A friend of mine at work, was chatting to me this morning about my big end bearing problem, and he has suggested that it may well be possible to change the big end bearings without removing the engine. He said on some engines you can remove the sump and just do the shells one at a time. Does anyone know if this is a possibility on the VR6 engines? Thanks.
Hi mate, yeah the big end bearings can be changed in situ just make sure you look for wear/marks on the crank and i would recommend cleaning out the oil pump pickup while there as it may have picked up some metal material from the worn bearing. It's not actually that bad a job to do really.
If you can't catch a nail in any journal marks, you'll be fine. Bluing and/or scoring indicates oil starvation and new bearings would probably get chewed up fairly quick. Journals 1 and/or 6 are usually the first to go in the VR if the oil level is low during hard cornering. Might be an idea to fit the R32 sump (pump needed too) if you throw it into corners hard quite regularly. It has plastic inserts which act as windage and surge baffles. Works a treat and bolts right onto any 12 or 24V VR6 engine.
Thanks guys, ordered a new set of bearings, so this is my weekend gone, lol. The knocking is very subtle, so I think I have caught it early, hopefully ensuring that the crank will be ok. I'll update after the weekend.
A very good mod as it's a lot shallower and helps to avoid smacking the sump into the ground. This can cause deformation of the oil pump pick up and result in low oil pressure or just a big hole Has to be a mk5 R32 sump, the mk4 R32 sump wont fit.
not only is the mk5 r32 sump shallower it sits further back at the front that makes a big difference in not hitting the ground as you can see from the pictures below the mk4 sumps dont last to long if they hit the ground you can see it's been hitting the front edge for some time before it cracked at the side my car now has a mk5 engine will try and get some pictures of the mk5 spump up as well
YeahI forgot to mention the sump/pump need to come from BUB or BDB engines, thanks guys Yeah the MK5 sump sits slightly above the subframe wishbone bolts, so in theory the s/frame should kiss the ground first, but last winter I smacked my MK5 sump into pack ice pretty hard and it took it like a man They're not as weak as reputed but obviously repeated whacks into tarmac / concrete won't help!
