What a nice build Bryant and it was a pleasure meeting you, Joewnt and Todd at the mile. Too bad we didn't have more time to chat.

Joe

 

I just looked at the pics of the rods again. The reason the rods cracked was they bent and then came in contact with the crank counterweights. The evidence is all over the bottom left side of the rod pic towards the wrist pin side.




The motor was making a "ticking" sound (rod brushing against the crank) that either was ignored, thought they had a lifter problem or simply didn't understand the sound.

This is probably the stage jhaung25's motor was just prior to the rod breaking loose.

 

Looks like maybe it clearanced itself?

 

Congrats Bryant. You will finally start winning races now!

 

Not long enough...

 

sometimes things aren't what they seam.

i inspect high stressed metal for a living and X-ray and use Ultrsound on steel ona daily basis and tell people how close they are to destroying things.


wish i still had a RM-80 piston i pulled out of a running bike that had a hole melted in the top and the strange part was that there was a rounded bolt shoved through the hole with some kind of epoxy jb weld crap under it with a lock washer and nut on the back side and the G damn thing Held compression for like 2 years with this kid running the **** out of it the cumbustion chamber had a nice dent in it from getting hit by the bolt head the first few times until it had enough clearance.

glad u made it out safely you doing anything cool in the bottom end Ti rods? any oil galley mods? any aero mods to the crank? how about some of the new black diamond oil holding bearing coatings?

how about oil pump mods? coatings?

 

He couldn't even handle the Sonata rental....

 

Contrary to any pop star opinions, that right there my boys, is why God created Milk of Amnesia...i.e. propofol.....

 

Paulie has shared with me that he prefers to be lightly sedated for his procedure: A small amount of benzodiazapine, a glass of white wine, some soft music and the gentle touch of his "health care provider/longtime companion" Chuck.

 

That's what we called foreplay in college.

 

Anything is possible but my personal opinion is that there was damage done early on most likely do to fueling issues before you had your 5 bar. Unfortunately, I don't think anything is provable one way or the other. So we will never know for sure and are left to speculate. Whatever the cause I'm glad that you dogged a potentially catastrophic engine failure.

 

just give him some of your "ruffies" and he'll never even remember

 

David ,I seem to remember that when you had tested your Sledgehammer and determined that the stock rods were capable of handling 850+whp and subsequently had the car for sale on this forum with 900 miles total.I would think this is hardly enough time or testing to determine whether or not you had reached any type of failure due to the power level.How many miles are on your car now?The point is this car gave no indication of the definite pending failure.The owner is not new to anything mechanical or fast ,this I can tell you,and is pretty knowledgable when it comes to motors of any kind.This being said i think you can get away with more than 700 -800hp on these motors for a little while depending on the situation and type of use/user.The problem arises when you start the thinking that everyone can tune their cars this way and it be bulletproof.Then some unlucky soul winds up paying the consequences because his motor is completely unrepairable.That unlucky soul ends up having to sell the car for parts because it doesn't pay to replace the motor with a core due to the fact that the motor and labor to install is worth more than half of the cars value and this only gets him back to square one.M.y 2 cents.

 

Probably easier to count the number of engines over 700 whp that have not had some damage in them. All these new builds, multiple build projects, etc. Yet, I have not heard of many motors grenading at under 650 whp. Seems like for long term driving sticking to the 600-650 whp on stock internals is a good reference. I am sure that most people going to big hp already know that risk and realize that their engine is not going to last at those power levels.

The old saying still holds true. if you want to play, you gotta pay. If you want to go to 800 whp with the big boys, then spend the time with an engine build. That or you will be selling your car in a year to avoid that bill and some poor schmuck will buy it off you not knowing the impending doom of it's engine. you escaped that bullet, but you handed it over to some unsuspecting buyer. not very cool.

I cannot afford an engine build, so in essence I cannot play with the big boys, but I won't sacrifice my engine or dump it on some unsuspecting buyer either. I am safe and my lower 600 whp level and happy with that for now. when and if I decide my kids don't need college I'll go play with the big boys.

 

^^ Ditto! This appears to be being used as evidence to build bottom ends early but it seems like every time such a thing is shown there's a P.S. at the end of the backstory that reads oh yeah there was this one time I ran it really really lean under high boost.... I don't mean to bust the owner's chops and I'm VERY glad disaster was avoided but 12.9:1 on anything but an NA vehicle is asking for trouble under power - race gas or not. And it ran this way for awhile because it was simply out of fuel, if it had been pump gas this story would probably be WAY different and WAY shorter.

Sadly there's no way to know when the damage began and if the rod did hit the crank counterweight then that certainly explains the crack though not the bend in the first place that caused them to snuggle. We'll never know but in the end this is a success story because it didn't blow so please don't get me wrong.

Rebuilding a bottom end is expensive! So convincing folks who work hard for a paycheck to do it when their engines appear to run well is going to be understandably tough be it a Honda or a Porsche. If there was some process where this could be done with a little less pain and KNOWN pricing up front rather than the La Brea money pit adventure so many owners seem to experience then the process might be easier to enter into. It's been pointed out such a process exists - except I cannot find out anything about it except via word of mouth. I can buy a set of 4 rods for something like a Subbie for around a grand that will hold 900HP so getting a set of 6 rods for a Porsche to hold that much and likely more since it's across 2 more cylinders shouldn't cost 2x and 3x that should it? See where I'm coming from?