cappelhans

after wiping all the soot off my face and stepping back to assess the situation - here's where I'm at:

Swapped a 94 JDM b18c1 into my del sol last year. Autowave down in Huntington Beach did the work - motor ran very strong. Two weeks ago I took the car down to Sportcar Motion in Vista where they did a custom turbo setup. T3/T4 with Silvia intercooler, Koyo Radiator, Tial Wastegate etc... - they did a very professional job on all the work and the turbo was set to run only ~7-8lbs boost. Took it straight over to Shaun at Church Automotive and had him tune it for dailing driving.

Unfortunately something's gone wrong and the car is smoking like crazy, burning a quart of oil in an hour and sputtering to a stop at idle. I'm assuming it's blown piston rings or a cracked piston - a compression test showed ~175 in cyldiners 1,2,4 and ~100 in the cylinder 3.

How would you proceed in my situation? I'm pretty surprised that I had problems given how cautious the boost level and tune were and that the engine showed no signs of trouble in the compression/leakdown test I had done prior to turboing. Just bad luck? I'm really bummed and did NOT budget for an engine rebuild so I only have ~$1500 to spend...any advice would be reaally helpful...


thanks,
Chris


for those of you with a blown-up daily driver - did you rent a car? any recommendations on where to rent from while this thing gets fixed...?

Sidenote:
In case it's helpful here's a rundown of the weirdass issues we had after installing the turbo:

I started having problems immediately, car was overheating in traffic so we replaced slimfan with the stock fan, switced in new lower-temp thermostat and fan switch and the cooling system seemed to work fine. Strangely the temp gauge would go crazy - now car would stay cool @ idle but when I took it on the freeway the temp gauge would shoot straight to "H". After pulling over several times and feeling almost no excess heat in the engine bay I assumed my temp. sensor or sending unit was wacko and set about to fix that problem...I'm guessing the car actually WAS running that hot and that's what led to the internal problems - but I never experienced any of the bogging or boiling coolant or other symptoms of overheating. Basically it just started to smoke a bit from the breather hose and then the tailpipe this morning and by the time I'd driven to work (~15 miles) it was smoking like crazy and stalling @idle.

Thanks very much for any tips/anecdotes/simlar experiences...I'm pretty bummed about a 10K investment melting down on me after 1 week...:-(

agrn93ls

well first off ive heard of a few gsr's blowing the piston ring land. what does the #3 plug look like? i had my #4 plug electrode blow off from i believe detonation. it scratched the cylinder wall and started smoking real bad. i was using nitrous though. anyway as far as what to do i found a good ls block and used the golden eagle ls/vtec kit and did the work my self. i built the engine including the ls motor for 1,000$. including new seals, type r oil pump,( which was 50$ cheaper from acura than a ls or gsr pump), new timing belt & water pump. as far as your compression 175 is low for a gsr i had 3 225#'s and one at 245#'s. im a mechanic so in my proffesional opinion, ok for fact a car that overheats at idle is usually due to a cooling fan isue (all remarks on overheating will be assuming it was full of water/antifreeze mix) and overheating on the highway is because lack of coolant flow. i/e radiator clogged or too small, bad water pump, blockage somewhere. sounds like you lost the ring or piston in #3. lose the block, get an LS block. it sounds like you did what you could to protect your motor by having tuned, the key to durability, but maybe it wasnt tuned well/properly just speculating not to offend anybody. the problem sounds like what detonation will do to a motor. but severe overheating can do bad things too. check your temp sending unit it is the single wire sensor on the head under the vtec solenoid, im pretty sure about the location but i know it will be a one wire sensor(the one for the gauge is) disconnect it and your gauge should go all the way one way, ground the wire to the engine or whatever and it should go all the way the other way, ive seen bad connections at this sensor before. if the gauge sweeps all the way as i stated it should be fine, dont run positive power to this wire. the sensor i acutually just a resistor that changes with temp, since it screws into the head it is a resistor to ground. sorry for your loss

nfn15037

Buy some pistons, rods, bearings, and gaskets and tear it apart and rebuild it. Take a couple days off, like a Thursday and Friday and then you have 4 days to get it done. If you want to do it right, pull the block and take it to the machine shop otherwise just hone it in the car and clean it very very well after.

I got a honda

sorry to jack the thread but i have a similar problem with overheating in my turbo gsr....wen its hot outside and im in traffic it will start to overheat...i rev it up to keeo the coolant flowing and usually it will go down or and if i have the heater on...wat do u guys suggest i should replace?...i have a new radiator....better cap?..have my sensors checked?....it use to happen on the freeway aswell just normal driving...then all of a sudden it will go down on its own....help?

DaveF

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by iluvboost &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">sorry to jack the thread but i have a similar problem with overheating in my turbo gsr....wen its hot outside and im in traffic it will start to overheat...i rev it up to keeo the coolant flowing and usually it will go down or and if i have the heater on...wat do u guys suggest i should replace?...i have a new radiator....better cap?..have my sensors checked?....it use to happen on the freeway aswell just normal driving...then all of a sudden it will go down on its own....help?</TD></TR></TABLE>

you have air trapped in your coolant system most likely

I got a honda

hhmm ill have that checked out i use to go through t-stats like crazy too intil i purchased an oem one its been holdin up....so im almost sure its not my t-stat

cappelhans

thanks for the advice agrn93ls - i feel foolish for assuming that my sending unit or temp sensor was haywire and driving it while the gauge read hot - but we replaced tstat, fan switch, put stock radiator fan (the big one) on a Koyo rad and flushed the system a couple of times/made sure it was bubble free...everyone seemed to agree that the gauge must be reading wrong...

that said, i never saw milky residue in the oil but if the headgasket was going i could have burned through my coolant and things started deteriorating from there....i guess we'll find out when they pull it apart - i wish i had the expertise to do the bottom end myself - you were able to get the ls block and pistons,etc. for $1K?


chris

agrn93ls

no i didnt get pistons( did you mean aftermarket pistons or block with pistons? i got a complete running engine and took the head off and put on my GSR head) i just bought and LS long block (engine including head) from my buddy for 450$ you could probably get one for like 600$ maybe less. then just get the golden eagle LS/vtec kit for around 200$ and put that head on block, = done LS/vtec/turbo the kit comes with everything you need to do a LS/vtec i loved it, did it all at work myself. not one piece goes to the machine shop, only problem i had, and many other people, with this kit is the dowel pins for the head they are a little too thick and take some persuasion with a hammer, or use a bench grinder and lightly grind them evenly smaller. but stock block LS/vtec is good for turbo becasue of the lower compression i will be turboing my car in about 2 weeks. but your fan switch, the thermoswitch for the cooling fan, is not the same as the one for the gauge so do the test like i posted originally. good luck. and also my theory is id rather buy 5-6 LS blocks than spend roughly 2G's on building a motor only to find the builder sucked or the pistons slap etc..... stock honda block in good shape can hold 300hp on good tuning no problem. so ill stick with buying LS blocks if mine blows.

PHiZ

For 1500, I would probably buy a B16 longblock, or if your head is good, do an LS/Vtec. This way you could use the majority of your parts, and it would save you the money.
-PHiZ