I think I had a lucky escape

Coming home Saturday night doing around 50mph on a straight level part of the road and suddenly there was a bit of a bang from behind and then a horrible grinding graunching noise like a bearing had suddenly collapsed. At first I thought the header tank cap had blown off or a hose but that didn't explain the noise and the temp was fine. Luckily we were close to home so I tiddled along and parked up.

Next day I was working so I asked my son to take a look for me and we put Ruby in the garage. The grinding scraping noise was if anything worse now and we decided it was coming from the top of the engine near the VVC pulleys so I left him to take a look and fearing the worst went to work.

A couple of hours later I got a call from him and the problem was in fact very simple. A bolt which should have been holding the VVC pulley cover to the head had come loose and was rattling around in the enclosure and must have been trapped between one of the pulleys and the side cover.

I can only think we missed tightening it up properly when we replaced the head gasket but I think we were very lucky it didn't either break the belt or jam the pulley, either way it could have been a badly damaged engine.

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