Scrap or keep? 2002 9-5 Aero Auto

[Drac]

Motorvation is already fixing mine. Went there on Wed to drop off my stock ECU, car was already in the air, brand spanking new engine delivered. Hopefully I'll collect today. Baby due on Monday so everything is happening at the same time...

[Norfolk Jim]

2 babies by the sound of it

[paolo]

What a luck! Just 3 weeks after having the car serviced, breaks replaced, engine mount replaced, CPS, BOV and APC proactively changed, etc the engine has given up after only 126k miles - while accelerating it went boom! crunch crunch crunch silence.... According to Motorvation piston number 3 ceased to exist - cheapest option that makes sense (please confirm) is to buy a brand new engine from neobros (£1600) and get it swapped. I was told all in all £2400-2700 for the job.

Since I am sort of emotionally attached to the car, it is in a really good clean condition and it was well cared for, I initially said - fix! Now that I rethought, checked autotrader etc and I can buy a newer 9-5 with not so many miles for about that.

Good question now: should I buy a "new" MY2003-2004 Aero or fix my old banger? How much money is a well cared for 2002 Aero with busted engine worth?

How long have you had the Stage 1 an who was the tuner out of interest?

This is the 3rd busted piston stage 1 Ive heard about recently.......

I'm sure it's all coincidental mind.
P


Isn't £800-1100 a bit excessive for relatively simple job of disconnecting one engine, swapping accessories onto the new one and mounting it in (pretty much labour charges + fluids + oil filter)?

How much would it be to fix just a busted piston/cylinder?

£2700 sounds like more than the car is effectively worth. A lot more in fact...

[sgould]

Any similarity?

http://www.uksaabs.co.uk/UKS/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=92985

[Drac]

Dunno really, the piston in my engine was completely gone - disintegrated. When viewed through the spark plug hole - the crankshaft was seen and that's about it. No sign of piston. Blocked oil jet was also suspected. The spark plug face was also smashed.

Sort of hard to tell, although 500 miles before the catastrophic failure the car was in for a service and compression was perfect (I asked that to be checked - 141psi = 9.65 bar) across all cylinders.

On the other note what I've also seen lately was a relatively high fuel consumption - about 24 mpg combined, although most of my mileage was done on motorway (in relatively heavy traffic though). Leaking injector? Possibly!
Could the Stage1 tuning contribute to the problem? Most certainly - if the programme had bad A/F ratio set. I've done about 15k miles with Stage 1 and it was fine until a week ago. I'm planning to get my own CANUSB interface so I can play around myself (and to switch on the opensid on stock software).

When I bought the car 4 years ago the first thing was to drop the sump and clean the sludge. All regular service from then on using fully synthetic oil (GM and Mobil1).

Anyway, the car is now fixed and at home. Brand new shiny engine in. ECU swapped for the stock 250bhp, newest software uploaded (apparently to help with common problem of failing DI cassette). On the way home (M25 @ 65-70mph) it gave me 35mpg.

The new B235 engines sold by neo are of a latest sort (2006 on)- meaning having the new (2004 on) oil breathing system, and the block heating option! Although the initial plan was to swap the whole system from the old engine, chaps in Motorvation found the service bulletin on how to modify piping so I ended up with the latest greatest and brand new!

All in all it did cost me just a few beers short of £2.4k - that's the new engine, labour, service items (oil, coolant, transmission), bits and pieces.

As to the earlier question about the tuner - it was EMST (Saab guru in Poland). Dunno what he's loaded in - whether it's BSR/Maptun/Nordic/Hirsch based or completely developed from scratch. We tried about 6 different programmes and chose the one that was working best. He was finetuning the software on the fly - checking the A/F ratio and other key parameters. The auto gearbox was also fooled to get 400Nm torque despite the usual limit, as well as speed limiter was raised to 270km/h (168mph). Tried it on autobahn on the way back to the UK, it reached 260km/h (160mph) but I refused to push it further (boot was full, only regular petrol in, middle of the summer, traffic was building up, SWMBO screaming and threatening with a divorce and getting out of a car there and then ).

I generally drive my car like a retired dentist, but like the occassional oomph when needed. You can't sort of use it on M25/M4 in morning and evening traffic or generally around London anyway...

[Drac]

2 babies by the sound of it

SWMBO indeed looks like it was at least 2