I’ve seen this story circulating for some time in Greek automotive forums and sounds quite like UL.
This is the story: A whole batch of engines from the Seat (a Spanish Volkswagen knock-off brand) plant for some reason came out of the assembly line without the crankshaft thrust bearings being installed.
The plant technicians knew about the problem, but instead of sending the engines back to have the thrust bearings fitted, they decided to go on and put the defective engines in the cars. The reasoning was that for the majority of drivers the problem would not be apparent until the car would be well out of warranty. Some engines would fail very soon for the few drivers who push the car hard, but it would still be more cost effective to replace those under warranty than sending the whole batch back for dismantling.
Is this story even remotely possible? And how long can an engine last without the thrust bearings?
If a bearing is needed anywhere, and it is missing…well, then something ain’t gonna work. When I read it, I was thinking of the thrust bearing, or throw out bearings, associated with a manual tranny.
Seems incredibly unlikely.
And these bearings are entire sets. The set was missing? Doubt it.
The thrust bearing keeps the crankshaft from moving front-to-back in the engine block. I’d imagine a car missing one would be undrivable if it were a manual transmission (as I imagine a lot of those little throwaway cars are) and unless the Seat warranty is incredibly short, I doubt one with an automatic would make it out of warranty either.
Could the story have been that it was a thrust bearing washer or something? That’s something I could see plausibly making it out warranty but ultimately shortening engine life. I don’t know what Seat’s corporate structure is like, but I really wouldn’t see a modern car company in this day and age risking the backlash that would come from something like that.
When did this supposedly happen? SEAT has actually been owned by Audi/VW since 1990 and their manufacturing plant is supposed to be one of VWs best. They also use a lot of VW engines. In fact, I’m kinda curious if they ever made their own engines because I’m not aware of them using anything other than VWs. But I’m no expert and all the google hits are for seats for VW cars and I’m too lazy to do any more than a cursory google.
Most thrust bearings are a combination bearing, that is thrust and main journal. Either the front or rear. With out a main bearing there would be major problems.
One, and only one, of the crankshaft main bearings has thrust faces on it. The crankshaft has matching machined thrust faces at that location. If the thrust bearing is installed on the wrong journal, it may operate for a while, but the crank will have excessive end play, which will quickly get worse.
I have actually encountered this on a Ford 200cid I-6 my dad paid a “mechanic” to rebuild. It ran for about a month until the end-play became so excessive that the oil seal failed. When he pulled the oil pan off and saw the problem, it is one of the few times I ever heard my dad use strong language.
VAG (the VW Group) shares platforms and engines across all its brands (Bentley, Lamborghini, Skoda, Seat, VW and Audi). The only one of the six that has its own engines is Lamborghini- everything else is shared with everyone else.
The Bentley W12, for example, also appears in the VW Phaeton and Audi A8 as detuned versions.
The last SEAT to use non-VW/Audi-sourced engines was the first generation Ibiza (built until 1993) which used a Fiat engine.
It depends.
Crank thrust bearing come in two flavors. Full circle that are part of a main bearing, and two 1/2 circles that fit in a recess in the block next to a main bearing saddle.
The half circle thrusts are an inferior system. First off you can forget to install them. Secondly they can fall out when they get worn enough.
I have seen engines where they have fallen out. On an automatic the engine makes some funny noises. On a stick, you can get a problem where either the clutch won’t disengage, or like I saw once, you push the clutch in and the fan belt pops off the pulley on the crankshaft. :eek:
I doubt you could get the car out of warranty with missing thrust washers. I would chalk it up to an urban legend.
Do you guys get the one about the coke bottle suspended on a string inside the door of a new car?
Several versions
First is a guy buys a new car, it has a clunk whenever he steps on the gas or the brake. Brings it back to the dealer, and after much fault tracing, the noise is isolated to a door, or a rear fender (always some fairly inaccessible area.
Upon disassembly, a coke bottle is found suspended on a string, put there by some disgruntled auto worker in the plant. Other versions also have instead of a coke bottle, a bolt or a nut on the end of a string.
Another version is a brand new V-8 just doesn’t have quite the oomph it should and runs rough. Again after much fault tracing it is found that one cylinder has zero compression. When the head is removed, it is found that there is no piston or connecting rod installed on that cylinder. A note is taped to the cylinder wall that says Ha Ha!
The idea that a part could be left out of an engine on an assembly line: sure.
The idea that the same part could have been left out of an entire batch of shipped engines: getting pretty unlikely.
The idea that plant management would know of the defect, expend the additional funds to put the known defective engines into perfectly good chassis and send them out into service en masse, expecting somehow that it won’t come back to roost when they all fail: not even remotely credible.
Mangements can be short sighted and ignorant, but this is a *wee bit *over the top for a modern multinational.
For what it’s worth, I remember hearing something about some early Honda Interceptors that were recalled after a process control glitch meant that they left the factory with mis-sized main bearings, but these were engines that had perfectly functional bearings in the engines; the size difference was small enough that the engines could have been used for the lives of the bikes without the owners noticing.