Will come around as soon as I got transport. The gearbox has gone on my back-up Audi today - that's the replacement box that I put in last year by the way ....

NOT a happy lapin!

Just read the first post, no doubt there will be detonation damge, bent or cracked ring lands, some bore damage, combustion chamber will have suffered a bit, Valve heads maybe slightly bent.

It wont be happy for sure.

Dropped the car off Friday afternoon at a local garage to assess the damage - he's on the spanners today finding out what's up with it. Waiting game now .....

Head gasket! So, (hopefully) the car can be saved - albeit with a LOT of work i.e. engine out, off with it's head, replace all the bits I did last year with cambelt etc! :mad:Final bill estimate - a cool £1000 .... could be worse though!

Getting it back next week hopefully.

* STOP PRESS* One of the valves HAD burnt out - will have to be replaced obviously - and all the others checked - re-seated etc. Another couple of hundred on the bill surely.

Let me get this straight as I can't be bothered to read the whole thread again to be sure.

You leave to go out too late, nearly crashing it 3 times on the way to your girlfriend's because you are driving too fast to make up time, you run it at 1.5bar without a PRV and then come on here complaining about the coop's reliability?

Seriously, do it a favour and buy a Scoob

Yep, that's about the gist of it trappy - except there was only one near miss (with a police car) & one speed trap (the missus has now received her fine for doing 54 in a 40 in her Puma through roadworks which happened later on after the Coupe engine was wrecked). Should be getting it back this week & sorting out a PRV as we speak.

I'm falling back in love with the Coupe again as well, and seeing as it's been such a money pit - I'll keep it as long as I can now. I've learnt a VERY expensive lesson about tuning as well - but I am disappointed that for such a fast car it can't handle being driven hard (as I have absolutely tortured bread & butter cars with no serious side effects).

I considered buying a Scoob last week actually - in place of my Audi - but have decided to keep the old warhorse now.

That's not really true, your car broke down due to the massive boost it was running. Any turbo'd car will fail after a while with 50% more boost than standard without some form of extra cooling or decent mapping. Keep it at a sensible 1.1 or perhaps 1.2 bar and you will be able to drive it hard without breaking down all the time!

I am amazed at the ammount of people on this thread that are blaming the boost level for issues. You can run 1.3 bar on a car with a chip and if the fuelling is out you can blow a piston - 1.5 is pushing it, but with the fuelling right then for road blats it should be fine if the engine is in good nick.

Was the fuelling on the car checked on a rolling road (as well as for detonation)? The boost has to be matched to the fuelling you can't blame one or another (taking into account that 2 bar will break a standard piston ring...)

Hindsight is a wonderful thing peeps! Will treat 'er like a virgin once I get her back I can tell you - and OFF the boost until the PRV is safely on & it's been rolling road-ed for the fuelling!

Engine is a healthy 3 bar & no excessive oil usage either.

I suspect that if I'd chipped a 944 Turbo, it would have held together a bit better (major components are good for 500bhp so I'm told!) - shame it looks as 80s as a red leather jacket!

I wouldn't bank on it, I went on a rolling road day with lots of modified 944 Turbos in attendance, they all struggled to hit 300bhp - and some had spent a fortune

I have ridden in a supposedly "high power" 944 Turbo, it didnt feel quick.

I've also seen one in an oily mess on a trackday at silverstone - not sure what the issue was though. There is nothing fragile about the 20vt engine - it's the other bits of coupes that are a pain, however if you are going to tune any turbo car then you need to know what you are doing and not cut any corners with both effort and cash, if you do then dont blame the engine when it does not last. Any forced induction engine will blow a piston (even if it is forged) if the mapping is badly out running low boost. The obvious assumption is that the engine could not take the boost and is therefore fragile - which is not true. You can't take an engine and generalize that you can run 2 bar of boost safely (or say that the standard internals are good for a specific level of power), as there are other factors to consider.

Well that's me told - good & valid points by everyone. The mistake I made was that I put the GTEC1 chip in as I received it, thinking (as I wasn't told differently at the time) that it was already pre-set to not overboost and/or be mapped to the correct fuelling. I will be taking steps to prevent any future re-occurrence of this type of thing.

Anybody able to lend me the £1200+ quid to fix the engine then?

MODERATOR - can we lock this thread now please.

Okay