Not a month ago I sold my 02 XKR coupe with 205k miles to an enthusiastic new owner. Not two weeks later he called to say he had broke down on the highway. In good faith I had his car towed to a shop, and today they reported that the engine is unrepairable. As reported, there are 3 big holes in the oil pan and another in the block. And one inside the oil pan(?) .

I've been on this forum for more than a few years and have never heard of the bottom end letting go.

 

That sucks.

 

Any ideas as to the cause? Or not yet?

 

I had a squeak in my engine for a spell...It ended up being a rod bearing. Never heard of a bottom end letting go either

 

I'm only getting information from the new owner, so no clear idea as to what happened. I can attest to a total lack of bottom end noise when sold, and on the test drive with him I hammered it to show that it was indeed a strong engine still. I feel awful for him and hate to hear that my old car has become a lump.

 

Neither have I. The two engine killers are failed tensioners clattering the valves into the pistons and overheating warping the heads. Bottom end is usually bullet proof.

Could be a failed oil pump. Whatever the cause, it's clearly left you with a bad feeling and the new owner must be devastated.

Graham

 

"bullet proof" I will suggest, does not last into the 200+ mile range. I mean, that's a lot of miles for any engine!

And with holes being created, that kind of suggests throwing a rod doesn't it? Which could be heck, just pure metal fatigue at that point, especially for a forced induction engine. Lots of stress in there.

But yes, it does suck for the new buyer and if I was the seller, I'd feel bad about it too. It's likely that the buyer didn't pay much, but that's a matter of perspective. I could lose a few thousand dollars/pounds in my fifties a lot easier than when I was in my twenties.

 

Hmm, I hate to be the cynic here, but in the UK where a dealer has to offer a 3 month warranty by law (I appreciate this is a private sale in the US) this is a well known scam that usually happens when the buyer is at the other end of the country.
Shortly after purchase the(ir) garage reports an expensive repair needed but the buyer will settle for a large lump of cash back from the dealer to save them transporting the car back.
Not saying this is the same but if you feel there might be comeback on you then make sure you see it in person. It certainly sounds very odd that the car would have an unheard of failure with no warning at all. Make sure the garage preserves the freeze frame data.

 

Hmm. Good point. Is he asking for some recompense?

Would be difficult for him to make the case that you knew about something that would fail like this. As always, caveat emptor not caveat venditor for private sales in the US.

 

Question: New enthusiastic owner trying it out. What would likely happen if they had selected/held it in a low gear like 2 and then floored it and accidentally/carelessly let the engine over rev ?
Is there a rev limiter to protect the engine when in gear ?

 

I would have to ask at what RPM did it let go and hope to get a truthful answer. New owner seeing what it would do.

 

The engine does have a lot of miles on it but as others have said the failure that was reported is not common at all in fact since I’ve been reading these forums for the past two years I don’t think I’ve read another post where somebody ventilated the block. And we have people that are doing hard-core racing with stock bottom ends with additional boost and tunes.
ask them for some pictures of the damaged block I want to see what it looks like. If he did ventilate the block I wouldn’t blame yourself. It had to be something he did such as hold it in low gear for a day and a half or a drain the oil out of it And blew it up intentionally. I don’t know what happened but I haven’t seen this engine feel that way in the thousands of posts that I have read The inches do you have Reva limiters so I don’t think you can get over 6100 RPM

 

Alternatively he hit something that put holes in the oil pan - and all the oil then left!

If not then .. "broke down" does not really cover the sort of catastrophic failure of a bottom end failure - I mean 7L of Mobil's finest all over the highway for a start, not to mention the noise, smoke and general explodyness of it.

 

The owner shared some pics. All I could say was 'gruesome'.

They aren't super clear, but I believe this is a rod through the case.

 

with all due respect, modern engines can and do last well beyond the 250,000 mark.

Without needing ANY disassembly, 400,000 to 500,000 miles on a well maintained engine is completely normal.

Engine accessories, like alternators, starters, power brakes and power steering components will come and go, but the power unit of induction system, cylinder heads, and cylinder block are extremely over engineered, even the forced induction of the XKR’s. To wit, the supercharger of the XKR is de-tuned compared to the same induction system used on the Ford Lightning pick-up. Not to mention, the CR, on the XKR’s is not as high as the CR on the XK8’s.

All in all, no reason to expect the 4.0/4.2 XK8’s or the XKR‘s to have any bottom end engine issues before wearing completely out somewhere far north of 500,000 miles. The lack of bottom end issues reported on this forum bears out the rarity of such occurrences.

Without knowing any more than we do, I have to suspect the new owner of manually shifting with a complete disregard of the red line.

Z

 

Unless you knew of a previous problem with the car it's just one of those things. You have no responsibility here.
And as previously mentioned, this type of failure is extremely rare so it just sucks for the buyer.
Sounds like you sold the car at the perfect time.