The easiest wat to tell for sure whether you dropped a sleeve is to feel the cylinder wall. There will be a ridge all the way around the cylinder where the top of the liner is. But from looking at the pictures it appears the liner has dropped. The busted up piston is just icing on the cake.

 

So assuming the sleeve has dropped, even though I have no white smoke when it first cranks up and am not loosing coolant at all, the engine is toast?

 

As long as there is no damage to the block itself around the sleeve and also assuming those nasty metal bits did not do any other damage then you could have it re-sleeved and rebuilt. As far as if it is just cheaper to buy a rebuilt engine from say roverland parts, I'm not sure. I know around here there is an old school machinist/engine builder that it would be cheaper for me to get it rebuilt but that depends on your area and who you know.

 

The liners in our engines are pressure fitted in place, so once it starts to move it could easily drop all the way in no time.

 

I located another engine, the guy says car hit a tree, he started parting it out but hasn't touched the engine, wants $500 for it, it has 7x,xxx miles on it.

What are the chances the block is cracked from the head on collision, i just need the block, nothing else.

 

Good deal even if it needs some work,

 

Wow. That's some nasty detonation. The p.o. had obviously been running low octane gas for quite a while. What does the head look like? Hard to imagine that the chamber above both cylinder 5 & 7 didn't sustain damage as the fragment got blown back into the intake. A resleeve, machine work, head job (both sides), &new pistons. No way I'd even entertain a rebuild. Just start searching for full motor. There should still be a healthy supply of recently clunkered. Too bad you're not local. This yard has 3 motors they are trying to unload.

http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/pts/1450578022.html

 

Was the head badly damaged? How would the particles get in the plenum? The inlet valve is primarily open on the Intake and a little bit of the compression stroke. So did something fall into the manifold at some point and what kind of material is it? This is a dry liner design so even if you lost a sleeve coolant would not necessarill leak unless the head gasket had been damaged. $500!! I think you had better have a budget meeting

 

What do you guys mean a "Dropped Sleeve"?? I am engine savy, not so much with Rovers but I cant figure out what your talking about dropping a sleeve?? ;-)

 

Our blocks are aluminum with steel piston sleeves pressed into them - since combustion in a lined aluminum block would melt the chamber. When those sleeves separate from their host aluminum block, then they have "slipped"; exposing the cooling channels in the block to either the combustion chambers, the outside world, or both. In any event, catastrophic motor failure.

In an iron block, the block receives steel surfaced linings, that for all intents and purposes, are part of the block itself. The metallurgical structure of the block and lining don't lend themselves to separation as a result of the relative low levels of heat produced during combustion, when considering the melting point of the 2 metals involved - iron & steel.