Hey fordmodders,

I started my EB Ghia up this morning, and the car was idling away on petrol, warming up, when it went "clunk" and died. Engine spins over. I have spark, fuel & compression. As it spins over, it clunks every so often. No metal shavings turning up on the end of the dipstick (yet).

I have not pulled the rocker cover off yet, gotta go to work soon, but I'm considering the possibility that it might have broken the camshaft. Can't hear the timing chain slapping around.

Let's say it has broken the camshaft, that could very well mean the head is warped where the cam sits?

I figure that it is unlikely i broke enough rocker arms to cause it to not run, and if it wasn't a broken cam, it would still be trying to run, even on a few cylinders. A broken aux shaft would stop the dizzy from spinning, or if it was missing teeth I'd get weird spark timing issues, and sometimes firing out the intake & exhaust as it skips teeth.

Anyway, i gotta buzz off to work in my little suzuki, I'll pull the rocker cover off tonight & check it out.

Cheers

ToranaGuy

pull the dizzy cap off too and check that the rotor is still turning around, may have done an auxillary shaft, hopefully not though
possibly dizzy gear??

edit; i just read your post properly , disregard my reply above...

Last edited by XRfairmont67 on Fri Aug 27, 2010 5:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would doubt a broken cam shaft, possibly broken the key off the timing gear? allowing the gear to free spin?

If you have broken the cam, you have some nice mangled valves about now as well, any that were held open will me misshaped from piston collision. could get messy if your right about the broken cam. hope for your sake its something simple.
Dave

I cant remember what the drive on the distributor in a 4l motor looks like, but im hoping like hell for your sake that its just sheared the dowel pin that holds the drive gear in place on the dizzy shaft or something else silly and simple like that...
I cant see it being a cam snapping, I never came across that sort of problem come through our workshop. But there are a few things that can go wrong, the timing chain tensioner may have s**t itself, you may have snapped a chain guide, all of these arent good as they would allow the crank and the cam to turn out of sync and cause things to not work ever again. Im leaning towards the dizzy here, you would be hearing really, really expensive noises going on when your turning it over otherwise. Also, if you have compression in all the cylinders, this tells us that the valves are straight and doing there job, otherwise there would not be compression as this relies on the vlaves opening and closing... Actually, it cant be the dizzy as you have said you have spark..

Thanks for the replies guys.

I did check for spark, and yes i have spark, but there is something i didn't do in relation to checking for spark, when it comes to diagnosing this issue, that i worked out when i spoke with a mechanic today at work. I work @ repco & deal with a lot of mechanics, so got to bounce the issue off a couple of them today.

I didn't check for spark on any other leads than #1. Broken aux shaft will not allow the dizzy to rotate, but it will still spark on #1 if it was there when aux shaft snapped. What i need to do is pull say #5 lead, and check it for spark, or pull the dizzy cap & check the rotor is rotating....

Anyway, if it's the aux shaft this engine is done for. I'm glad i have a spare in the "parts car" i recently bought. I have to work all day tomorrow, so i think i will be removing the engine from the parts car on Sunday, fitting a set of new welsh plugs & dropping it in.

Cheers

ToranaGuy