This morning I convoyed down to Des Moines with @DoughtCom for tuning! It was kind of crazy we both had the same tuning date planned and we were able to get back to back spots. It was apparently swapped GC day at Boosted Performance Tuning with mine, Shawn's, and another really clean swapped GC from Kansas City that was up after us. The car exceeded my expectations. I was going to really be happy with anything north of 450whp. It put down 400/381 on 91 at 20psi and 505/489 on e85 at 24psi! THe car was tuned around e60 so it'll even make a bit more power with some higher ethanol content. I am super happy with the results! The car is running great and is now an absolute blast to drive! A few pictures from the day and a dyno video below
Wellllll, that was a fun day while it lasted. Last night I noticed my AOS vent line spitting oil. Compression test showed cylinder 2 down to 60psi. The other 3 are around 120psi. On the way home from the tune I did a 3rd gear pull and it hit fuel cut at like 7k RPM and the car thew a CEL - Boost Limit Exceeded. I'm guessing this is what killed it. The car still pulls hard and I probably wouldn't have even known if I hadn't seen the oil and then checked the compression. I still can't say what the cause was for sure, but still investigating. Tuner says all the dyno logs and the logs I sent him once I got home all look good/normal. AFR's looked normal as well. I'm probably going to yank the motor this weekend and tear it down. Needless to say, I'm super bummed. The car is probably going to be garage art for a while... Talk about a roller coaster. Tuesday I was beyond ecstatic at how the car performed. Yesterday it was a complete 180 when it just gave me a big middle finger . I guess that's the game I chose to play. To be continued....
After being away from my computer the past couple days and coming back to this... What a wild ride. Sorry to hear about the issues, hopefully it's fixed sooner than later!
Not to take away from the SUCK factor here... sounds like ring failure, 120 is on the not broken in fully yet list, could be alot worse... spun bearing, fried crank, broken rod etc... CHIN UP buddy, sort it out and smile the Bitc* put down 500
The 120 reading is on a $15 gauge so I'm not certain how entirely accurate it really is. But 120 in 3 cylinders and 60 in the other is a pretty telling sign something is going on lol. I started taking **** apart last night...how depressing. Hoping tonight I'll yank the engine and start tearing it down, if anything I'll have it out sometime this weekend. So far I haven't found anything standing out to blame for the presumed lean condition in cyl 2. Going to pay close attention to the injector cushion seating and what the IM gasket looks like on that side when I pull that stuff off, but I'd be surprised if it's a mechanical issue like that that caused it. Then again, I'm not even sure what the damage is yet.
When I did my tgv deletes, I ripped the small oring on the injectors that seal it. It was a little rip and I wouldn't have found it had I not taken the TGVs back out to adjust the mounting bracket. Long story short, it's definitely easy to rip the thin aftermarket ones. I also read the stockers can leak under high boost too, so if you ran those, it may look fine but might not have been fully seated. That or the fuel rail was bent and didn't hold the injector all of the way down. sucks to hear though. If you ever need a hand with anything, Lmk. If you show up on Tuesdays meat, I got a beer with your name on it.
Thanks for your condolences everyone haha I definitely wasn't expecting to have this view so soon, but all I can do is tear it apart. I got the engine torn down halfway last night so I could at least take a look at the dead cylinder. The 2nd ring has a decent chunk blown out. Here's pic with the ring in the bore... ALso, a chunk of the broken ring embedded itself between the top ring and the ringland, essentially freezing the top ring in place. I had to pry the ring to get it off. So on the bright side it's not as bad as it could have been. We're still not sure what the cause is. The piston, spark plug, and logs showed no signs of knock. We are leaning toward it being an assembly error. It was build by a guy out of state who I bought it from (aka: It wasn't built by a reputable shop). The ring gap was .036" on the top and bottom rings, which is pretty loose. Manley has a formula for ring gap (bore x .006). These being 99.5 (3.917") bore the gap should have been .024 on top and 2nd rings. I think the plan is to bore the block to 99.75, get a new set of pistons/rings, new King bearings, and put it back together.
At least the whole thing didn't go kaput. You'll get her back on the road, i have faith in ya! Also, the car didn't go down in a fiery blaze, so you've got that going for you as well!
Ring gap plays heavy in turbo aspiration, sorry to hear... checked the others? probably the same ( this is why I try to doitallmydamnself) Did it f up the bore?
I haven't pulled the other pistons yet to check them. The bores all look fine, even the one that took a ****, surprisingly. Now I'm debating...just drop a new piston in that cylinder and rereing the other 3 and cross my fingers... or do I bore it over, new pistons/rings, new bearings... or sell the thing as is and just buy a staged block that I know was put together properly. I asked the same question haha. Tuner said that it shouldn't effect it much. Can datalog and make some minor adjustments. That's another thing I'm uneasy about though is the tune. Not knowing exactly the cause and not finding anything mechanically (aside from the ring gap being way loose) that would have caused it, lays blame on the tune. Obviously everything was fine until we turned it up...
The decision was made to sell the shortblock as is. I have someone coming to pick it up tomorrow. I'm going to put that money toward a staged IAG shortblock, either "Stg 2 Tuff" or their "Stg 3 Plus". Probably the 2 Tuff. 3 Plus is $1k more and the 2 Tuff should be more than sufficient (rated at 675bhp). I would have just rebuilt what I had, but the rods in this block are just regular Manley H beams, not the H tuffs. The regular H beams are said to be good to about 550whp which I should be close to on true e85 (505whp on e60). The IAG Stg 2 Tuff block comes with the Manley H Tuff rods. This was my main deciding factor in going this route. The cost of rebuilding my current block plus buying new rods would be slightly greater than just selling it for what I can get out of it and buying the stg 2 tuff block. Assembling the engine myself would have knocked another 5-600 off the final cost, but that's one area I don't have much experience in. My mind will be more at ease knowing the shortblock was professionally assembled and has assembly issues warrantied.
I think that this is a good move for you Joe! Excited to see the progress start moving back into a positive one!
Taking advantage of the downtime and coating some wheels for a coworker's Cub Cadet lawn tractor that he's restoring. Prismatic Powders Orient Beige. They turned out pretty decent. I had to completely re strip and blast one of them a second time because the grease inside the wheel hub oozed out and ruined the coating in the oven. Im going to work on stripping the rear wheels today.
Lola's new heart was delivered yesterday. IAG Stage 2 Tuff. Hopefully I have better luck with this one! I'm still waiting on a few random gaskets, orings, oil, etc, but I was able to get the heads on a least. I'm out of town over the 4th so I'm hoping to have it running again by the weekend after. I'm tempted to bust ass and get it done this week and drive it up north this weekend, but that might be a little risky. Besides, to stick with the engine break in guidelines I'd have to stop somewhere just north of the cities and change oil on the side of the road lol.
A roadside oil change on one of these would be such a piece of cake! I say go for it if you're confident you won't miss anything and/or won't be belligerent if/when it comes down to the wire and you can't quite finish it in time. Lots of pressure.
If you're at all serious you're more than welcome to make a pitstop in my garage. I'm on 65 about 30 miles north of downtown MPLS.
Sweet mother, what a ride. Not exactly what I was expecting as I caught up with this. Way to pick yourself up from what had to be a low point for sure. Side note - I didn't realize the Cub Cadet restoration was a thing until the teenage nephew got into it. He has three I think now. Nothing like see the neighborhood gangsters roaming the streets, two on Cub Cadets and one on a skateboard.
Really appreciate the offer man! But...it sounds like the misc O rings and gaskets I have on order won't even be shipped until Monday . Probably better off, honestly. This way I can really take my time and be as meticulous as possible. I can also imagine myself 300 miles from home with a broken down car... Definitely a roller coaster ride...hit the high point of the build and the next day, the absolute lowest lol. Take the bad with the good I suppose. And yeah, believe it or not there's actually a pretty large CC restoration "scene". On the topic of the wheels, I'm coming to terms with the fact that I need a larger air compressor. The 33 Gal ~6cfm Craftsman isn't really cutting it for larger sandblasting jobs. The smaller wheels weren't too bad to blast, but the larger rear wheels are taking forever. This compressor just doesn't move enough air. I'd love a 2 stage 60 or 80gal compressor (specifically this one: https://www.aircompressorsdirect.com/Quincy-2V41C60VC-Air-Compressor/p855.html ), but I don't have 220 in my garage. Someday...
It's hard to be productive when it's 90* and 100% humidity in the garage... Problem solved. I've been wanting to do this for a while. A friend gave me the AC unit for free so can't beat that. I went from 89* down to 80* after about an hour and a half. Just removing the humidity from the garage makes a huge difference! I still need to put some j-channel on the siding to keep the water out and probably some foam/insulation to fill the small cracks around the ac unit. Not bad for free and an hour of work.
With a cool garage, I've made more progress. I think I have everything I need now except for a LH inner timing cover. Mine was cracked and the belt guide is folded in half. I'm not sure how it happened, but I may have stepped on it without realizing it at some point. I should be picking up a used one locally tonight and I'm hoping to finish putting everything together tonight as well. Then this weekend I should be able to drop the motor in and hopefully get it back on the road.
Motor is finally back in the car. I was able to reroute the engine harness on the RH side to run under the fuel rail and rerouted couple other things to clean stuff up a bit. I need to add coolant, oil and filter and it's ready to fire. I went to install my oil filter last night and it doesn't fit with my ELH (PurolatorONE PL14460) . I'm going to go with the smaller diameter PurolatorONE PL14612 filter instead...I'm hoping I can find them locally otherwise I'll have to wait until Wednesday to get them via Amazon. I had a buddy helping me drop the motor in this time too, but this was the easiest time I've ever had mating a motor to trans. It didn't put up any fight at all and essentially slid right into the dowel pins...almost as if it couldn't wait to get in there. Edit: apparently photobucket is being a bitch and wants me to pay $400/yr to use their image hosting......... Edit 2: **** photobucket...using Imagur now
Today, as long as I can find an oil filter locally, I'm going to do a 20 minute heat cycle, change oil and filter, let it sit overnight, then tomorrow begin the breakin process as outlined by IAG. At 50 miles, change filter and oil to Motul 10w40 break in At 500 miles, change filter and oil to Motul 10w40 break in Hoping to have 800-1000 miles for tuning (I'm going to have Jr tune it this time. I just want to remove any chance that the current tune had anything to do with the failure) At 1500 miles, change filter and oil to Motul 10w40 break in At 3000 miles, change filter and oil to Motul 5w40 synthetic Tune date with Jr is set for Aug 3rd at Off The Line Performance so I don't have a whole lot of time to get some miles on!
First start went well yesterday. Changed oil after a 15-20 minute run. Today I got about 30 miles on. Car seems to be running well. This motor feels a lot smoother than my last...not sure why. Old motor had a nasty vibration/shake when revving from an idle that the new one doesn't have. I noticed I've begin to develop an oil leak in the turbo area. I believe it's my oil drain coming off the turbo. The gasket was toast, but thought it would be fine. I'll have to pull the turbo and fix it. I think I'll use some of the high temp ultra copper sealant. It seems to be working well on my header gaskets. While I have the turbo out, I need to slightly modify the turbo heat shield because it's making contact with the EWG and buzzing like crazy. I'll just lop a corner off of it and should be good to go. Good to have her up and running again. Needs a bath.
I'm noticing even more of my images that are hosted on Photobucket are breaking now. Will have to fix those eventually. How dumb!
Awesome news on the car. Pretty quick turnaround it seems despite the catastrophe. Anywho, did you hear about the recent Photobucket sh!t show where they're charging people a stupid amount to host pictures now? Resulting in tons of old forum posts turning up with blank pictures lately. It's insane.
