cjd was suggesting. As I stated, I too thought about it. I think it would work if lack of heat is the issue. It should only take a few degrees to fix the problem. Although I'd hope for a classier solution than cardboard.

 

Please point to a car where it's definitely happened.

 

I assume at this point unless it's happened to you or you are given visual proof you won't accept it. Two members here have had ice in their engine. They haven't introduced the water themselves. A Jaguar dealer in a cold climate has given this as the cause. I accept that it has happened. The science makes sense. Bickering about it does not. I have windows in my house frost over on the inside in the winter and my house is warm inside. I can accept that a dealer in a cold climate has seen this "a few times" (or whatever the quote was). Why not be helpful and suggest a solution? Is arguing about it doing any good?

 

I should also say that I'm not being contradictory here. I'm new here and I'm certainly not a Jaguar expert. I'm here to learn from those that know more about these cars than I do. I just don't want to argue about something to which a reasonable cause has been provided. Solutions are needed.

 

The problem is that we don't know what's causing it or why.

With all due respect- the simplistic examples of frost/moisture accumulating on wings, windows or glasses of water just don't apply to the present case of ice forming inside an intake system. I'm not going to argue 'why' any more.

If the focus is to fix and/or prevent, I strongly discourage attempts to raise engine temps beyond normal levles by blocking off air flow to the radiator. These cars are known to have virtually useless temperature gauges. The probability of unknowingly overheating the engine due to an overzealous 'improvement' is too high. I remain highly doubtful that water/ice is sitting in an area affect by coolant temps anyway.

 

A few thoughts:

The following post, #18 I believe, seems to confirm a fact that I have been dubious of previously. Namely, that enough water had made its way into one or more cylinders to actually hydrolock the engine. I believe a prior QuickCat post confirmed the dealer reported the car would not start after spending the weekend inside their heated garage. I inferred from that post that it would not crank. Previously, reaching back to Noodlearm's "Broken Rod" thread of 2011, My opinion was that enough residual moisture was in the engine post-shutdown to deposit enough ice-glaze around the moving parts to defeat the starter's torque. I still maintain that is the mechanism normally at work here....else we'd have the occasional report of a SC V8 being hydrolocked after running in these ambient conditions then spending the night in a heated garage. However, whatever is responsible for delivering moisture to the cylinder(s) certainly appears capable of delivering enough to hydrolock it on occasion.
John, maybe you can clarify what "it" is? Are you talking about IC condensation as a cause? or the more basic issue of water in the cylinder?
Also, can you amplify on the frozen starter issue? Do you mean moisture getting into the starter, freezing at low ambient and locking it up? Or speaking more phenomenalogically of a locked starter being "frozen." Sorry, I am unfamiliar with the issue, but I realize many times we speak of inoperative electric motors as "frozen" quite apart from temperature.

This one seems to be of the flavor having "almost enough ice to block the starter" I think maybe it would've cranked more or less normally had it been in a heated garage.
Mike, sounds like you are dubious that 3.5 hrs, given the conditions and sunshine was enough to allow it to re-freeze in the cylinder...and your half-crank seems to bear that out. This one would seem to have occurred even if you had parked in a heated space, no?
QuickCat, did the dealer mention if they attempted to start them after letting them warm up? or ALWAYS pull the plugs first? Also, did they mention if they see it on S-Type R's as well? or only XJR/SuperV8?

John, I'm assuming you are using "it" in the same manner as before...but still not quite sure exactly what you mean. If you are talking about the entire string of events from shutdown to inability to crank in sub-freezing temps and attributing it to one distinct cause/mechanism...then ok, I think we have 4 incidents (noodlearm, 2XQuickCat and MikeP) without enough hard data to say of any specific one: "Warm, moist IC charge air condensed frost on cool supercharger/intake plenum, melted after shutdown and drained into 3rd cyl on left bank, froze-in-place and prevented the starter from rotating the engine" However, I believe we have enough data to speculate the same basic mechanism is at work in all 4.....and if your position is that none of these incidents were caused by water and/or ice in a cylinder....I believe you are perhaps on thinner ice than it would take to lock up a Jag SC V8. I can understand being dubious when the car is hauled away, and doesn't experience a successful start for several days and then information is relayed through several people....communication always presents an opportunity for error...but in the case of Mike P and QuickCat2, they actually had "eyes-on" water/ice....so I am a bit confused by your position. Help me understand.

A couple of observations and postulates from my POV:
I think the V8 starter does not produce enough torque to do significant engine damage, only to regap plug electrodes.
I'll take a stab at why we don't see this when parked in a heated space: Not sure of the SC V8 t'stat setting but I suspect it is somewhere around 210F, so at steady-state operating temp, the actual cyl wall/piston surface would be hotter still. Further, we know from experience that the coolant actually heats up a number of degrees after shutdown indicating the cyl's are considerably warmer than the coolant. So...when parked in a 30-40 deg F space, vs. 0-8 deg F, the rate of cooling of the cylinder is lessened, while the rate of ice-melting (wherever it happens to be stored in the intake path) is accelerated, meaning the water reaches the cylinder sooner, and it is hotter, so hot, in fact that enough is boiled off and exits the chamber as vapor through the same valve or opening through which it entered. When the time for restart comes, there is not enough water left in the cylinder to cause the hydrolock.


Now, not a supercharger guy, nor even a Jaguar V8 owner, so I won't begin to speculate where the water is coming from, but I believe this thread + the 2011 Broken Rod one is sufficient to establish that Near-zero-F ambient temperature operation results in some cases in an introduction of water into the combustion chamber(s) and shutdown/parking in near-0F ambient is sufficient in some of these cases to prevent the starter from cranking the engine.


I conclude with an observation that I've seen ice cause mechanical systems to not function at all....or in other cases to malfunction in a manner to make you think ice would be the last thing to suspect, and leave behind a fully-functional system with no evidence whatsoever that there was ever any ice formed nor water present. So when I hear the car wouldn't crank, even by hand, it was cold..then when it wasn't cold anymore, it started and ran fine....I think of ice.

 

time for more "stuff" to chew on ...

1) it would take less water than some presume to hydrolock a 4.2L engine. about 60 cc's in one cylinder is the threshold. water is a incompressible liquid so any volume of water greater than the size of the combustion chamber is the point at which incompressible solid meets incompressible liquid.

2) the flow of air is not completely through the supercharger at cruise ... some flows through the bypass ... therefore there is a relatively stagnant chamber of air into which cooled air is being introduced

3) the air before the supercharger is not compressed and heated but instead is under expansion and cooled ... just like a carbureted system

4) the rods are formed from sintered metal powder .. not forged steel .. while a forged steel rod would tend to bend before shattering ... a sintered rod has different properties under stress .. it is more brittle

5) the only heating going on in the intake tract is the coolant passage at the throttle body and it may have little effect

flowing from point #1 .. the question becomes solely whether it is possilbe to accumulate 60+ cc's of water in the intake tract held in suspension as either ice or film that can settle out later a cylinder

note that it does not have to be common ... only possible in at least one case

note also that the S-Type R and later XJ/R use a different design of plenum that do the earlier SC engines.

 

Again, just thinking out loud...

I see the big Diesels hauling many 10's of thousands of pounds, pulling up long hills in the winter under full power and with only a 12 x 12 inch hole unzipped on their radiator covers. At single digit temps I would be very surprised if you could get any car to overheat if you cover most of the radiator. My Jag cools fine at 110 degrees F in Texas summers. How much core really needs to be exposed to cool it at 5 degrees where this issue is happening.

Again, I'm not saying I know...but it is something to thick about...

Any big rig drivers out there got any input on what determines how much radiator to cover?

 

heh heh, If so....and if you are in a Freightliner Century Class circa 1995-2005 or up through whatever model year the mid-2000's redesign launched, or to a lesser extent; FLD or 1E - I can explain why your aux(sleeper) a/c system blows really cold, then alternates hot/cold as airflow diminishes until it finally dies and the blower will only work on High,thereafter.....hint: also an ice issue, but as you can probably attest, the hotter and more humid the ambient, the quicker it occurs.

 

I'm happy to accept it MAY have happened and I do NOT need it to happen to me. However, this thread is the ONLY car it MAY have happened to. The car in the other thread appears definitely was not ice. Or do you have a link that shows it was? As you'll have seen, the car in the current thread by no means certainly involved ice inside.

It seems to me that the difference between allegedly and definitely should be understood but are being confused.

 

I have no comments on another thread. The OP was told by a dealer what the issue was and then a second poster in this thread had the same issue. That makes 2 cars in this thread. Add to that how many ever cars the Minnesota dealer has seen. You know, the dealer that knew the exact situation/circumstances seen here. It is not an isolated incident. You are overlooking the proof provided here. The fact that it only happens in extreme cold is the easiest thing to cure.

 

Yes, after the car had spent the weekend inside, they attempted to start it, and the engine would not turn over. I asked him to check all the grounds thinking it may have a weak/corroded connection. An hour later they called back and said all the grounds were good and he had also attempted to turn over the engine with a breaker bar attached to the crank. It was only after that I gave him the okay to pull the plugs. He did not indicate if the prior similar experiences were with XJRs or other Jags.

I woke up to morning temps of 3 deg F. Based on my past experience, I did not have any confidence in driving my XJR to work, so I borrowed my son's car. Thinking of a way to not have this happen again, my idea is to somehow have the air temperature of the intake be warmed before being sucked into the s/c. I don't think blocking the radiator will do much good as I don't believe the engine temp is the issue. The idea of removing the intake snout from the front of the vehicle and not having it suck in cold air from outside the engine compartment is what I'd like to try. Thinking back to the old days, when engines were carburetored, the air cleaner had a nozzle that had a tube connected that captured heat from the exhaust manifold. I'm thinking if I could make something that would intake the air from around the manifold or possibly from the back side of the radiator, the air temp would be possibly 10-20 degrees warmer than ambient. Thoughts?

 

My thought was not engine temp but underhood temp. I don't think the "engine" needs to be warmer and blocking the radiator wouldn't make it warmer. The thermostat will keep the engine itself relatively the same temp. Colder outside air will keep the engine cool even with reduced airflow. I like the idea of getting warmer air in but also trying to keep the charger or intake manifold temp higher. That would mean having the temp under the hood higher. Maybe I'm attacking it the wrong way. I am thinking that ambient temperature outside of the charger/intake is what is allowing frost to form. I could way off base. If it is the velocity and temperature of the intake air trying to get it warmer underhood would be useless. Maybe either of the 2 would work, or both together. I wish you the best of luck. I hope your plan works out.

 

The air stoves used on carburetted cars were a crude way of dealing with stumbles and stalls during engine warm up only. I don't believe adding heated air would solve the problem. The supercharger is already doing that while under boost. If we use the explanation given by the Minnesota dealer that ice is forming at the outlet, combined with the analogies of wings, windows and ice water, more hot air should produce more ice.

Instead of 'more heat', I'd suggest again 'less cold'. If we accept the first dealer's explanation of condensation in the IC, then it makes sense to reduce the cooling effect it has on the supercharged air.

 

Wild a** idea..put a space heater (with fan) under the car after it's parked and turn it on with it blowing upwards into the engine compartment. Should keep things from freezing, then again...what do I know...
may work, may not work

 

I don't think a space heater would work. I live in Michigan and the amount of heat put out by a space heater would not be enough in the temps and wind that we are experiencing. The space under a hood is small enough but it isn't a sealed environment and the wind would likely negate any affects of the heater.

 

Even if it did work, the water would run into a cylinder- another hydrolock.

 

Right, didn't even consider that part.

 

Something to be considered here...an intercooler matrix could be leaking. This has happened and the coolant could get into the engine. Also, the intake air is heated by passing through the intercooler, it is heated by the 200 deg F intercoolers. When running, the intercooler is part of the cooling system.

 

I believe the intercooler is using air to cool, instead of coolant? The purpose of the intercooler is to reduce the temp of the air after the supercharger heats it by by compressing it. In other words, the intake air makes the intercooler hot, not the other way around.