Are all 1.6 blocks the same

[Peter Palmer]

Hopefully a simple question, are all the 8 valve blocks basically the same, my mate has managed to knacker one of our vans somehow and the bottom end is knocking, I've had it to bits and the shells are in the bottom of the sump now so its finished. I think its possibly the DV6FD engine that we have - the bluehdi 95 1560cc (2017 Dispatch) but will say a DV6C block be ok if I cant find the exact replacement engine, the top end still seems perfect, the cam and followers are like new, I'm not really sure what has happened to it, cant be oil starvation if the top end is still good can it.

For reference the VIN is VF7**************[VIN obfuscated, can be read by forum staff]

[mickthemaverick]

Unfortunately the forum has lost access to the VIN database so I cannot look up your engine. However I would be surprised if all blocks are the same across the range so I'd advise getting the right one based on your engine number and possibly a dealer's help to find the block part number. Having said all that I would think a far cheaper option would be a refurbed engine complete.

[shtu]

ebay breakers seem to be £4-600 for a complete engine, have a trawl on there. Lots of them list the engine code in the description.

[Peter Palmer]

Cant find any engines on there for that sort of price, cheapest I can see for an FD one is about £1200, there is one where the cambelt has snapped for £700 which could be ok but I'm not sure the van is worth repairing for that sort of money.

Its a 2017 dispatch van with practically 200,000 miles on it, as well as the engine it needs a windscreen, new pads and disks all round, new aircon rad, the clutch is practically worn away, the side door has a ding, the front wing has a dint, I cant get the engine light off due to not being able to reprogram the PAT fluid tank and it has run out of MOT.

I've taken the engine out as that cost nothing to do and as suspected the big end bearings are well shot, practically nothing left of them, crank is damaged too. If I was to put a new crank shaft in it (one on ebay for £100) and a set of shells, what are the chances of the actual big ends being damaged as well? Its a lot of work to put it all back together again, what do you reckon, what's it worth scrap?

what I did find was when I took the oil pump off a couple of small roller bearings fell out of it, so I think in the past maybe the cam belt has snapped and a repair job has been done on it and somehow bits of the rollers have found their way into the oil pump, maybe blocking it up, I don't know. Or does the oil pump itself have roller bearings inside it and that is shot/

[mickthemaverick]

Personally Peter, having read your list of other things that need sorting I would suggest it would be more economical overall to scrap the van and spend the potential repair costs together with the scrap value on a lower mileage replacement eg: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/137462319246

[Paul-R]

Goodness, it was such a list of problems I fully expected you to say that it was a scrapper. Fully in agreement with Mick.

[Peter Palmer]

Oh the turbo is on the way out as well, loads of end float in the shaft. I could break it but don't really have much space to put all the stuff I'd take off. You look on ebay and even the adblue tanks second hand are the best part of £200. But do I want to get into the mither of people scamming me trying to return their faulty part which I'm sure will happen.

that van linked to is quite nice but ours is the newer shape one, we had that shape as our last van and it ended up doing over 230,000 before I sold it, it did have a mysterious wobble from it somewhere though that I was never able to get to the bottom of.

[shtu]

Plenty engines at less than £1200, but you need the 3-letter code to know it's the right one.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/377233109680
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/127928752997
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/366442139272

and so on.

With the huge list of stuff you need to fix on that one, you'd probably be better admitting defeat and scrapping it.

[Peter Palmer]

Just to update this thread, thought I'd give a run through of my saga -

Its finally running perfectly again, I think. I took a bit of a hit on the money side of things but its now practically perfect as long as it passes its MOT next week. So what I ended up doing firstly was just throwing a set of shells in it and seeing what happened, it actually ran ok and drove down the road fine but a mile or so later the oil light came back on and it said danger low oil pressure on the screen, went off above idle but didn't sound happy at all. Stripped it down and it had spun a bearing again, even though the crank looked slightly damaged it didn't look bad enough to spin a bearing in a short distance, so maybe the oil pump was the route of all the problems. It was worth a try though for £25 for a set of bearings and £40 for some oil.

Anyway it sat around for a while until I found an engine cheap enough on ebay, managed to get one for £260 in the end although in the description it said it would run on easy start but would cut out when on its own diesel. So that must be an ECU, injector or pump problem right, not the actual engine itself? Wrong, I swapped all the stuff from my engine that did run onto the new engine like the high pressure pump, injectors, EGR valve etc etc. and it still wouldn't run, sounded like it had low compression. So smoke machine down the injector holes and it comes right out of the inlet and exhaust ports. Great, maybe the cam belt had snapped in the past and bent the valves and they just couldn't get it to run again.

So I took the head off (top tip - I found the best way of getting the head bolts out without snapping them is to plug up the oil and water return ports and then use a 16mm hole saw without the pilot drill to drill the washer off the bolt, not all the way through and damage the head but nearly all the way, you can then undo them very easily, yes it creates a mess but if the head is coming off anyway its easy to clean out.)

Once the head was off you could see the valves weren't shutting properly and it wasn't because they were bent, all valves were straight as a die when spun in a drill, it was because they were absolutely covered in crud, especially the inlet ones, the inlet manifold was so full of black gunk I'm surprised it let anything through, so a jet wash out, valves lapped back in, head back on and the cam shaft and followers out of the original engine (just in case a lobe had spun on the new one) and they finally sealed up properly, I haven't got a cylinder pressure tester but with the smoke machine there was absolutely no smoke leakage and it builds up a surprising amount of pressure, enough to blow the balloon out of the hole anyway. Back in again for the fourth time and it fired straight up and run like a new engine, no oil leaks and no water leaks.

I think over all I spent £1400 on the van, but for that I've got a decent engine, new pads and disks all round, new windscreen, new belt and pump, new fuel filter, major service, new head gasket and bolts, a like new turbo and a like new clutch which came with the engine and a second hand PAT fluid tank which managed to get the engine light off at last. I've also got a fair few parts left from the old engine like the block, EGR valve, high pressure pump, cam assembly and a lot more which must be worth something on ebay.

In answer to my original question - are all the 1.6 HDI blocks the same, I think certainly all the 8V blocks are although not too sure about the 16V ones, the only difference from the earlier 8V blocks to mine that I can see is on the earlier ones (the C and D versions) the oil pressure switch is on the left front of the block where as on the later ones its in the oil cooler/filter housing but the later blocks just have a blank screwed into the old oil pressure port. Also my original engine had an oil level sensor and the one I bought didn't but again the one I bought had a blank screwed in so it was just a matter of removing that and fitting my level sensor in. The sumps are bigger on the later engines as well although they look the same fitment so should be a straight swap over, I just left the sump the engine came with in place.

I know this is a bit long winded but it may just help someone out there and if anyone needs any bits I may have something lying around.

[Peter Palmer]

Not too bad considering it was due for the scrappers a couple of months ago.

[Paul-R]

An excellent result to all your hard work. Well done!