Blown Engine SC
 

Ok, where to begin... Car lost power on a drive. I pulled over and it started to shake. I turned it off and checked the oil. Oil level was fine. Tried to restart it and it barely started. Took it home and took the advice of some on this board.

I pulled all plugs. Here is the story.

Plug 1 bank: Oily inside.

Plug 3 bank: Dry inside but oily at point of spark plug entry

Plug 5 bank: Oily inside and oily at top. See pic #1.



Plug 2 bank: No oil, but silver specs imbedded in piston and a tiny little pit about the size of a grain of sand.

Plug 4 bank: No oil, but 1 silver spec imbedded in piston

Plug 6 bank: Oily inside.

I have not heard any signs of detonation nor any indication like a loss of power.

Here are the pics of the plugs in order of 1,3,5,2,4,6. Spark plug 3 is what really worries me. It's missing a chunk of the ceramic.


Here are the pics. Who wants to do my build???

I would be worried about all those spark plugs!

Those plugs look really bad. How long did you have them in there?

Since the install of the SC. About 6 months.

Holy chit! The ends are gone!

wtf i dunno how hard you drive or whats the deal but those plugs are dead.

I am not surprised about cylinder #2 being in it's condition. All of them being bad is certainly a surprise, especially at stage 2. Not sure if the dielectric of #3 being gone or the entire electrode of #2 being gone is worse. No matter which one is worse, detonation was certainly happening. Accross all cylinders would point to fuel system? Not to dig to deep into the incident, was it anywhere near during a shift ie; fuel cut of the rev limiter?

I heard thru a 3rd person, someone at Stillen had mentioned that the Nissan fuel pumps could be at fault for some of these incidents. Outside of California I have no idea why more people don't change out the main injectors. The way the Stillen system is presented to the buyers is it's the safest and the most trouble free system. I clocked 7k miles before mine blew, stage 3 lasted maybe 2 weeks before it killed my motor.

Next steps.... Get a compression test done and documented on each cylinder. I have not heard of anyone ever going thru the warranty process with Stillen. As you know the warranty is thru a 3rd party warranty company so I'm not sure the process to get support. But You will certainly want to know the condition of each cylinder. You said you did not see any smoke coming out the back which is good, you hear or feel a slight knock or weird vibration? I'm sure the engine gurus could help with that but it could be a number of things.

damn those plugs are DONE....!!!

Holy $hit!!

That scares me...

sorry to say, but 99% of the time, when a chunk of plug is missing, the piston has exploded in the cylinder! look down the cylinder with a flashlight (through spark plug hole), can you rotate the crank? is it stuck or still freely moveable?

if the piston is gone, you should be able to see signs of destruction when you look with a flashlight, if the crank is able to rotate. move until the piston is at TDC and you should be able to SEE some signs of what is going on.

sorry to hear, let us know if we can help, we'll have a few motors done in the coming weeks...

-TODD

BTW..oil pooling on the top of the valve cover around the spark plug hole is not indicative of anything..as this can occure normally, small amounts of oil can get past the seals that secure the valve covers around each spark plug cylinder- I have seen this on several motors, both N/A and F/I...

the thing that should be alarming is that such huge portions of the plug are missing, and oil present on the plugs....

when a plug is oily (if you can confirm that it is oil- considering the circumstances- more than likely is), the oil can only come from a few places...

1) below piston... piston has fractured, or piston rings have broken/worn excessively
2) intake- it would take tons of oil coming in the combustion chamber to even cause a "oily" appearance on the plugs, this can happen if a turbo seal goes bad, allowing oil to be force-fed into the motor...this is not too likely
3) valve stem seals: these can leak with tons of miles or excessive damage from excessive heat... this can allow oil to drip down from the heads, past the valve stem seals, onto the valves, and into the combustion chamber--also, with your history, not too likely...

I know this isn't too comforting, but you can assume that the bottom end is toast, sorry.

-TODD

Its posts like this that make me scared install the supercharger I already got and is sitting in my garage

Kinda curious, who did the install? and was the kit ever tuned?

This is scaring me also. I am changing my plugs this week and will post pictures also... I'm afraid to know what they look like.....

I see you already changed your sig :( sorry to hear about the loss

This is what I am going to do tomorrow.

Buy a magnetic pick up tool and see if it picks up any pieces inside the combustion chamber.

Buy new plugs and install them. I'll start up the car and see how it runs.



BTW, I have checked the oil level and it is at the "full" line.

Also, the car does run with no oil burn.

The SES light did turn on after I got it home.

The engine has a zzzz sound, so I'm not sure if that is from compression loss.

The exhaust sounds like a V8. Like a gurgling sound.

I looked down the 3rd spark plug hole with a flash light and it looks like the piston has a half of a dime size chip on the top. But it is in a perfect half of a circle shape.

Can everyone that builds engine, pm me a price for a built bottom end?

Who did the install? and was the kit ever tuned?

GRD in Naperville IL did the install. They specialize in Z's and G's. The tune... well, it is run by a SS Box which is locked out by Stillen so that you can't tune it. But I don't want to get into that now.

Thanks, I just wanted to know for my future install reference.

Ok, I had a magnetic pickup and stuck it down in each cylinder. Picked up nothing. :confused: I tested the magnetic pickup to make sure that it was working. It was strong enough to pick up an entire spark plug so I know that it is working. Tomorrow I'll do a compression test and put in some new plugs and see if everything is better.

My question is where did that piece of the ceramic go? AND would that piece of ceramic maybe just get crushed into powder and go out of the exhaust valve? or do you think that my valves are damaged?

I know that I am getting ahead of myself and I'll have to wait until tomorrow. Just trying to speculate.