Yard Art

A friend of mine was digging up a bunch of tree stumps for me about 4 years ago. His John Deere 490E excavator broke the crankshaft into two pieces. It continued to run for about 15 minutes giving him time to park it here. He shut it down and it was all over with. He finally found another engine but a lot of bad luck has come his way since. It is still sitting in the same spot and seems to have become "Yard Art". I have told him many times that I will help him as much as I can to get it running when ever he is ready. He is the nicest guy in the world that has the most bad luck of anyone I know.

Bad luck is often the companion of "grease worms." :-( gm

(quoted from post at 09:39:33 12/20/20) Bad luck is often the companion of "grease worms." :-( gm

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Had the engine in my ford do the same thing I don’t know
how long it was broke but I do know it started running awful
had Just enough time to back it up to the fence and it died

Seems he would have retracted the hydraulic cylinders to keep the shafts out of the weather.

There was one sitting above the mass pike (Grafton) near a house for over 10 years and they moved it last year. I have no clue if there were any problems with it.

(quoted from post at 10:54:06 12/20/20) Seems he would have retracted the hydraulic cylinders to keep the shafts out of the weather.

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Well, I guess in a perfect world the engine would have restarted and then he could have done that.

That reminds me of a Poclain 160 which is a big machine which I drive by regularly. It is in the back yard of a house and only the back of it is visible from all the trees that have grown up around it. There is no access for any sort of large hydraulic equipment to get to it so it appears that it would need to be dis-assembled in order to be removed.

A few years ago I was leaving for vacation with the wife in my 85 F350 6.9 with our camper on the back and it started making a noise. The wife said
it always sounds that way. Well I turned around and drove home, 20 miles. Put it in the garage, pulled the motor put it on the stand pulled the pan. Was looking for a bad rod, all good. Turned the motor backwards and the crank seperated. Broke in half, broke the block. New motor time. But it ran home and into the shop.

Had a Buick V6 one time that broke the crank, still ran just fine but had a deep knock at idle in gear. Tore it down looking for bad bearings, removed the middle cap and there it was, cracked through at an angle.

Good morning, Tom and all: This is irrelevant, but it came to mind from reading others comments. I had a 1958 Buick during 1980's, the hood had a decorative v-shaped groove down the center with a chrome molding. The hood had been repaired, and rubber washers that were supposed to make the thing water-tight were missing. One day, the car sat out during a bad rain storm; then I started it up and noticed a new noise, sounded like a collapsed lifter for a few minutes. after a few miles, I got on the interstate, and as I got up to speed, I heard a bad noise from the engine. I looked in rear view mirror, I could see smoke, and engine parts on the pavement behind me!! Long story short: The defective hood had let rain get through the hood, puddled on air cleaner (which had a depression in top center) and water leaked down through carb into intake manifold. When I started engine, the noise was actually a connecting rod getting bent since water does not compress in cylinder. Consequently, in about ten minutes the whole thing came apart. Inside of engine block was cleaned out: rods, cam shaft, part of block broken, even broke the block where starter attaches (I found my starter lying on pavement).

Dennis M. in W. Tenn.

Sounds like broken crankshafts are more common than a person may think. As I think back, in 1970, I had a '57 Chevy two door wagon. The engine was a 283 bored out to 301. Crank had been turned, all new bearings, cam, pistons, etc. Engine ran good for several months. Then one morning as it was sitting at idle to warm up and head to school, it made a loud clunk and stopped. Immediately. Pulled the pan after school and found that a counter weight on the crank had broken off and wedged between the crank and the block, of course cracking the block.