I was driving my LS to work on Monday morning around 6:00am when I heard a ticking sound for about 10 seconds and then the motor went off key.

I had just changed down to third gear to go left on a roundabout and when the engine lost power and sounded bloody horrible. As I wasn't that far from work, I nursed it along but whenever I went to 4th gear, it would just about stop but went sort of ok in 3rd.

My first thought was a valve had gone and I was right. Broke an exhaust valve just below the top of the valve spring. It hit the piston but didn't do any damage to it but it did bend the valve shaft into a nice "S" bend.

Lucky I have a mate that is a mechanic and does extra work from his home, so he has it now.

Oooh, that sounds nasty

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Dean Hutton's first car was a Mini.

painful. Hope it gets sorted quickly for you

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Nice souvenir for the mantlepiece!

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1967 Cooper S - new front bearings to do.
1965 Cooper S shell - Slow progress. No time or money!
1966 Deluxe- next rustoration!
Mk 2 & XJ6 Jags. Less said the better.

Very lucky it did no further damage.

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Too many cars, and too little time.

OFFERINGS TO THE GOD OF SPEED

-Cam

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IS NOW BACK ONLINE AFTER SOMETIME..... SORRY TO ALL, FOR NOT REPLYING TO PM'S!!

smart to take it easy and pull it off the road as soon as loss of power, or noises start appearing that werent there before. Even if there is damage then there is less damage.

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Aussie Leyland, Aussie Factory, Aussie Mini S.

My wife dropped a valve in a Nissan ute. Same thing - head snapped off but before she even got it off the road terrible things happened.

The head was alloy (as are the pistons) and the combustion chamber was chewed up, the piston had hunks out of it and the most suprising thing was the spark plug electrode end sticking into chamber was almost cut in half as though an angle grinder was used.

Although that was in the space of about fifty feet.

You are incrediblely lucky

Mike

I dropped a valve in the old HQ race car at Oran Park once during a qualifying session.
The valve broke around the top groove. It hit the piston and popped back up and stayed there. There was just a slight bend in the valve holding it there. It just took a poke with a screw driver to poke it out.
A hour later I had another head on it and did the race.

At another meeting I stripped the brand new timing gears and slightly bent all the valves.

Bet that was after you put bolts in the neck of the camshaft to stop the camshaft snapping.

I used to help Peter Dane and learnt a lot about 202's

Mike

No, it was because I didn't run the new gears in for long enough before giving it full power.
I learned a lot of rules when racing a Holden.
New bits need bedding in.
New bits break because they have never been tested.
Never start a race with new bits.

I never broke a cam and I never fitted the strenghening bolt. I guess I was lucky or not trying hard enough.
It was quite funny, they only started breaking cams when they allowed avgas.
Avgas meant higher compression which led to more power and higher revs which put the engine into a vibration period which broke the cam.
When they run Super petrol nobody broke a cam (except some Victorians that were cheating by using avgas!)
So instead of returning to Super they allowed an endless string of modifications to fix the problems.

Peter Dane was great. He did everything right.
The secret was not to do a couple of thing right, it was to do everything right. Peter Dane did a first class job.

I worked with Keith Davison for a few years and we built many, many 202s. He also raced a HQ, a very quick one & he did a lot of the engine development for the series. A top bloke with a welth of knowlage.

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Have a Nice Day.
If already having a nice day please disregard.

Yes he and Charlie Winecompany Name (dementia setting in).

I was with him (Peter) at one race meeting and he was being accused of cheating and he simply said to them "there is the car pull it to pieces, find the cheating" "just put it back together when you finish" and then walked away. However, there were some things.

Mike

Charlie D'Aquino. He was a nice bloke.

There was a Rex D'Aquino that had the wine business on Bathurst Road in Orange ( Just down from where I worked at CBN 8 )

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Dave K.
1979 Moke Californian + 1981 'Coke' Moke