I bought a Seven Type at the end of the year. It was cheap as the 1.8 silvertop engine was noted as having an unidentified tapping noise.

The car had also had a fully ported 1.8 head with Piper cams fitted a few months before*. The owner had also had the rev limited removed from the Alpha managment system.

Anyhow, the 'tap', did not sound like big - or little ends as expected, so I tried replacing the tappets with those from a replacement 1.8 engine I already had - just to chance my luck. No change and nothing gained or lost.

So I took the head off and- it looks like the piston (nearest pulleys) is coming out of the bore, past the head gasket and it is striking the bottom of the head/combustion chamber.

Has anyone come across this before? My thoughts are that either:
the bearing is that far gone, that it is allowing too much piston movement,
or (outside chance), the standard rod has stretched!

Not knowing much about Zetecs, I am assuming that at TDC the pistons are supposed to be flat with the top of the block like a Pinto??


Im going to change the block for the other 1.8 for the time being, using the ARP rod bolts (and fit the 1.8 head to a 2.0 later), but I wanted to see what people thought first. - I cannot see the head being at fault, if it is flat.
So, it must be the piston??