9 replies to this topic

[Tomm]

hey,

just been looking through ebay and found a fair few cars for sale and in the description it says bottom end is knocking.. is this a technical abreviation or just a rough description of a noise that can be heard.

bit of a newbie question but it has been on my mind and i thought the best place to as would be here.

thanks! Tomm

[Grayedout]

Bottom end knocking means big end bearings are worn which means a complete engine re-build to fix properly !

[Retro_10s]

^^ what he said ^^

[Big_Adam]

Yep, as said. At minum it means crank out. regrind. near bearings. then putting back together.

[The Matt]

Depends on the car and how knowledgable the seller is. I mean it could be anything in theory.

to say 'bottom end knocking' would usually mean a suspect crank/shells, but it could be badly diagnosed. Could just be something really stupid. You'd need to go and listen to the car and find out.

As an example, had customers come into the garage in the past and say that their engine is knocking at the bottom end, they expect an engine rebuild and it's something daft like the exhaust fouling the bodywork or chassis somewhere.

Expect an engine rebuild though if you do buy one, that way you are expecting the worst and it can only get better if you find something little that is in need of fixing.

[Tomm]

ah thanks guys!

Well erm the car is being sold at a giveaway price, even if i was to decide not to rebuild the enine and sell it again i think i would split it and still make more than what he is asking!

If i was to send the engine to a shop to get repaired how much should i expect to pay?

[Tomf]

Depends what work you would be having done, if you was just going to change the crank and bearings you could send off your crank to be reground and buy some new bearing. If its a 1275 or bigger i would think it would about £150 should cover the crank and bearings, but i guess you could buy a good condition second had crank cheaper then buy new bearing... but then if there is crank damage there could be damage to the bores so these might need to be reground, and then you would need new pistons aswell.....

You would have t strip it down really to see what damage is there...

But i expect i will now be told that every think i have just told you is wrong

[Jordie]

is this a mini engine?

your guess is as good as ours not knowing the engine, whats wrong or what make/model.

If its a mini, you might aswell just buy a new engine/2nd hand recon one.

[biggav]

are they mini's or different types of cars???

Rover K series units had an "inherent Caracteristic" crank shaft rumble and some of the brand new cars even sounded like diesels... only in extreme cases were cars or engines changed and most owners were fobbed off with a free extended warranty... The problems started around 1995 and got worse up until the k-series tooling was changed in 98-99 for the 1.8's in the Rover 75. 1.4 and 1.6 were the worst for it but the engineers claimed there was nothing wrong with the engines exept for a bit of noise.

[Jordie]

Mmmmm, thats all making sense now. I had a rover 416i which had a rattle/rumble to it from the engine.