alloy engine block damage??

[GTphil]

I have got a mate who has a lotus esprit sport 350, he's had a little incident whilst he was at the nurburg ring, well, quite a big incident realy! somehow one of the pistons has been smashed up inside the the block taking out a liner, compleatly mullering the cylinder head and putting a hole in the block!

to say he is a bit gutted would be an understatement!

firstly he's not even sure how it happened, its a compleatly standard engine running standard boost and hasn't been played with at all, it had only done 29k and was in good order. He said that he heard a rattling sound and thought it was the exhaust or something similar then heard a bang and was greeted with loads of white smoke from the exhaust, pretty consitent with the damge realy

He thinks the engines are very rare and another block would be very very hard to find.

My question is can an engine alloy block be repaired?

http://i425.photobucket.com/albums/p...2008/006-1.jpg

you can see the hole in the block in this pic.

[Andrew Cooke]

if it was mine I'd be giving Neil a call

http://www.prideengines.com/index.html

[GTphil]

I will pass on your suggestion to him, cheers.

He is interested in rebuilding the engine himself, he has had some experiance with this sort of stuff before.

As for what happened, i can only think the piston came away from the rod/gugeon pin somehow then the rod mullered it. The piston is in a million bits! lol

http://i425.photobucket.com/albums/p...2008/008-2.jpg

The crank bearing is shagged, the top bearing seems to be ok an the pin is still attached to the rod just not the piston! doesn't seem to be a fueling/cooling issue as the rest of the bottom end is fine, well, apart from all the bits of piston floting about!

It just puzzled me how this happened, he wasn't even being giddie with the go pedal.

[Mr_Dave]

Hi mate, those engines aren't rare, just expensive! Think they're about £15k from Lotus. Its just the same engine as the rest of the V8 turbo's with a different ECU.

They do come up from time to time on ebay, and look here:

http://www.esprit4sale.co.uk/Sale/parts.html

The parts cost a bomb, not sure that rebuilding it himself would be that good an idea!

Not cheap cars to run at the best of times these, I've got a V8 GT on my driveway Its on its 2nd engine too btw

[GTphil]

I did think so from looking at the block of other esprit turbos, he's not short of a bob or two just don't think he fancys spending circa 10k on an engine!

From looking at the damge he has done, i would say he would be better finding a fresh block to rebuild and good cylinder head.

Do you know if there are any other differances other than the ecu? I noticed the valves in the head have a small dish in the middle and the pistons are dished also.

[Mr_Dave]

Its identical mate. The 350 sport removes the boost limit from 2nd to 4th gear that you get in the other V8's (think it still limits 1st) - the standard ecu limits the boost until you get it in 5th.

Different shocks/springs/wheels and a flash carbon spoiler, thats it basically

Strange failure that, those engines are pretty strong by all accounts. The one in mine was replaced along with the gearbox as it spent 2 years as the press car, then Lotus flogged it on. Well I say mine, its actually my Bro's car

Think if he's gonna rebuild it, I'd want to know exactly what failed so you know which parts you can safely use! Personally, I'd bin the lot and start again Not a job you wanna do twice!

[Big Jim]

I've repaired a lot worse than that...

[Mr_Dave]

This guy mike_sekinger@hotmail.com has this for sale:


Freshly built MY97 (scheduled completion Jan 2009) standard Lotus V8 918 engine - 6500GBP outright. As build is in progress, opportunity exists to influence build spec if required