Yep, that's right.. After convincing a buddy that these things are hell to kill he bought it, and it died.. THe vehicle in question is an '85 300TDT (Wagon) Sporting about 237,000 miles.. Well kept it seemed other than a little rust on the rear wheel wells.. The darned thing ran tip top.. Power & economy was right up to snuff.. Smooth, Quiet, No leaks, started great.. Friday night a group of is were off to dinner, just accelerated onto the highway and backed off to cruise at 70mph.. Then it chattered twice and POOF, loss of power and huge plume of smoke.. Pulled off the road shut her down and called AAA for the tow.. The response from the AAA operator and the tow guy were both along the lines of "How in the heck did you blow one of those up?"
Enjoy:
#3 Combustion Chamber
#5 Combustion Chamber
#3 Exhaust Valve
#3 Piston
I'd say either the injectors were shot, or the PO waited too long to replace them.. They look fairly clean like they have been replaced at some point so I'm guessing the latter as it ran excellent till this....
#3 chamber blew apart and toasted the #3 exhaust valve.. Piston looks unscathed.. I haven't gotten the turbo apart yet, but I fear it's crap now as well (Lots of oil where there shouldn't have been).. #5 cyl looks okay other than the chunk missing from the chamber..
I saw one of those blow up once. I was driving my Jeep Cherokee on I-5 and an old 300D next to me started smoking real bad, made a horrible racket, then I saw a connecting rod go flying past my passenger window. I'm not kidding, what was left of the connecting rod actually shot through the engine and was launched into the air. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen on the road and I've spent a lot of time on Mexican highways.
I'm sure the engine would have gone another 200,000 miles if the owner was actually trying to keep it alive.
Neat!!! IF only you could have had a video camera ready for that one! I really expected to find a valve head jambed in a piston, or half a piston missing on this one.. I guess he was lucky...
I finally got the hair dryer disected on this one.. I think it lived.. No signs of anything contacting the housing or the wheels
We had one of those blow the core out of a glow plug on the way up a hill.
Shoved the core back in, wedged it w/ a block of wood on the oil filter housing, and limped home.
Doesn't look like yours fared so well.
valve head peeking out, just to say "hi"!
this rods almost straight enough to use. lol. notice the cracks in the piston? and the notch already there for the oil squirter!
Another picture (better) of the rod, after losing the valve. i cant believe it bent so much, but didnt hurt the crank at all.
and finally, a picture of the head and all that fun stuff.. i wonder what the guy was thinking when this happened?
sorry for the threadjack brett, just wanted to share my wall hangers with the world!
Not a problem.. Carnage pics are always fun.. Even moreso when they are not yours! Something like that is what I was expecting to find in this Benz.. Luck prevailed so far.. What the block damaged in that blowout? I had an 84 Jetta TD drop a valve and so similar things.. Not a friggen mark on the cylinder..
tore the engine down to a bare block, crank still turned wonderfully. extracted that mangled piston/rod, inspected the cylinder, had a TINY score that i couldnt catch a finger nail on.. honed all the cylinders, went down to grandpas and grabbed a 1.5 piston/rod/rings from some unknown engine.. threw it together.. its sitting in my bedroom. its the last engine i had in my black rabbit. i put probably 15k miles on it in that car after i put it back together.
usually when something gets this mangled, the rest of the engine is toast too.
this is almost as bad as your crack-addicted 11mm block..
Well, it appears that the engine is litterally "bullet proof", but that doesn't mean that *** can happen. If that had been a VW diesel (as you can see from the pics, and I have seen many times), there's usually no option short of a full rebuild, which usually doesn't make sense because the head is so busted up....
Shucks, and here I thought I'd get to see pics of R.O.R. and ex-forum member OM617 beating the crap out of each other...
i would pay money to see that..