Jakes wrote:What caused the conrod to hit the block, the milaege are still low on the engine.
Hi jakes,
We are as confused as anyone. It started when we went down to St Lucia and I filled up at Melmoth. Everything was fine up to a small pass just outside Melmoth where I hit a ditch in middle of the highway where roadworks was going on. There are two up and two down lanes but in the middle of the two down lanes, a piece of the tar were removed all along where the white "stippel lyn" ought to be. It is about the width of a tire but I quess about 10cm deep. Traffic were quite hectic at that stage and I was towing a 6vt Trailer. I landed up in trhe right hand lane and went along a blind bent when the right hand lane were suddenly being blocked up and the road became a single lane. I had to change lanes quickly and went through the ditch with a heavy thump.(OME suspension a bit harsh on a SWB) My engine stalled immediatly. With the power steering off and at a downslope, I had to keep my wits in that traffic to reach a place where I can leave the road fairly safely. Lucky for me, we went down with my friend and his family. he is a Merc/Jeep/Honda fundi and he stopped behand me. We looked the engine over but could not find any visible damages. The tempreture were still normal, the engine fairly cool, water and oil levels fine. We started the engine again but it misfired a bit and did not want to idle. If I kept the revvs above 1000 rpms, it went fine but dies immeadiatly under that. As it was not far from Empangeni, we decided to move along, just making sure to keep the revvs up above 1000rpm's
This remains the same and on the first day avalaible, I took it down to Mitsubishi in Empangeni and had it looked at. They ran a test on it and reported a damage boost sensor. As they did not have spares available, I asked them if I may use the vehicle as it is without possible damage to the engine, and they confirmed that nothing can go wrong and that I may proceed back home and have it checked there. We returned and before Vryheid I found that the engine was running normal again. No excess smoke and it was idling as new. No power loss, nothing. I filled up in Vryheid and from there back home it runned like a brand new Pajero. At home I used it for a couple of drives down town, early morning cold Free State starts, without any hassles. At that stage we became sure that this might have had something to do with possible contaminated diesel taken in at Melmoth. The next day I took it for about a 175km drive. About halfway back, just outside Vredefort, there were just a sickening whossss sound and when I looked in the rearview mirror, I could see smoke and oil on the road. I pulled of immediatly just in time to see my almost new 10lt of Caltex Delo 400 running onto the ground. It reminded me of a Kudu's throat being slid to have it bleed out. In the block and sump were gusting holes the size of my fist. I picked up pieces of engine block all along the 70 meters from where it started up to where I came to a standstill.
At this stage I've only had the engine removed but not opened up. I had to find a replacement first. My guess is a seized no 4 piston due to overfeuling, perhaps caused by a defective or blocked injector. What exactly happend when I hit that ditch, I really do not know.