My own fault - it was rattling like a diesel before it let go on 3 cylinders - not a great pic but there's actually 5 holes in the block from continually over revving the engine. It put up a lot of abuse for an almost 30 year old original 1.4 litre. I'm not proud of it and it's a constant reminder as Dad likes to point it out to me every time he catches me doing something that I should know better about...
Realistically I should have done something about it before it came to this. The dieseling noise was the big ends stretching - we had another engine that could have replaced this one in the mean time... alas, the car's gone now anyway.
I hope you don't learn the hard way like I have - that's the reason why I might come over as being a bit harsh on you and how you tell us you treat your vehicle...
Regards
Bennie
