If your water pump, in it's age, decides to shed a few vanes



And the engine heats up, and causes friction between pistons and cylinder walls, your big end bearing bolts might shear.



Bouncing it's end-cap down off the transmission case



And back up into the next cylinder across.



Causing the engine to sieze hard



I bought it with the seized engine, but it must have made a helluva noise when it happened.

Holy Shizen,
that was done properly then wasn't it

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Dean Hutton's first car was a Mini.

Not much worth salvaging there!

Nice first post by the way

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Too many cars, and too little time.

Wow dude, That looks brutal. Glad it wasn't you in it when it went off... Correct me if I'm wrong guys, but I would imagine if it seized like that at any speed, it would lock the transmission (if you didn't hit the clutch) and be a pretty wild ride? I'm guessing the gearbox/diff would go through a lot of punishment and pretty much be buggered too?

Cheers,

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-Wasabi
1972 Clubman - Daily Driver
1962 850 - EW1 Powered

Thats one of the crappy modern water pumps with the pressed metal blades.

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1969 Cooper "S"
1967 Mini Deluxe
1973 Clubman Van (the fleet spare)
1978 ex 1275 LS ("Wizard" Eaton Supercharged)
2015 HSV GenF GTS(occasional drive & tow car)
2019 MINI F55 Cooper S

I'll also say... nice first post!

Yep that is one of those naaasty water pumps

Don't think I've ever seen an overheating engine do that, though! Makes a cool story all together though

I wonder if someone mixed up big-end caps or something, I'm trying to think what would cause both big-end bolts to snap with so little other damage (in fact those pistons look pretty ok!). Any other pics we can look at?

cheers

Jacob

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'72 Clubman Van - 1022cc, 295 head, 731 cam - Daily Driver
'69 Morris 1100 S - Dinged by a bus, in shed under repair
'64 Morris 1100 - Early 1100, long term project

Whoa........that's impressive.........for all the wrong reasons.

Good luck with the rebuild.

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Rod
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v607/Rodney/

Thats extreme......i like Would have loved to see it eat its self like that, major KABOOM

What revs would it be doin' when it let go? Twisted rods and sheered bolts...
it would've been at full stick.......?

Dam

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It should start like this....

When you get up out of bed

You find the winter winds have blown out the pilot light of your hot water system... It's 5.30am. You know it's going to be a bad day.

Stumbling through the bedroom you stand on one of you wife's bra and one of the hooks punctures through the bottom of your foot

Finally you manage to pull everything together and pickup the mini keys to head off to work.

15 minutes into the trip you notice the temp gauge a little higher and then it shoots up, maybe the voltage stabilizer as fried...

You get on the freeway and get the car up to 100km/h

You decided that today is going to be a good day because you have your mini and it's runing sweet, apart from the pesky voltage stabilizer, but you can stop on the way home and get a new one.

Unknown to you your water pump, in it's age, decides to shed a few vanes

And the engine heats up, and causes friction between pistons and cylinder walls, your big end bearing bolts might shear

Bouncing it's end-cap down off the transmission case

And back up into the next cylinder across

Causing the engine to sieze hard.

The front wheels lock up and you somehow manage to come to a screeching holt.

You get out of the car white as a sheet but calmly ring your wife to bring you a clean pair of jocks......

You're right, that does make it more exciting