well a few weeks ago about 4 days before i was about to sorn my car i was about to go out for a finally blat. i started the engine up in the garage with the doors open and it sounded really rough when it started ticking over; it sounded like it was only running on three cylinders, then as i backed it out of the garage i heard KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK coming from the block so killed the engine straight away. O'OH i thought . tried to turn it over by hand and got threw about 90 degrees then it locked solid!

My dad & I pushed it back in the garage both fearing the worst , thining that the bottom end had gone? dropped the sump off to have a look and to find that the tbottom end was all in order, nothing missing, broken, sheared etc few, i thought. then took the spark plugs out and had a look into the cylinder with a torch only to find shards of metal sticking out of the top of the piston so i whipped the head off to take a further look.

when i took the head off i noticed that there was indentations in the head around the combustion chamber of the second cylinder. Anyway after lots of head scratching thinking that possibly the rings had gone and somehow found its way around the the side of the piston (quickly disguarded) and a full dismantling of the head i noticed that the exhaust valve seat was missing, now it was become clear that the valve seat had come loose, the got smashed into pieces by the valve closing and the remains fell into the cylinder to the be smashed & squished between the head and the piston. following pictures show the damage!



so i took the head to Kieth at 'Classic Car Engines' in Coventry & he couldn't have been more helpful, he replaced all 4 exhaust seats with stainless inserts, replaced all 4 exhaust valves, reseated the inlets, skimmed 50 thou off the head for me & supplied me with a new piston & rings which he put onto the conrod for me as well, all for £160! I couldn't have been more pleased as i was quoted some silly figures by others.

Before & After Pictures


i've had a busy weekend as well, i spent 6 hours yesterday porting the exhaust ports and blending in the backs of the valve seats to match the contours of the exhausts i also opened the exhaust up to full diameter of the gasket like it says to in Dave Vizzards book & then hand polished to finish (my fingers were killing!). Then today i went about reseating all the valves and rebuilding the head!



well thats about it for the weekend, im absolutely exhausted, tomorrow im going to have a go at honing the cylinder bore so that i can fit the new pistons and then rebuild the bottom end. Hopefully i might have a rebuilt engine by the end of the week who knows i might even manage to respace my ITB's as well.

oh got an interview on wednesday as well!

thanks for reading all, i know its a bit of a long thread, but interesting for those who are running pinto's or rebuilding heads at the minute.

Alex

edited: a credit must go to Dave Ashurst, 1) for letting me pick his brain to come up with solutions & 2) for letting me borrow his honing tool. (cheers Shaun)

[Edited on 20/9/09 by omega0684]

You forgot the credit to Dave Ashurst lol

Looking good!

Hope it all goes back together OK! Think of the weight you've saved shaving 50 thou off a pinto!

I've had a similar problem, with what I thought was a HGF on my engine, only to strip it down, get the head skimmed, refit all the cleaned up valves, re-seat them all, fit all new gaskets put it back together for it to still lose water!

Mike

Excellent job! It's so tempting just to scrap the engine when something like this happens but it makes much more sense to fiddle with the oily bits.

That piston photo is giving me flash-backs. Nasty!!!