Just wanting to say goodbye to the SVT world forever!

[96stanggt]

Sorry to hear it man, we've all been there at some point. I reached that point with my old GT and decided to bail out of it and buy a Terminator since it would be so easy/cheap to make the power I wanted and it was strong enough to handle it. I wish you the best of luck, I'm sure you'll love a nice bolt-on/cammed Z....I know I've been dreaming of picking one up lately!

 

[cobrob]

Sorry to hear man. I'm on my third motor possibly fourth and its always a stupid piston issue!

 

[zPipes]

maybe my z06 with have SNAKEATR on the tag :shrug: j/k

haha!! soo wrong, but thso z06 are lovely. sorry to hear about your ride, good luck to you!

 

[mike1284]

now not to be a dick, but how is it fords fault when 2 aftermarket motors popped?

 

[twistedstang]

now not to be a dick, but how is it fords fault when 2 aftermarket motors popped?

I too wondered that but I understand getting frusterated.

 

[mike1284]

I too wondered that but I understand getting frusterated.

i understand that, but blaming svt for a bad egg?

 

[01cobravortech]

Should have bought a Terminator from the beginning. I had a much similar experience with my 01 Cobra. I hate the 99-01 Cobras with a passion because of the crappy motor that Ford put in there, IMHO.

 

[mike1284]

so 99-01 4v's are junk motors?

 

[Orange Stang 04]

so 99-01 4v's are junk motors?

No. They weren't really designed to handle big power, its kind of a roll of a dice when you throw boost at it, but it's usually fine for the most part. I beat on mine pretty hard at about 9lbs of boost on the stock motor and its holding up...knock on wood...

OP - Sorry to hear about all your bad luck, I can't imagine how much blood, sweat and tears you have into that thing, and to have it break on you like that must be tough.

 

[mike1284]

No. They weren't really designed to handle big power, its kind of a roll of a dice when you throw boost at it, but it's usually fine for the most part. I beat on mine pretty hard at about 9lbs of boost on the stock motor and its holding up...knock on wood...

was unaware of that. got a buddy with a '99 with a eaton swap. hope his holds up

 

[Nazman]

Sorry to hear about your loss. I have a few questoins, comments/observations if I may.

1. When you had the very first spun bearing, did you change the oil cooler assembly?

-This is a must happen. With any cathastrophic (SP?) on thse 4Vs you have to change it. This cooler will trap all the particles/fragments circulating in the oil and they are 99.99999999999999% imposible to remove. Then when you run your new motor, these particles/fragments will go back into your new motor and do damage.

2. When you had that UI company build your first forged motor, and it broke, and you found out all the specs being out of wack by a whole bunch and a stock piston being utilized, why didnt you go back to them and procecute them?

3. When your friend build you the 2nd forged motor, did he reused the Cam Bolts? Im willing to bet that he did, and that driver side cam bolt failed (since they are TTY and one time use only) and that is what caused the havoc this time and if he did change them for new units then, they either over or under TQ'd causing the failure. If indeed, it was the cam bolt, then, you can count on most of your valves being bent, chains destroyed and what not. If he did utilized the used cam bolts...:bash:

4. I dont think that it was a rocker since they rarely, very rarely will fail. When they drop and if they lock the cams they will cause havoc as well. They 9 times out of 10 will drop due to improper lash clerances..that means too losse causing the rocker to drop, with low oil pressure, or a bad adjuster.

When you pull the motor, dont go crazy and determine what caused the failure. Pull the valve covers and inspect each and every lobe, follower and adjuster, the cam bolt will be clear if so.

Best of luck and keep us posted.

Naz

 

[VirtualSVT]

Sad to see you go man. Always had a beautiful car.

 

[01_Svt venom]

that sucks dude. good luck with the next car.

 

[burnzilla]

Nothing wrong with calling it quits.
Its Corvette time.

 

[SlowSVT]

Much sadness. The one about the undersized slugs got me baffled. The piston slap should have been apperent right on start-up? If built right failures in these engines are fairly rare. I wouldn't throw bricks at a mod motor. The guy who built it or installed it......that's another story.

 

[Bizarro]

Reading the background of the car...man, I can wish I could say I didn't understand getting fed up with the car.
My 95GT was the same way for me...I kept modding it and tossing money at it and kept having problems....ended up selling it.

I hate the situation for ya, man...

Sad....your car was always one that I would stop and look at in your sig any time you posted....always thought it was a beautiful car....

.

 

[VenomousSVT]

Sorry to hear about your loss. I have a few questoins, comments/observations if I may.

1. When you had the very first spun bearing, did you change the oil cooler assembly?

-This is a must happen. With any cathastrophic (SP?) on thse 4Vs you have to change it. This cooler will trap all the particles/fragments circulating in the oil and they are 99.99999999999999% imposible to remove. Then when you run your new motor, these particles/fragments will go back into your new motor and do damage.

I changed a LOT of things in the motor and specified to swap out everything that needed to be,no matter the cost when the first motor blew. I am not sure if the oil cooler was replaced, and honestly it didnt even cross my mind to specify to them to swap it out, but you are right... it needed to be!

2. When you had that UI company build your first forged motor, and it broke, and you found out all the specs being out of wack by a whole bunch and a stock piston being utilized, why didnt you go back to them and procecute them?

I thought about doing something about it, however with no more than I drive the car it had been 3 years since it was built. The car didnt have that many miles on it, but i wasnt sure after looking at the facts how I had much of a case when the motor was installed for years after the face and ran fine (se we thought) The issue with the second motor was definitely a combination of several things. Not only was the motor built wrong, but my tune was also a little rich. So at cold startup, when the pistons were their smallest, cranking the car with something that was rich down low, it would let fuel wash out the rings. To throw more gas on the fire I didnt drive the car that often, so it may sit for 2 weeks without even cranking it, with that being the case, any protective oil film had run down into the oil pan and it would be a rich tune startup, with pistons that were too small, on a motor that had been sitting for a while.

3. When your friend build you the 2nd forged motor, did he reused the Cam Bolts? Im willing to bet that he did, and that driver side cam bolt failed (since they are TTY and one time use only) and that is what caused the havoc this time and if he did change them for new units then, they either over or under TQ'd causing the failure. If indeed, it was the cam bolt, then, you can count on most of your valves being bent, chains destroyed and what not. If he did utilized the used cam bolts...:bash:

the first thing I thought of was the cam bolts.... but the car still ran and it didnt throw the timing chain at all. We built a mach 1 when I worked at cpracing that broke 2 cam bolts (both new). However even with the mach we did, when the cam bolt failed his didnt bend valves.. maybe we got lucky though. We had the head checked and everything on his was ok.

4. I dont think that it was a rocker since they rarely, very rarely will fail. When they drop and if they lock the cams they will cause havoc as well. They 9 times out of 10 will drop due to improper lash clerances..that means too losse causing the rocker to drop, with low oil pressure, or a bad adjuster.

apparently the rock is an issue on the 03 cars as my mechanic was telling me. I suppose he just related the 2 cars and thought the issue may have been the same. To me, the rocker would be less catastrophic than the cam bolt.

When you pull the motor, dont go crazy and determine what caused the failure. Pull the valve covers and inspect each and every lobe, follower and adjuster, the cam bolt will be clear if so.

Best of luck and keep us posted.

Naz

good advice, I was thiniking about trying to remove the valve cover tonight... not sure how able I am going to be with squeezing it past the brake reservoir, but I am sure it can be done. I just want to look inside and find exactly what happened for myself. I will probably end up fixing this nightmare AGAIN, and gettign it right though. I still intend on selling the car, but I could not see not fixing it right than trying to dump my bs on someone else, not my cup of tea. Karma is a bitch! If it gets sold, the car will be in as good of working order as it could be.

I am just tired of dumping money into this car and am ready for a fresh start.

 

[VenomousSVT]

Much sadness. The one about the undersized slugs got me baffled. The piston slap should have been apperent right on start-up? If built right failures in these engines are fairly rare. I wouldn't throw bricks at a mod motor. The guy who built it or installed it......that's another story.

it was a noisy ass motor when you cranked it cold, but it did quiet down when it warmed up a good bit. Honestly, this was the first forged motor I had ever owned... when I picked up the car from having the first motor being built i mentioned how damn noisy it was to the owner of the shop. He led me to believe that forged motors are just noisy compared to stock motors. I went with his word not knowing any better. It wasnt until i started building 5 liter cars that I realized he was just an asshole.

 

[VenomousSVT]

now not to be a dick, but how is it fords fault when 2 aftermarket motors popped?

it was fords fault when the first motor popped due to an oiling issue. we informed ford of the reason and had full documentation that it was a production issue in the block... they politely told me to get f*cked.

since then there has been a curse on me with that car... no matter what i fix something else fails. Its like having a girlfriend continuously let you down and leave you in a bad spot.... you may still love her, but you will never be happy if you always have to worry what she's really doing 24/7. It would be nice to have peace of mind and confidence in a car for a change. When this last motor got built I told everyone it would blow up again in a matter of time. I was right.

 

[zPipes]

good advice, I was thiniking about trying to remove the valve cover tonight... not sure how able I am going to be with squeezing it past the brake reservoir, but I am sure it can be done.

When I removed mine, I actually had to unbolt the assembly, boo.