Guys, the motor is done. The headgasket blew so bad I would not be surprised if it torched a cylinder wall. The deck has no doubt been distorted. The next decision I make will be a long and drawn out process. Only time will tell which way to go. I will more than likely be building off my spare motor. No way pulling the heads and replacing the headgaskets is going to cut it. I have a dead cylinder for sure. That hole is fubar.

Pull the spark plugs and see what they look like. Lets just say curiosity.

LOL, not touching it. Waste of time.

It tried to hydrolock when I put coolant back in it after I replaced the clamp and put the hose back on. I told you it is fubar.

Should of bought a mustang.. :stirthepot: jk Sorry to hear about this. That has to be extremely frustrating dumping an insane amount of time and resources into a build just for something like that to happen. This thread provides alot of helpful information for us and I appreciate it, so whatever decision you go with I support. :icon17:

I have several irons in the fire, so to speak. Brian at MA is getting with the machine shop to see what they think. They have built many a motor and have sleeved many. Only one engine that I know of has had Darton MID sleeves. That is Mikes, bullitt5897. I know MA has done one engine with LA sleeves. I am just like anybody else. I can't afford for this to happen again. It is raining here again today. I need to drain all the coolant when the weather breaks.

It is a high HP build. Crap happens. As far as the Mustang comment, you go right ahead. I will pass.

I wish there was more information available about High HP builds. I haven't found anybody that has been successful yet. A couple of folks still working/testing a solution but they haven't posted anything about it. It is purely frustrating. Still researching. My wife asks me how it is going. My response is "It is the black hole of information."

I have no dog in this fight, nor am I ever going to have a FI build, but this thread is invaluable.

The information from a high up build that actually gets driven this much and this often will serve as an epic example for anybody that goes down this path.

Sorry to hear. I initially thought this was one of your jokes (remember the 4 way JRZ, and then the you sold your freshly finished build for an offer you couldn’t refuse, or your front shocks blew...). Best of luck!

LOL, I wish it was one of my leg pulling posts. It's all part of a build. The ups and downs. Anybody can go down the path, it's not for the faint of heart.

I will figure it out guys. I am just doing what nobody has attempted before or even documented. I have a good idea of what I need to do. I just need some conformation and I may not have that for a bit. My motor needs to come apart and be inspected. That will tell the tail of what happened for sure. I got one more chance to get this right and I will be taking my time. I have some good people around me helping.

Yep, there aren't that many of us that are in the big boost game. I'm not up for a high dollar high horsepower mall crawler or I would just go buy one! That's no fun and I get more enjoyment out you knuckleheads giving us crazies a hard time. The commentary is priceless.

LOL, You so Crazy..... I enjoyed all 7k miles I put on the car so far. I will be back up and running eventually. Hold my Mt.Dew and watch this.

One thing is for sure. You need to put many a mile on one before you can declare all is well with the headgaskets.

man, Spooler, I feel your pain.
My car is back down at MA-Motorsports as well …
It started running real crappy soon after I got it back from build.
Took it to a few shops up here in NJ but nobody wanted to touch it so I put it on a flat bed and back down to Maryland it went.
When it arrived at MA-M they determined that (most likely) the passenger side turbo had failed - which in fact it had - but they didn't get to replace it immediately because of the workload in the shop.
I've owned the car for almost 9 years now and almost 6 of those years it's been sitting in a shop somewhere accumulating tire rot.
aaarrrggghhh

Ughh, that sucks man. I wanted big power in my Z but couldn't stomach the cost it would take to do it in a VQ. Keep up the good right man.

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Sad to see the news ............

If you are going to start again, start with an R35 (VR38) block .....

Can I also suggest that you need two tunes in the car .... one with "enough" boost for fun-DD and another for "mega-grin factor".

There was a time when I had to build 3 race engines (starting with new blocks following catasrophic engine failure) in one season before biting the bullet and retiring the wet sump and going dry-sump, so I understand the frustration. I eventually stepped out of competition for the season and spent time researching and "building it right". I had some really robust conversations with my engine-builder and lots of phone calls and discussions with others who had been down my road (my race engine was based on the Buick 215 alloy V8 which was the genesis of the Repco-Brabham F1 engine in the 60's) and I found a heap of research available. Not wishing to say anything about MA but there are a few guys here in Oz who run VQ35HR TT engines in off-road buggies and they all run 600-700 HP for extended WoT). Check out the Finke Desert Race as an example of arduous duty - but these guys limit their boost to aid reliability hence my suggestion for 2 tunes - OR start with a VR block. There is a shop in South Australia who are doing a billet VR block but it is a serious investment.

Blowing the bottom hose off suggests you've got boost/combustion pressure into the water jacket so head gasket clamping pressure is the key and I suspect a VQ block - even with closed deck sleeves is never going to be 100%.

Hence the suggestion of a VR38 block as the basis of doing it again.

Two quotes to remember ...

"Good luck with your project"

and

Look after SWMBO unless you want to find out how much your half of the house is worth !!!

LOL, I am leaning on a couple VQ35DE guys. I think they have had it figured out for a long time. The problem with the VQ37VHR guys is many people have had issues and just swept it under the rug to save face, so to speak. I have however decided to just be transparent no matter how much it hurts. There are a list of high HP guys who have all had blown headgasket issues. They do a dyno number and then they are gone. Some sell out and some rebuild and you hardly ever see the car being driven again. You never hear of them mention any problems. They still act like they have a high HP car and they don't. I was running two different boost levels. I am good with the power level that I had, now to figure out how to make it live. Most high HP cars are not even driven. They mall crawl or whatever. They can do what they want but that is not my thang. The only car being driven similar to mine is Freshhkiicks. I am not sure of his HP level. He had headgasket issues at 10k. My wife is good for now. This can't continue though.

If you decide to go with Darton sleeves make sure you find an experienced shop to install them. I had one of the first LS1 darton blocks and had nothing but nightmares with the block. I would call Darton and ask them who can do the install correctly. Personally I'll never use sleeves again.

I dont think sleeves will fix the issue anyway. I'm having deck stanchions machined above each chamber for additional strength. My shop thinks it will handle up to 30psi. It should be done in 6 weeks, I'll post some pics.

I would be interested in knowing what is needed to use a 3.8 block...

Good luck, your gonna need it. You are in the black hole of the VQ37VHR. Let us know if it works short term and long term. I am not sure if I am going to do sleeves. I have many more questions to ask that need answers. I have 2 machine shops with Darton MID sleeve experience.

I'm building it to drive like you have done with your car. I wont lean on it real hard very often, probably stay around 12-15psi if I even get that far...

Remember there was a build on here from a polish Guy? He wrapped his 370 red and posted some street racing vids, running 800whp on 93. He did studs instead of sleeves.

My friend runs 22 psi and 830hp, for about a year now. He burned a valve, but that's it..so far..

Anyways, goodluck!

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Just read the updates here, really sorry you went through this Spooler! I know it comes with the territory, but it still sucks big time. Thanks for continuing to share your experiences, both good and bad.

good ol' diabel

Diabel actually used rods to stabilize the cyinders. It was genius as hell. I actually copied his build with mine. How to get those rods done bothered me so much I just gave up on and went with his base build. He finished up with 771 on 100 octane. My goal was to meet his power which I'm pretty sure I've done now. Difference is he used Jun cams and I used JWTs and also he was 9:1 and I'm 10:1. That'll change sometime soon since I'm probably going to switch from the PTE 6870 to the new Comp air cooled 6871.

This problem is so FRUSTRATING. Still researching. Very little data to be had.

A 3 or 4 Axis CNC is needed for the machine work to keep the tight tolerances.
As long as it has been machined properly you shouldn't have any longevity issues.
CAT, Cummins, etc. have been using this for years in diesel applications.

Are you talking about pinning the sleeves? You can get that done at pretty much any machine shop. Its a simple process, just not a DIY type thing if you dont have a the machining equipment. I have never personally had it done, but Id imagine somewhere in the 600-750$ range based on other custom machine work ive had done. It seems a bit inconsiderate of coolant flow though.

I had Darton wet sleeves installed to a block for my car a few years ago. It was done at a machine shop that makes some of the billet VR38 blocks, they were very well equipped for it. Unfortunately I was too busy to build my car and ended up selling that block to someone on here, never had a chance to try it out. Im not sure of anyone trying them in a built VHR yet? The guy who purchased mine, his car sat a couple years but they did just finally assemble his engine, so we will see how his turns out soon.

I think this is what Forged Performance tried on the all Carbon 370z build some years ago. IIRC it did have a head gasket failure, but id have to double check with the owner to be sure. Any machine shop should be able to replicate this for you.

That was part of my issue with it Charles. I have to be able to conceptualize something to have confidence in it. At the time I was going back and forth with this and a closed deck or just open. After I considered not wanting to go higher than 800, I abandoned the idea. Then I choked myself again after the build when Seb started mentioning concern of headlift and making me pinky swear I had L19 hardware when I started asking for 20psi.
I'm actually shocked Spooler got it at 17psi because I spiked 27.8psi and not an issue. I roll around at 18 all the time and have been playing with my 21psi map 4 lately.

How many miles do you have on your build? I had 7000 miles on mine. You may be OK or you may not. Just don't be surprised.

I have talked with Brian today. We have decided on a solution and what we need to do going forward. He has talked with the machine shop that built my engine today also. We are still gathering information to ensure we are on the right path. Everyone is backed up. It may be a little bit before my car goes back to MA. Brain is working on the scheduling nightmare. We are going to do several things. MA-Motorsports is taking care of me. That is a good thing. It would be unreasonable to expect it all for free. I am not expecting such.

You may find this interesting.

Daelen recommended the Darton Sleeves for my build … Haven't driven the car enough to see how they are holding up. Did have a fair amount of glitter with the first oil change tho'

The glitter is to be expected with the first few oil changes on a new build. Mine was less noticeable at the 3rd oil change. It was looking good.

How was your guys piston slap? Mine sounds like a damn diesel, not only on start up, but all the time.

Do you consume oil?

I had no piston slap at all due to the custom designed Diamond pistons MA uses. They had it with the first build they did, opened it back up, found out why, and fixed it. I was using just a little bit of oil but that is to be expected with a looser build than stock. Saw it at around 2000 miles on the oil. 2500 miles I was changing it due to running E85 all the time.

Sorry to hear that this has happened to you Spooler this just really blows and is painful to read.