This ones for you Infidel. Cosmo. and all of you guys who have felt the pain.)
This is a situation I have keep pretty descrete for going on 6 weeks now. Never know how a community will respond to a well of knowledge.
Friday April 11th, 2014. A day ill never forget for the rest of my life I'm sure. I spent all day Thursday night prepping the nismo until 3:30am to depart for Dynosty in Louisville, KY at 4 am. Finished wiping the car down went over every nut and bolt vaccum line all 9 yards those of you DIY guys know what I'm talking about.
Arrived at dynosty around 8:45am where the car would spend its day being tuned. We were introduced to everyone just before 9 and pulled the car out of the trailer promptly after. It was discovered that the turbo feed distribution block had a leak from where I had to tweak it earlier Thursday night to route the lines for my oil cooler. Ontop of this the car had to yet be drained of all the 93 and replaced with e85 before we could begin the tune. Apparently it took 2 hours to drain the oil and put new thread tape on my distribution block and then another 2 hours yet to drain the fuel from the car. The car was strapped on the dyno around 12 for pulls to begin after lunch. At 1:00 pm drivability pulls started on the zed. From 1-4 pm I sat in dynostys waiting room listening to my fast intentions exhaust roar that building pull after pull. At 4:15 I had made a comment to my buddy "I haven't heard anything in a little while; I hope everything is alright." At around 5:30pm Hal came into the waiting room to fetch me and the three others I had with me to pull us into the shop stating he: "had some bad news." Hal told me infront of the dyno screen that my block was seized, the crank would no longer turn. The last pull on the car was at 4:03pm (if I'm remembering correctly at this point it was all a blur, and I honestly had to have him tell me a second time for it to even sink in.) Immediately my buddy and I asked what/how this happened. Hal told me they heard a "noise" and immediately stopped the pull on the car and shut it off. His tech then jumped in to tell me I could have a blown head gasket and gotten coolant in the oil causing it to break down my oil and spin a rod bearing (there is no way you could have ground down the bearing surface fast enough to get the two bearings to "lap" one another which is the only possible thing that could have happened to seize piston movement like that, but I didn't want to go pointing fingers as I've seen some crazy **** in my 22 years lol). As I'm being fed this bull$h*t, I'm looking over graph of the last pull with Hal showing me a 400whp pull on 4lbs of boost(mind you my car is on 110 octane fuel now). So, extremely p*seed off by this point and things not adding up, I pushed the car back into the trailer and headed back north for my shop; I wanted answers and I was GOING to get them.
I arrived at my shop around 10pm and had the car up on the lift undergoing surgery by 10:30. Removed most of the front clip as I knew no matter what the motor was getting pulled. Drained the coolant; no traces of oil (knew that was coming anyway) drained the oil; no traces of coolant. Shun a light into the pan of oil and it looked like a fine silver mine shat in my royal purple oil. Pulled the oil pan and found a few large shavings of metal but thankfully no pieces. Going on 45 hours with only a nap on the way down(couldn't sleep on the way back, wonder why.) I decided to call it quits Saturday at 3:30 am. Started in Saturday night at a little after 5pm by removing the rest of the front clip. Motor was pulled out and on a stand by 7. Upper oil pan and windage trays were removed and we began to try rotating the crank. Almost immediately after getting the crank to 3/4 rot one way or the other we found the issue, or one of. Cylinder 6 rod was bent and twisted, BAD. After peeking a little bit more with a flashlight we noticed 2 was suffering almost identical damage. Flipping the block over to the top I pulled all the plugs to begin checking for flooded cylinders. No fuel came pouring out but I noticed the porcelain of both the #2 and #6 bank plugs to be broken inside the plug and laying down over the electrode. I continued to tear it down to a short block that night and once again called her quits on Sunday morning around 3am. Sunday evening the caps were removed from the rods and the rods were removed to inspect the bearings/crank. All of which looked almost brand new minus a few heat spots on them much like the surface of a flywheel and the crank had ZERO grin scores on any of the bearing raceways. Pistons show some slight signs of pre detonation but they survived the fight. With the rotating assembly removed the girdle was placed back on for the block to be sent to the machine shop. Only two slight scoring marks were made one in each of the damaged rods cylinder walls(call me lucky, but that is EXACTLY the case here.) I decided to go with a .020 overbore even thought a 10 would've cleaned her up just for the sake of it seems like 20 over is standard when sizing pistons for a rebuild.I called dynosty later that week to get some answers from Hal. I was convinced this wasn't just coincidence. He instructed that I look over the fuel system, have the injectors sent out, and check the rail for debris. I knew my fuel system was working properly because earlier in the previous week it was remote tuned by Hal so that it could at least be started to put on a trailer and I had an AN fitting loose at my e85 filter leaking fuel all over my damned driveway. The injectors were BRAND NEW from Fuel Injector Clinic(proudly sponsored btw
) and Brian instructed to me that the injectors are tested anda flow sheet is boxed with them prior to being sent to the customer(cool so that covers that area). Next up that rail; I had ZERO doubt's in my mind that my beautiful CJM rail had any flaws with it and I was about to prove that statement. I first made sure to evacuate the rail with some compressed air then I plugged off all of the holes but the inlet and hooked the air pressure to it. Around the rail I tested all 6 ports to 100 psi of regulated air and they all read for 98-100psi dependent of how well I could get the other 5 ports to seal. I've covered all my bases Hal. WHAT NOW!?.
I'm sorry but there's some sh*t that doesn't add up. Why did it take 1 1/2 hrs to tell me my car was blown up when I was 50 feet away? Why was I offered "great deals on parts to fix it" before I left. I understand people make mistakes sometimes but I left thag shop with a 700$ bill. A (from everything I can tell) lie in my face. And a knife in my back. I have since paid them a 1300$ deposit towards new internals; called Dustin twice as well as emailed Dustin twice and STILL have yet to receive a status on my pistons that were "supposed" to have been ordered three weeks ago now when I put my deposit down as well as yet to receive my total quote for how much I have left to pay them to cover the bases of the rest of the parts. As far as I'm concerned they have done NOTHING to attempt to right a wrong when I feel they should be improptou kissing my *** for not taking this up legally regardless the waiver I signed.
Im not on here looking for a pity party I KNEW from the get go that a blown motor was possible what I didn't know was that it could happen on power only marginally higher than bolt ons. So I guess I'm not only posting this as a "beware" but I'm more so looking for answers as its got to be down to a tuning issue. Even Todd with Motion Labs could agree with me on that point after a VERY lengthy conversation on the phone with him and Adam for the first time ever this evening(61 minutes to be exact if that tells you how willing the shop is to take time out of their day.)
So guys chime in! Lemme know what you think could have happened(factual please.) I god honestly am looking for some insight onto what happened to have caused this issue. Cheers Z brothers
stay boosting!#choo
