Further to the above, has anyone on here ever pulled a piston out of the V6 engine?
Is it possible to do the job by just pulling the sump and head off, or does it require the whole engine/gearbox to come out?

Just trying to weigh up options of new engine vs rebuild, and garage vs me and a mechanic ...

Thanks for the advice Teenmal, I'll give that a try. Presumably the proceedure would be to disconnect each HT lead in turn and fire her up, and when the noise goes, i'm on the cylinder with the problem? only thing is, if it truly is piston 'slap', rather than the noise of the gases escaping from ...

So as a follow on from my previous post, and after 2,500km of happy motoring in between, the 'tappet noise' I was experiencing has been diagnosed as possible piston skirt/ring cracking... recently started getting a hideous misfire when warm, and some blue smoke. I suspect the next step will be to ...

Our '99 V6 has been noisy since we bought it 4 months ago... starts from cold outrageously noisy, and only quietens down slightly once it warms up. Otherwise runs like a dream. It has a Romano LPG conversion, with FlashLube (perhaps LPG conversions are more prone?). Having taken the cam covers off a ...