Timbo

In principle I'd have a set, assuming a non-ridiculous price.

SOLD, pending collection.

No one? Next stop is the scrap heap 😢

Just had a wee look with my telescope gauges... (surprisingly?) they're all pretty round, as far I'm able to measure anyway.

No crank. Intermediate pulley bearing in good shape, no discernable wiggle. Engine had 130k on it, but the bores are still in reasonable shape. Ideally you'd pick it up from Edinburgh, but I'll stick it on a pallet if required (at your cost). No idea what it's worth tbh, £50 ONO I guess? https://imgur.com/a/FXFthCg

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F202400799941

Agreed, he is super annoying!

Unless I'm blind, surprised no one has posted this yet:

Sorry, didn't mean to come across as snarky; it's been an annoying few weekends getting oily, recently, for no payback. You make a good point, though having said that I wouldn't say I was confident in this block, now :(. I'm leaning towards replacing the engine, I think.

Just putting a feeler out really, but is the engine a decent runner and would you be willing to pallet it to Scotland?

I rebuilt the head in the past couple of years, but besides that nothing of note. The fact that I had done this work is really why I homed in on it as the source of the noise. One of the conrod bolts on the affected cylinder was not what I would call loose, but certainly not tight. It's impossible to know whether this is cause or effect though really. Worth saying all the other bearings looked completely fine. The most surprising thing for me is how suddenly it came on. It was completely quiet until a few weeks back when the knocking started. I've only started it since to check if my attempts at fixes made any difference, and for a few minutes after replacing the tappets it was completely quiet again. Very odd. Thing is, if the crank is goosed (and I'm pretty sure it is), so is the conrod. And if the conrod needs replaced then the piston needs to come out and if the piston needs to come out, the block needs to be split and if the block needs to be split I'm basically doing a rebuild and I might as well save myself the trouble and replace the whole engine. To be frank I'm in my mid to late thirties now and this p1ssing about with cars thing is starting to get a bit tiresome. I guess my options are: * Sell as a non-runner project for someone else to fix up * Fix and rebuild the existing VR6 * Replace (+refurb?) with another VR6 * Like a muppet, turn it into an R32 project

Edited it to rehost the image; hopefully it can be seen now. It is shells, or what's left of them. I haven't measured it, but the crank journal looks more or less ruined. I think it's a fairly dead engine now to be honest, and not really worth rebuilding given it's had shredded bearing shell pumping round it for who knows how long. Anyone got a spare engine? ;)

Yes well, safe to say it's big end.

I think I would prefer if it were the big end!

Fair enough, balls. Could swear it's a top end sound though. Hmmmph.

Thing is I would 100% agree with you guys if it hadn't been completely quiet immediately after replacing the (prefilled) tappets. It was only after the oil warmed up that it because noisy again. Really don't want to take the crank out for nothing.

A few weeks ago I started getting a bad tappet tick after the engine warmed up a bit. I took the rocker cover off to have a look and see if anything was obviously broken. It all looked visually fine, but I could get some movement in cylinder 1's tappets with just finger pressure. About the same time I noticed a few metal flakes around the cylinder head. At the time I had SP263 cams and I mostly convinced myself the metal flakes were down to run in wear from the cams. Anyway, I ordered a new set of tappets and went back to standard cams. Started it up and it was completely quiet... for about 5 minutes until it started clattering again. Sigh. New tappets come prefilled with oil so I guess this makes sense? So now I'm thinking, OK, the tappets are brand new so probably fine, perhaps my oil pump isn't supplying enough pressure to keep them filled? So off comes the sump and I replace the oil pump. The bolts that connect the output pipe to the pump were not loose, but not exactly tight either so perhaps it hasn't been pumping up into the block particularly well. Hmm. Meanwhile, I look at the sump and it's covered in metallic particles :(. It looks like aluminium to me, again presumably from the cylinder head but there are some larger copper coloured flakes that could be big end/small end bearings? Anyway, I put the sump back on, put some new oil in and it's still making an horrendous clattering noise as you can hear. Maybe I just need to be brave and rev it a bit to get the tappets filled? Anybody got any other insights? Maybe the metal sludge in the sump has blocked some of the oil galleries in the cylinder head? Bloody cars.

What is a "normal" duty cycle for the ISV? Also, is it normal for it to basically remain the same (or only change very little) when not idling? Mine seems to sit at about 50% all the time, with not a lot of fluctuation. I ask because I've got the dreaded stalling when slowing down and stopping at a junction problem.

You know that's actually possibly even a genuine profit, even accounting for the labour. Pretty rare for Wheeler Dealers.

Hmmmmm. I'm thinking I might have ended up with one from a "dodgy batch". I can get one finger between tyre and arch, and I get rubbing with passengers. That doesn't sound right, does it?

So I recently installed my Bilstein B12 suspension, and now when I get rubbing on the rear when I have passengers in the back. I'm running 7J ET40 17" wheels, which isn't all the extreme, as far as I can make out. The extra "poke" compared to standard should be 3mm for the offset and 6.35mm for the rim width. I guess having the wheel in another 9.35mm might provide enough clearance, but it would still be very tight. It's catching at the rear edge of the arch, for what it's worth. Does this all sound reasonable? i.e. it's weird that I'm getting rubbing, no?

Yeah me too, but I've heard on the grapevine that they stopped doing the older engines. I did email but haven't got a reply from them yet.

Yeah that had crossed my mind, but would they be happy doing that? Can't hurt to ask I guess.

I'm currently putting my engine back together with some SP263 cams and fancy a remap to take full advantage. Trouble is, all the recommended places to get this done are hundreds of miles away. Does anyone know somewhere within sensible driving distance of Edinburgh that can handle a VR6 remap?