GRD performed a compression test and.....DUN-DUN-DUUUUUNNNNN........all three cylinders on the left side have way low compression. Either broken ringlands or rings. The motor appearantly sustained damage when it got hot on the way home, and when they turned up the boost, it finally gave way. I'm not sure how the motor getting too hot can only effect one side of the motor and leave the other side just fine, but then again I'm no expert.

On the bright side, I've already purchased most of the internals for my buildup, and will be pulling the motor to send it off to be fully build as soon as I get the car back in my garage next weekend. I'm really anxious to find out the exact conditions of the pistons and rings.

 

Sorry to hear this. Good to see you were already planning on building up the motor though.

Of course the inevitable question, in your opinion was there a fault with the kit or was it just a coolant leak from installation?

I guess for any of us with/going FI, if the car even runs a bit hot, we should tow the car instead of trying to make it somewhere?

 

Sad Day. Is this the first Blown engine by APS TT? Just saw a post for Turbonetics first blown motor. It appears to be our VQ's, and not the kit at fault. Dunno now, maybe FI is not for me. Guess I need to save for a VQ build-up first.

 

Really, they seem to both be safe kits.

In this case ccartwright drove with a coolant leak that could have caused it, and in the Turbonetics blown thread, there is apparently "more to the story". Sounds like neither case is probably a fault of the kit...

 

Shiiit, APS.. NOOOOOO.

 

Can someone smarter than me please explain how the entire motor getting hot only effects one cylinder bank? I'm not being a smartass, I'm honestly curious.

 

It honestly doesnt make sense... But then again i dont know EVERYTHING about the VQ35 engine.. Hopefully someone with a little more knowledge can chime in, like charles or sharif. But to my knowledge, i dont think heat can only effect ONE cylinder.

 

Here are the compression results Irshad gave me from first to sixth cylinder. Anything under 10% is okay:

1. 7.5%
2. 13%
3. 5%
4. 10%
5. 5%
6. 12.5%

 

ccartwright

Sorry about your motor, at least you are prepared....

What did GRD turn the boost up too, when the engine gave way?

What kind Boost/HP numbers did you have?

 

Tuan boosted up to 9psi, and a little over 400whp I believe. I never saw any printouts or anything.

 

those are leakdown numbers.

depending on what leakdown tester is used, 12.5% could be fine... I had a MATCO leakage tester that said my bone stock 350z had 15% per cylinder, long before I ever put turbos on it, it only had an exhaust at the time. I got rid of that tester and got one from Total Seal, and it said about 6.5%.

But either way, the inconsistency here says that regardless of the tester, the motor is toast.

If by left side you mean the passenger side, that is the side that seems to have issues with temperature control... however, when you tear the engine down is when you will find out if it was the heat that did it.

Your story didnt sound like you were boosting it while it was hot? If you were not boosting at all, the temperature could have caused those pistons to start to seize and scrub the hell out of your rings, ring lands, and cylinder hone... causing not so much a BLOWN motor but a worn motor that will burn oil from poor ring sealing.

If the ring lands are actually cracked, that is more of a sign of detonation/knock/ping then it is a typical sign of your average overheating. If you were boosting on the motor while it was overheating, this could have caused such circumstances.

IMHO the APS kit didnt blow your motor... its never the kit that blows the motor. Its the tuning... some kits are tuned better then others out of hte box, APS being the best tuned out of the box... and some shops/individuals have greater knowledge and resources to confirm that the engine and engine management are correcting running and operating. There could have been an error to cause the engine to run differently then APS ever intended, such as a torn o-ring when inserting the FPR into its housing (which I hear is somewhat common, and i had it happen to me the first time i installed this kit)... or god knows what else.

Its not easy to guess exactly when it started doing it either... GRD uses vent tubes on the exhaust to keep the shop enviroment safe to breath, with the only side effect of this being that you will not be able to see if the car is burning oil while on the dyno... so it could have been doing that before your car ever got in their hands and had the boost cranked.

 

damn, 9 psi is practically stock boost - not much more anyway

 

when tearing your engine down, you might want to inspect anything that effects each bank individually... such as the fuel lines and rail fittings etc... for example... something lodged in the fuel feed pipe inlet of the rail on that side, or a major fuel leak in the first injector o-ring of that rail... these could cause poor fuel delivery to the injectors on that side.

The fuel filter is in the tank, and if you got some shavings of something in the fuel lines when doing the install, it would have gone straight to the rails/injectors and could have caused a problem.

sometimes a blown engine can be the result of a very isolated and bizarre problem... be very cautious in reusing components without extensive inspection on your new engine.

 

when i broke the ringlands on my 3 pistons, they were all on the passanger side bank

woooooo...the mystery continues.. you'll know when you tear down the motor..took me 5 hours-and it was my first time, should take a professional a fraction of that (i assume)

 

Thanks for the advise Charles. You will have a PM in a couple mins

 

Sorry to hear about your loss, but glad this beast will be back with a vengance. Was the heat caused by a coolant leak or a bubble? The heat alone without boost could not break a ringland, but boosting under high heat would definitely increase the risk of detonation.

 

It was a coolant leak, caused from a misaligned gasket on the LHS waterpipe going into the side of the motor.

There was heat, but it wasn't pegged, and I never got about 2000-2500 rps on the short drive home, and was certainly not under boost.

 

Ccartwright I'm sorry to hear about your engine.

Now that you know what caused the failure, have you been able to determine why the gasket was misaligned to begin with? Had someone done some work on your motor first, or was it from the factory like that?

 

When we first installed my Greddy TT, that same coolant pipe had a pinched gasket, which equates to a coolant leak. I'm somewhat surprised though, you should have noticed it within a day or so . . . the coolant will drip and create a puff of white smoke. It surely scared the **** out of me when it happened.

 

I installed the kit, which involves taking off the water pipe. When I reinstalled it, it was so tight in there that I didn't realize that I had it kinked.

I noticed it immediately when I started the engine, but had to get it out of his garage that night and I decided to drive it and not have it towed.