Hi.

I have a buddy, who has the same Fabia I have: 1.4MPi 50 kW. He had a problem that his cooling liquid is disappearing somewhere. We busted up the engine to see and OH MY! Coolant had somehow mixed with oil. We removed the upper block to see the gasket but it wasn't that bad. He tried to clean up the piston heads because they were pretty dirty and one more "OH MY" happened: the piston casing was almost free. And as soon as we touched it, it came loose and all of the coolant fell down to oil pan. Luckily we drained oil before we started working. Tho, it wasn't oil anymore. Was more like very liquid chocolate.

Anyways, I believe the loose piston casing was the bad guy here. It allowed oil to mix with water and almost screwed up the engine. Now it'll take me a long time to get the parts I need.

Sounds painful - but I guess you got to it before it killed your engine fortunately

****!

I just learned that we need to remove engine from engine bay and take it apart almost totally to reattach the piston casing. I mean, I need to remove the piston but I can't reach it unless I remove the engine. PAAIN!!!

Good thing we're both pretty handy but it'll take a week for parts to arrive.

The 8 valve is a wet linered engine, which means that on no account do you turn the engine with the head removed without the liners clamped down. The liners are supposed to be 'loose' and are held in place with the head. When re-assembling you need to ensure that the amount that the liners protrude above the block is within the specified tolerance, you adjust them by placing shims at their base. The pistons come out from below and are fitted from the top, and you will need a piston ring compressor. Whilst the hydraulic tappets are accessible, you will need to squeeze them carefully in a vice (use jaw protectors to save them getting marked) to displace any oil within them, if the oil in them is coolant contaminted it is best to replace the affected ones.

Did you check first that the coolant wasn't getting lost by leaking from the radiatior fan thermo switch?

Yea, the coolant definitely had access to oil pan somehow. No leaks anywhere else.

I didn't turn the engine after I removed the head. It was loose when touching with hand although it didn't seem to let water flow through. After I moved it, water fell to oil pan. Other casings are solid.

Shim is that very thin coppe/bronze band that was around piston casing? It seemed a bit lumpy - somehow damaged.

Yes. thats a shim and it sounds like the cause of your problem. You can use large washers as liner clamps held in wth the head bolts with suitable spacers.

Woot! Improvements. By some miracle we got new gaskets and piston shims today. Happy

And by another miracle I was able to reapply piston casing without removing piston. Just needed some ingeniuity. So, we built up the engine today but I don't know if it holds liquid yet because we quite didn't finish it and we didn't put in the life-support fluids.

I think that we may have messed up the valve timings. Atleast my friend thinks so. Any help on setting them correct IF they happen to be messed up?

Other than that liquid diarrhea, the engine is in mint order. Piston casings and piston rings have absolutely no signs of wear, fuel injectors looked like new, piston heads look good, valves are clean except for 4th cylinder ones, because block gasket was a bit weak and let some fluids in cylinder. Nothing too bad though. Will replace spark plugs, they've been on longer than they should have been. Btw, that engine has done 80k miles