blown engine 3.6 manual

Head gaskets can fail in various ways, you don't necessarily get water in the oil.

Sometimes you can get water into a cylinder, in which case lots of white smoke. Other times they can blow from combustion chamber into coolant circuit, in which case pressurised cooling system. Other times they can simply fail on the oil circuit side, in which case you get a oil leak between head and block.

The AJ6 doesn't have a reputation for rings/piston failures. Besides, such failure would not occur suddenly. Head gasket failure is a known failure mode for this engine, but I'm not quite sure what goes wrong. I had a 4.0 once which was leaking oil between head and block, for instance.

However for the cost of repairing it, you could be as well to get a known good unit, the AJ6's are very cheap to buy as there is practically zero 2nd hand demand for them. I have a very reliable contact who is extremely reasonable on price, pm me if you would like his contact details.

Dear Phil ,

such smoke and oil every where is not only a head gasket but most probably piston rings , and may be both too, head gasket causes oil to get mixed with water , so if you check your radiator water and see traces of oil in it so it's most likely to be a head gasket too .

but i would go for piston ring which means and engine overhaul and a lot of money !


Hope that helps, sorry for the bad news,
if i were you i would run it for a while first and see if the symptoms are gone ,you can be lucky and it would only be a problem of some oil slipped into the combustion chamber due to long park time ..


good luck
Mike

hi everyone, long story short,my xj-s 3.6 m 1986(ok cond) has i think just droped its engine, after sitting for a month for general tidy up etc for mot started with new bat roared back into life with huge cloud of white smoke and spatered oil over wall, garden plants, pets and house. i hope i'm wrong but could be head gasket at least most likely engine. i've not had car long,75000 mls she had been left out for over a year after failing mot(brakes) with last owner, i got her very cheap as its been a dream since i was young to own an xj-s any help or info would be most welcome. i realy don't want to even think about braking or scraping her but only have limited cash flow should i give her up and look for a replacement or repair.phil ayrshire