rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about five of the worst car engine
designs ever made, now as time goes on things have gotten more complicated they
started simple, in my grandfather's day he was a mechanic who was born in the
late 1800s, the Model T Ford was king, it was a pretty simple vehicle with a
pretty simple engine, and yeah since the metallurgy wasn't as good back then, Hey
the engines need to be overhauled quite a bit, but it was inexpensive many guys
were able to do it, but modern cars we're talking about uber complex machines, if
you want to overhaul a modern engine in the car, you can easily spend anywhere
from four to ten thousand dollars, so it's something you want to avoid at all
costs a bad engine, the Chevy 2.2 liter Ecotec four-cylinder engine, now this
engine was designed with the Germans from Opel helping GM, a relatively
complex designed that put on a lot of horsepower for small engine, so it was an
extremely tightly designed engine, but that led to its downfall that and the
fact that Americans often did not take care of their cars all that well, because
they had massive problems with timing chain failure on those things, I had a
bunch of my customers with them they either towed them in because they didn't
run anymore, or they came in clanging like mad, I'd have to say gee I'm sorry
you know the engine has gone kaput, because the timing chain assemblies all knocking
holes and things, and they just weren't worth the money to repair at the age of
the vehicle, and they just ended up junking them, the biggest design flaw
from what I can understand is that the timing chain tensioner pulley didn't
have enough oil in at idle, so an idle it didn't get enough oil pressure
everything started to come apart after that, if you have overhead cam engines
and you don't get enough oil feeding them, hey they're gonna self-destruct
that's why the older engines actually lasted longer cuz they were pushrod
engines and the cam was in the middle of the engine where there's more oil than
at the very top where if there's an oil supply problem the tops gonna run dry
and the cams are gonna go, and on this overhead cam design what's called the
interference engine, something goes wrong with a cam timing
boom the valves hit the pistons goodbye engine basically, so specially if you're
the type of person that doesn't maintain a car well, change the oil all the time
using quality oil and quality filters, stay away from an Ecotec engine because it's
just flirting with disaster if you don't take care of those really well, now
the next bad engine design is the Audi 1.8 turbocharged four-cylinder engine, now
here again a lot of the problems with this Audi turbo 4 are maintenance related
because there's a big argument now but a lot of people are saying, audi and
Volkswagen, they use these in Volkswagens too same company really Volkswagen owns
them, they didn't tell them that hey they have to use synthetic oil, so a lot of
people use normal oil but they went to the synthetic oil change interval, they
were changing them like every ten thousand miles and sludge built up
inside the engine, these engines were produced from 1997 to 2004 and were in
a ton of Volkswagen and Audi products, it gave them a really bad name especially
since they were turbocharged, turbochargers after all they do is they
ram more air in, so that's the same as increasing the compression pressure
inside the engine cylinders, the more pressure the more sludge and build-up
faster the engines are gonna go out, I've seen tons of either be on their last legs
burning oil like mad knocking, or they just give up the ghost and they lock up
and they don't run anymore, now these 1.8 turbo engines also had
frequent coil pack failure, and so they'd run crappy a lot, now that's not that big
of a deal to a mechanic like me, I just get out my scan and I can see the
coil packs aren't firing and I'd replace them, and since I know those were bad if
customer had problems I just buy all four aftermarket and put them on, and in
this case the aftermarket ones were actually built better than the ones that
Volkswagen Audi put on them in the first place
now the next bad engine as the Chrysler 2.7 liter v6 engine
what a clunker, they so many bad designs it's hard to cover them in a short video like
this, but one of their big ones was the stupid water pump was driven by a timing
chain, and you had to take the whole engine apart and
the crossover pipe of the exhaust system in order to change that stupid water
pump, and it wasn't something you could kind of leave alone because since the
water pump was driven by the timing chain, guess what if that water pump
actually snapped off and the bearing went, there goes the timing chain, Pistons hit
the valves there goes the engine, what a stupid idea
and the old cars hey they I had the fan belt running the water pump on the
outside of the engine, sometimes you could change them in 15-20 minutes, even
the hard ones might have taken an hour or two, but if they broke it didn't
destroy the engine, just overheat you see the temperature gauge go up and you turn the
car off, and they broken on these chrysler engines
boom there goes the engine it's too late then, even a crankcase ventilation
system was designed wrong on this, and a lot of them they let the sludge get into the
engine, then of course that would clog up the engine and they'd lose oil pressure and
the engines would blow, I saw that tons of times and interesting enough the
history of this engine was, one of their guys Francois, he decided that Chrysler
needed a lightweight efficient modern aluminum v6 engine and give Chrysler a
reputation of quality and modern designing, boy did they mess up on that
it gave them a reputation that went down the toilet,
now the cadillac v8-6-4 that could turn the cylinders on and off, activate it or not
activate it, was that a clunker, now sure the electronics back in 1981 when they were
making these things was really lacking for activating and deactivating the
cylinders, they do have a modern version somewhat better than the older one but
still I've got costumes with them and they haven't been happy with them, a lot
of them pay a mechanic to disconnect that system and just go back to a normal
v8 engine, and in the case of this cylinder deactivation engine from 1981
hey it was a throttle body fuel injection it was basic fuel injection,
bad electronics and a basic fuel injection system, those things were
horrible it would mess with their acceleration, making it shut off when it
shouldn't, or not shutting it off when it should, customers of mine that have had those
things, they just ended up hating those cars and
since that fuel injection system was so basic, they had some serious problems of
first when they shut off, they would not have enough fuel and they would run too
lean and then when they turn on, they would run too rich, so you get
herky-jerky motion, I mean you don't buy a v8 engine vehicle to get herky-jerky
motion, it was just a really stupid idea that GM actually produced, now the last
bad engine design I'm talking about today, is the mazda 1.3 liter rotary
engine, basically it was an interesting design that failed, I remember when I was
young mechanic Mazda came out with this cosmos, and they had a little bitty
rotary engine that they said, yeah puts on a lot of power and it can run on any
kind of fuel, but there was real drawback, well more than one, but the main one was
yeah it was a tiny little engine and yeah that little 1.3 liter engine put out
a lot of horsepower, but it got horrendous gas
mileage, I knew guys with these cosmos and they were getting like four or five
miles a gallon in this tiny little car and the real kicker was the seals on
those engines, their rotary engines and they have like a triangular rotor and each
corner there's an apex seal and those seals all wore out, and one of the
biggest things that happened to them was absolutely hilarious, because the seals
didn't work right and gasoline a lot of it got by the seals,
so almost every single one of them when you turn it off you'd wait a few
seconds and you're here bang, the unburned gasoline would get into the
exhaust system and then it would explode and most of them turned into tremendous
oil burners too, one of the reasons was it's actually a design of the vehicle,
they found out that those apex seals would wear out, so they actually had an
oil injection system almost like a two-stroke motor, where they would spray
oil on the engine when you accelerate it so it would lubricate the seals, well then
you're burning oil of course this made them very
very hard to get to pass US emissions and as they aged they
wouldn't pass the emissions anymore because all that burning oil it ruined
the catalytic converters, they kept trying to fix it by changing designs, but
even in the end the rx8 and they had engine failure all the time too, often
around eighty thousand miles the engines will just give up the ghost, and the
older rotary engines mazda had, they used to flood out all the time, I had people
tow them here all the time and the engine was flooded out and I'd have to take the
spark plugs out, dry them and big hullabaloo to get them running again, and
then later they'd flood out again it was just basically a bad designed to put in
a car, these Wankel rotary engines have a great power-to-weight ratio, and you want
to put them in a light aircraft and rebuild the engine all the time, hey they
can be great for that, but for a car you're gonna drive every day down the
road, it's a stupid idea and hopefully no one will ever come back with it again, so
now you know five bad engine designs to stay away from and hey who knows what the
future will bring, maybe they'll make some more like variable compression
engines, or gasoline engines that are self igniting that don't use spark plugs,
they're working on those, but boy they've already got teething problems on the
gasoline ones already from what I've read, so if you never want to miss
another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell!