help me PLEASE! Twin Cam thrown Rod

Hi, i am new on here, but i needed to know if anyone has ever had this problem and ehat there is to be done about it...

about a month ago i was on the highway doing about 85-90mph. I stopped to pay a toll and when i pressed the accelorator i heard a knocking sound coming from the engine and also noticed a loss of power... so i got off the highway and took it to a shop and they told me a had thrown a rod.

Now from my understanding of how engines work, if you throw a rod, wouldn't it be nearly impossible to drive the car?? because i drove the car for about 20 minutes after the incident.

Also something else he told me was that there was no oil in the car! i was like wtf, because i had just gotten the oil changed ONE week prior to this.

If anyone has any advice/input on this it would be GREATLY appreciated. This car means so much to me, i am 17 and i have over $1500 in modifications done to it, this car is truly bad ass.. being on a tight budget i don't want to buy a new engine if it is not needed.

thanks, cor

if you really had NO oil, talk to the shop manager, i bet that ether they didn't fill it up or didn't tighten the drain bolt or something.

if you really had NO oil, talk to the shop manager, i bet that ether they didn't fill it up or didn't tighten the drain bolt or something.


Actually its not unusual (the oil) I have a 95 sl2 and just after I bought it discovered literally, no oil on the dipstick. The oil for some reason leaks into the engine. There was never oil on the ground. If you are consistant about keeping oil in it you can drive it that way, its costly to repair I was told by a reliable mechanic, they have to open the engine to repair. At this point I blew the engine and since I love, love, love the car I am looking to replace the engine.

The rod isn't completely thrown yet, but it's coming apart on you. My wife's 96 SW2 just had the same thing happen. If you can't do the work yourself, it's going to cost enough that you may as well get a reman engine.

OK.... Listen dude. I race my SW2 1.9 DOHC. I just did the same thing you did to yours. What happened is you did not "throw a rod" You cant. You dont have the kind of rods you can "throw" When someone say "threw a rod" its from the old school. It means you put a pushrod somewhere past a rocker or cam lobe. Since this is an overhead cam engine, you have no pushrods. What you did was slip a main bearing (or several!). It makes a clocking-clacking sound that goes with the RPM's. You can fix it yourself if you dont want it done right. The right way would be to drop the pan. Remove the head. Remove the rod and piston. Replace. This is VERY VERY (did I say VERY) difficult with the egine in the car. What you should do is pull the engine. Pull the crank and all rods and pistons. Take the crank, pistons, and rods down to a machine shop and have the crank ground, grind the rods, and get new pistons. Bottom line is: about 300.00 for all the parts and labor. Not bad considering what happened. If you have a shop do EVERYTHING it will cost ALOT! Go get a book and rent a cherrypicker. You'll be glad you did it yourself. If you can afford it, you should also take the block down and have it rehoned or bored if it needs it. After you do all this, you should get another 100k+ miles from it. Not to mention you will ALOT more power because of the new rings and such.

I advise you not to rebuild that engine. Go to your local wrecking yard and buy a good used motor and have someone change it out. The usual going rate depending on milage is about $500 to $600. for a motor.

"throwing a rod" is referring to the connecting rod, not the pushrods. either way thats not what happened to your car, mostlikely you spun a bearing, either a main or rod bearing. , i would replace it with a junkyard motor.

if the place didnt put oil in your car, it wouldnt have lasted a week. more like 10 minutes.

Check the drain plug, was it still in the pan? "throwing a rod" usally means a bearing going out. But the literal meaning is when the rod comes loose from the crankshaft and exiting the block acommpanied by a loud bang