crazyitr

Here is the setup. B18B block and crank, GE blockguard, Crower LS Rods, CP Pistons-ceramic coated by HPC, B16 head with stainless intake valves, inconel exhaust, Type R cams, JG intake, 1000cc RC injectors, Hondata s300, Walbro 255HP fuel pump. The bottom end is all new using a new oil pump, water pump, ACL bearings. 81.5 mm bore and 9:1 compression. GT3576- .82 a/r, tuned by tony1 to run 12psi low boost and 20psi high boost on e85.
Here is the scenario: I break in my motor with 1000 miles of daily driving after my initial tune. I run a GT 3076 for 600 miles at 8psi before I upgrade to a GT3576R and get my car tuned at T-1 Race Development. This is a street/strip car. I have twin disk clutch, DSS axles etc etc. No expense has been spared. I take the car out for a drive and I am hear a fluttering sound on deceleration that turns into a knock. Limp the car to a safe place, tow it home, drop the oil pan and see this. #1 bearing is flattened, #2-#4 have significant wear. I am running e85 gas and the motor did not see more than 12psi as evidenced by my peak hold boost guage and datalogs. So what happened? I would like input from someone with engine building/tuning experience. I would like to prevent this from happening in the future and possibly keep someone from experiencing the same situation. The motor has a total of 3500 miles on it.

RC000E

Who built the bottom, what were the bearing clearances, what torque and lubricant was used for the rod bolts, what was the oil level of the motor (gotta cover the obvious too).

Bearing damage points to your clearances and/or lack of oil supply obviously, so build info is what I'd be curious about first and foremost. What's the condition of the cylinder walls and other areas of the bottom end?

crazyitr

Rod bolts were torqued to specs. Engine was built by a local engine builder who has built many reliable Honda motors. I was using mobil1 10w30 at the time. There was 3.5qts in the motor, when I checked the dipstick, it was 1/2 low after the incident. No signs of coolant in the oil. As to the bearing tolerances, I can't say, I didn't assemble the motor. ACL "green" bearings were used on all the rods. Oiling issue has come up. The motor is an LS crank and block being revved to 9-9.5k rpm. Oil pump did not fail. I have not taken the motor apart, only removed the oil pan and looked at the crank and rod caps/bearings from the bottom. I say that I used Mobil1 10w30, I don't remember if I put 5w30 Mobil 1. Put the oil in approx 6 weeks ago when we had a cold spell?

90teg

So same size acl bearings were used on all of the rods? Sounds like the engine builder didn't check the clearances.

crazyitr

This is true, but ACL only makes one size of bearing for a street application. Those who swear by them claim that this is not a problem.

Pay2play killa

were you using an ls oil pump?

if so it probably wasn't getting enough oil around w/ the vtak y0 head.

That and the one size fits all probably had a bit too little or a bit too much play in that one jornal that spun the bearing.


this is why i build my own engines so i know EXACTLY what clearances are

/edit: another thing to think of is detonation will kill bearings; but since you were running e85 i doubt thats the problem... just something to think of; detonation = high cylinder pressure = lots of load on the bearings

tony1

This motor was on stock sleeves, detonation would have broken a sleeve way before it pounded a bearing out of it.

At the end of the day, all the motors i've seen with bearing problems have 1 common thing, aftermarket bearings...

You don't hear about bearing problems very often at all with oem bearings. All i use is oem, and in all the motors i've built, i've NEVER had a bearing problem.

crazyitr

gsr oil pump. 12psi with a good tune on e85, detonation not likely. plugs looked good. the other bearings had unusual wear and looked polished.

HiProfile

I'm curious about the crank - was it balanced as well as polished? I'd also be interested in if the pistons and rods were balanced to within a 0.2 gram of each other. My eagles and wisecos came balanced as such (bought a jewelers scale just in case to test). I'd assume the 'most accurate piston' maker would do so, but I know there seems to be more Crower issues on Hondas than other mfg's. Regardless, it does seem odd that #1 would get beat up so badly.

RC000E

Fact of the matter here is that the it's highly likely to be builder error. We can all guess at what happened, blame the bearings, blame the rods, blame whatever...but the fact is that clearances are clearances.

I've used OEM bearings, ACL's, and Top Lines....kind of like best, best sometimes, and worst on the scale of bearings. Granted ACL and Top Line use a "one size fits all" bearing, but if the tolerance is hit, the tolerance is hit. If you have proper clearance, accompanied by an adequate oil barrier, then damage like this won't happen to a bearing.

Plain and simple the thing was put together too tight in my opinion. You say you got it tuned, running higher psi...maybe you got some higher temps in the block and the too tight became straight up contact...hard to say.

Either way, I'd certainly be having a word with the builder. Ask him up front what the clearance was across the board...if he can't respond quickly with a proper number and has to think about it or reference something I'd be wary. I build a motor and I can tell you right off the general clearances you had. That's partly because I target specific tolerances on every build, and anyone who builds motors regularly generally does things that way.

At the least the builder should do another build for you free of charge, as well as help you source parts (i.e. new crank, block if necessary, etc). Doing such a build has its risks, so you can't always entirely blame the builder (financially), but in my opinion this is mostlikely the builders fault.

Good luck

dude_123

Looks to me that bearing 1 had insufficient crush.

tony1

Were the rods new for this build, or was it a used set?

RC000E

Yeah, just to add, you said the rod bolts were torqued to "spec", but spec would be based on the thread lubricant used. ARP style bolts generally require less torque with the proper moly lube than do the OEM bolts with oil as outlined in a Helms. If they were overtorqued that will certainly skew the clearance.

Mochanic

"I am running e85 gas and the motor did not see more than 12psi as evidenced by my peak hold boost guage and datalogs"

BS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Car came and left with the switch set to high which is 20psi In fact when it was switched to low is when there was major boost spike to 25psi (according to the same datalogging gauge) Also didn't bother mentioning the bad S300 that had to be sent back and fixed (which was the cause of more than 1 problem including the over boost issue)

bearing clearances were well within factory specs of.0013"-.0020" (service limit is up to .0024") crank was carefully micro polished too. If you notice the "A" on the #1 rod journal in the pic. and using the treat aftermarket rods as a #2 rule you would get a bearing code of "pink" (2 colors away from the "green" ACLs which is still well within the factory spec. especially after the micropolishing).

Tony says ACL bearings are junk!

whats the effects of corrosive E85 on ACL bearings since the fuel does get into the oil. also could to much fuel in the oil change the lubrication factors of the oil? The shinyness of the bearings is very weird!

whats the point of posting this until we get the rest of the motor apart and see if there was an oil pump failure, what the main bearings look like, what the pistons and cylinders look like, etc.?

Tony, what do you do to get the oil to return to the pan as fast as possible under high rpm so you don't starve the oil pump? (run a bigger pan with more oil? Just curious if you had any other tricks up your sleeve on that issue)


Believe me, reguardless of what actually really happened here, I will NOT use anything but OEM bearings on high hp/rpm motors that I build from here on out!
(maybe, just maybe on the mains only if the customer is on a tight budget since I have NEVER seen a main bearing spin on a Honda)




Modified by Mochanic at 2:37 AM 5/10/2007

Mochanic

This motor as always, used ARP moly lube on all rod and head studs/bolts!

And btw... I have purposly over torqued a used set of rod bolts on a old rod to test the effects on bearing clearances... I found that you would get the same result starting at the specified torque within .0001 all the way unitil the bolt broke in 5lb increments. This is due to the thickness and surface area of the caps where the clamping force of the bolts take place. (Once the caps are torqued to the advertised spec the cap does not get any tighter before the bolt breaks or strips)

To answer your question Tony.
I'm not 100% sure, but I do believe that these were used rods.




Modified by Mochanic at 2:31 AM 5/10/2007

crazyitr

A- The rods were new. If used rods are a problem, what problems do they pose?
B-The boost cut has always worked to protect the motor, and the motor's boost cut was set below the max boost it was tuned to handle.
C-The purpose of this thread was too discuss the use of aftermarket bearings and/or tolerances of bearings on a street/strip motor.
D-Possibly to dispell the myth of build a motor "loose"
E-Examine possible solutions to oiling problems in a vtec motor.

Another question: Does the use of a non-vtec block compromise the longevity of a boosted motor? ie Would using a gsr vtec block prevent this scenario?

Does the use of a specific weight/brand of motor oil help this situation?

Does anyone shim the oil pump or use any other techniques to aid in the oiling of the factory system?

blaze the chemi

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by crazyitr &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Here is the setup.....

Here is the scenario: I break in my motor with 1000 miles of daily driving after my initial tune. I run a GT 3076 for 600 miles at 8psi before I upgrade to a GT3576R and get my car tuned at T-1 Race Development....</TD></TR></TABLE>
Did you get your car tuned before going to see Tony? I hope you just didn't slap everything on and "break" in the motor.

I have ACL's and my tolerances were IIRC 0.0015-0.0018" on my rod bearings and the crank is from a 1989 B16 . My motor has held up fine for the last 18K miles. Not as much power as you are outputting, but I broke my motor in on the dyno after my build with a proper tune.

Those bearings do look strange. There shouldn't be any scars on these bearings if the oil and clearances were true. One or both of these things failed you.

tony1

Randy, I run a completely stock oil system on my race car. Stock oil pump right out of the box, stock oil pan, stock windage tray, stock all the way down to the oil filter, no issues as of yet, except when I did a 1-2-1 shift and it saw 14k. Didn't come apart on that pass, but it did on the next one.

I know you've built a lot of motors, and i know you do good work. I don't know why this happened, but i do know this generally seems to only be an issue with aftermarket bearings. Of course it doesn't happen on every motor with aftermarket bearings, but i'm just telling you what i've seen.

Looking at the rest of the bearings though, it seems as though there is an oiling issue, it's not like the 1 bearing spun and the rest are perfect.

g2turbo

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by tony1 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">This motor was on stock sleeves, detonation would have broken a sleeve way before it pounded a bearing out of it.

At the end of the day, all the motors i've seen with bearing problems have 1 common thing, aftermarket bearings...

You don't hear about bearing problems very often at all with oem bearings. All i use is oem, and in all the motors i've built, i've NEVER had a bearing problem.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I would think clearances are really what is to blame in these situations. Im using ACL bearings in my built motor with absolutely no issues, however, they did not fit correctly out of the box. I think a problem that most people make is that they slap these "one size fits all" bearings into their motors and expect everything to be nice and cozy. Thats not the case a lot of times.

I dont think its a bearing manufacturer issue. A green honda bearing in the same application most likely would have done the same thing. Thats my opinion.

To the owner, were the bearing clearances measured?

Running925

if it was detination problem you would have had problems with all the bearings.

I've personally seen 3 b-series motors that were ran on an FMU with no intercooler at 12-15psi (t3/t4) and absoutly was having a hell of a detination problem. Every motor trashed the rod bearings, it was all the rod bearings and they all did what number 1 did only way worse.

Definatly oiling problem, possibly due to the clearances but not garenteed.

MoonScryer

Uneducated guess: Crank walk on that end of the crank? Mains quite a bit looser on one end of the block vs. the other?

Shoot in the dark theory, feel free to tell me why I am wrong

nasteboyii

just wanted to throw my 2 cents into this

1 one cylinder obviously spun a bearing, this could have been caused by oil issue or tune issue

tune issue (fuel/detonation) u could have detonation on just the one cylinder, no one seem to hit on this point, it could have an injector problem which would cause detonation in just one cylinder which would beat up a bearing.

second is oil issue, look like oil starvation on the one bearing mostly the others dont look great but dont look bad either, that could have been due to start up/lack of proper braking for the rest of the bearings, but the one definetly has issues, lots of things can cause that problem, when u get the rest of the motor apart can possible tell you more about the situation

sorry for ramblin, im at work typin quick

d