send my sympathy to the injured and their families of the cowardly and abhorrent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon today. This is not a crime against America but a crime against Humanity and I only hope that by the next millenium these kinds of brutal acts will only be read about in the history books. Update 2 - Today I picked up the car from Octagon, the bill being considerably less than I had initially expected. Removing the head was about a 6 hour job and the parts cost was negligable. While they were in there they noticed some old damage to the top of another piston from some incident in the past, and that the valve guides are nearing the end of their useful lives. Combined with the fact that it appers hardened valve seats were never installed to deal with unleaded gas, this just re-inforces my original plan to have the engine completely rebuilt (with some performance modifications) this winter while the body is being sandblasted and painted. As is, the engine could easily give me another 20,000 miles of service and the valve train is considerably quieter than it was before. I'm just relieved to have it back, tomorrow I'm going to give it a good wash and cleaning to say "welcome home".