Engine's toast.......

[dsfelton]

Well, I think I just became another statistic:cuss:. I was driving over to a friend's house to put on my new brake lines when it all happened. I hadn't gotten into the boost all day. I just putted to work and then over to install the brake lines. I started the car to reposition it and the motor sounded horrible. The car wouldn't idle and there was a loud knocking sound coming from was sounded like the bottom end of the passenger side. After doing a compression test the #4 cylinder had 0 compression. All other cylinders were fine ranging from 150-160. I know that these cars are prone for #7-8 going bad, but it looks like I'm the odd ball. The car only has 37k on it and I don't abuse the car so I am kind of baffled about the whole thing:shrug:. I never do WOT 5th gear pulls and since I've owned it the car has never seen the track. The motor damage is being assessed and depending on what's all f*#%ked up will decide on which route i am going to take to get it fixed. I'm guessing that I'll end up with a built short block and do a little massaging to the heads. I'm bummed the cars broke, but she'll be back better than ever in 3-4 weeks. I'll keep you guys posted and let you know exactly what let go in the motor.

 

[silverbullit02]

that blows man rebuild bigger and badder:beer:

 

[mike302]

Damn that sucks, who tuned your car?

Good Luck with the build I'm sure it's going to be better!!!

 

[divided]

That sucks to hear man.

 

[dsfelton]

ST Motorsports in San Bernardino tuned the car. The tune was spot on so I don't think it was the tune. I had it tuned at 17#. The A/F was 11.2-11.4 w/18* of timing on 91 octane. I have only had the car for 4 months. I think the damage was done before I bought the car. The owner before me had it tuned at 20# on 93 octane in Florida. The previous owner said the tune was 17* of timing and the A/F was 11.7-11.8. I thought the car was in great shape when I bought it, and I had it retuned and droped the boost to 17# after I bought it. I really don't know where it went wrong:shrug:.

 

[04CobraMatt]

ST Motorsports in San Bernardino tuned the car. The tune was spot on so I don't think it was the tune. I had it tuned at 17#. The A/F was 11.2-11.4 w/18* of timing on 91 octane. I have only had the car for 4 months. I think the damage was done before I bought the car. The owner before me had it tuned at 20# on 93 octane in Florida. The previous owner said the tune was 17* of timing and the A/F was 11.7-11.8. I thought the car was in great shape when I bought it, and I had it retuned and droped the boost to 17# after I bought it. I really don't know where it went wrong:shrug:.

20 ~ 17psi of boost is what went wrong. Just my guess, these engines are strong but once you get upto that boost level its borrowed time. Some are luckier then others.

could of also been a bad tank of gas.

 

[JedWele]

Kinda of curious to what you find out since you were not driving it hard when it happend.

 

[dsfelton]

20 ~ 17psi of boost is what went wrong. Just my guess, these engines are strong but once you get upto that boost level its borrowed time. Some are luckier then others.

could of also been a bad tank of gas.

Yea I thought that these cars were good for 17#, but I guess not. I guess it could have been a bad tank of gas, but I fill up at the same station and only use shell gas.

Since I am looking for longevity out of my new motor what is a safe boost level to run on these motors with a built bottom end and still retain DD reliabilty? Money doesn't grow on a trees for me and I can't afford for this to happen again anytime soon. Besides the car is an occasional DD.

 

[dsfelton]

Kinda of curious to what you find out since you were not driving it hard when it happend.

Yea I'm curious as well. You would think that if something happen earlier I would have known. The crazy thing is that the car drove fine all the way over there and the motor showed the first sign of trouble when I started it to reposition the car in the driveway. After doing the compression check I quirted a little bit of oil in the #4 cylinder to check the rings. Usually if the rings go bad you can at least pick up 10 to 20 psi, but it was still zero. So my guess is that the rings are still holding up but who knows. I'll find out by next weekend and keep everybody posted on what I find out.

 

[SciFiHiFi]

are you going with a short block or rebuilding yourself?

 

[Silverboost]

running 19-20 psi is not running on borrowed time. As long as you have a good tune, good gas, and plenty of fuel you will be fine. I would suspect that something was wrong with the tune or you got bad gas. But it could be a lot of other things. I vacuum hose coming off could cause an engine to go.

 

[dsfelton]

are you going with a short block or rebuilding yourself?

A guy that I know is building the motor for me. He is a very reputable mechanic in the area that worked for MMR. Rebuilding it myself would be a little out of my league. How much I end up doing really depends on whats wrong with the car.

 

[grnenvy]

Hmm

I agree with Silverboost 100%

running 19-20 psi is not running on borrowed time. As long as you have a good tune, good gas, and plenty of fuel you will be fine. I would suspect that something was wrong with the tune or you got bad gas. But it could be a lot of other things. I vacuum hose coming off could cause an engine to go.

 

[01cobravortech]

You could have a simple mechanical failure. Not all motor failures are due to tune related issues. The piston in that cylinder could have had some manufacturing flaws. It can happen.

 

[wjurls]

My bet would be a valve problem and not a short block issue. Strange for it to happen to #4 and not #7 or #8 but for it to suddenly go while gently tooling down the road sounds like a sunken valve seat to me. If so, you are in luck, because a passenger side head can be changed over the fender if you have balls. Are you able to do a leak down test to isolate it?

 

[camp upshur]

Has Adam had any comment? He's a pretty sharp guy. Good luck, keep us posted.

 

[SciFiHiFi]

A guy that I know is building the motor for me. He is a very reputable mechanic in the area that worked for MMR. Rebuilding it myself would be a little out of my league. How much I end up doing really depends on whats wrong with the car.

Does he have his own shop in so cal? I have a bad motor on my hands too.

 

[dsfelton]

My bet would be a valve problem and not a short block issue. Strange for it to happen to #4 and not #7 or #8 but for it to suddenly go while gently tooling down the road sounds like a sunken valve seat to me. If so, you are in luck, because a passenger side head can be changed over the fender if you have balls. Are you able to do a leak down test to isolate it?

That's what I'm hoping for. If it's a valve problem then I'll just cam it and rebuild the heads. No, I didn't perform a leak down test. I already dropped the car off. That's the first thing that he's going to do though.

 

[dsfelton]

Has Adam had any comment? He's a pretty sharp guy. Good luck, keep us posted.

He said the tune looked good. He also said that it could've been a number of things. If the piston is bad more than likely it leaned out somewhere. I should know the cause of failure by the end of this weekend. I wish I had installed a wideband A/F and I would have known for sure.

 

[dsfelton]

Does he have his own shop in so cal? I have a bad motor on my hands too.

He's doing it on the side at his house. I'll talk to him and see if he's interested in more business. It'll save you some money and he does great work from what I've heard.