Knocking engine, replace or rebuild
 

Hi guys, i was running my car unfortunately low on oil, high revs and also dropped into the wrong gear at one point. Took all the stupid pills that day!!

It loss power so i cruised back to the pits and found loud knocking at low revs.

Few people i have spoken to (including the superb guys at R2 Automotive) say not worth rebuilding as could cost up to £5k, especially if crank is gone. Could be all sorts wrong in there. My gut is that if it was oil changed it would quiet down a lot but anyway certainly needs a rebuild

however a 2nd hand engine is £3k and then once you add garage labour for fitting, consumerables etc you’re going over £4k anyway. So my thinking is if i could definitely get a freshly rebuilt engine for under £5k then that makes more sense. Maybe i could even replace for now and rebuild the old one separately.

looking for some advice as well as lots of ribbing for getting into this situation in the first place!!

Here goes...

Unfortunately, it seems the f20c is a difficult engine to rebuild and there have not been many successful rebuilds.

I’d look for a replacement.

get the spanners out and whip the sump off and have a look.
crank may be ok.
+cylinder wall damage its another story

How low is low, when it comes to the oil level? Normally you’ll get 4.8 litres in there, so what did you have on the dipstick when checked?

As said; the crank might be ok. In which case new pistons and liners might be a (somewhat) cheaper option than a new engine.

Another thing is to remove vtec solenoid <10 mins>and look at the filter for metal and what type of metal if any.

either way you made a very expensive mistake

there are a few who i would trust with rebuild.. a few

bit of oil at the bottom of dipstick probs a few mm from very end of the stick (not the min line).

Any renowned builders in the south?

what use is old engine? Who buys them, just for bits i guess?

cheers for tips above!

You need to understand what the actual damage is before trying to decide on next steps.

this is now the plan, check oil filter, remove sump n have a look around for a rough idea of what is going on. If there’s filings in the oil for example. If it looks bad then will put another engine in rather than stripping down the entire engine n doing measurements to see what needs replacing and whether rebuild would be £5k or £8k!

Lots of metal flakes in the oil! Replacement it is I guess!