I messed up my engine tonight
 

Well, I'm sad to say this, but it looks like I am going to be rebuilding my engine in the near future. I drove home from school today NC to MD with no problems, everything was running good. Tonight, I went out with some of my friends from back home to show them my car. We were driving it kind of hard but I only turned it up to 10 psi once, the rest of the time was only 7 psi, and there were no mishifts or high speed runs.

While driving, we noticed some smoke and the smell of burning oil so we pulled over and popped the hood. There was a lot of oil around the breather and my dipstick showed about a quart and a half low. I drove home slowly, did a compression test which was 110 190 180 180. So I'd guess I messed up the ringlands on piston #1. I'm not quite sure why this happened considering I am running a hondata, have only 68k miles, and wasn't really cranking up the boost, but it happened. So, I guess I am going to build it now. Is it ok for me to drive around a little as long as I keep the oil level ok and dont boost at all or should I really not drive it at all? Any other advice? Thanks guys.

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (SilverLudeSi)
 

Thats shitty bro
if it is your rings expect allot of blow by and shit like that, i would stay away from driving it if i were you but some might say otherwise. I drove my civic with a rod knocking for 3 months before it let go. So its really a toss up. What are your plans for the re-build?


ROB

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (rjardy)
 

nm..

[Modified by sushibug, 6:55 AM 5/6/2002]


[Modified by sushibug, 2:01 AM 5/7/2002]

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (sushibug)
 

Sorry to hear that man. Stock ringlands suck.

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (Inlinefour)
 

sorry about making light of the situation but at least now you can go with new pistons and rods.....and more boost.

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (sushibug)
 

Maybe avatars wern't such a great idea... Nah he changed it LoL all is good once more at H-T!

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (Ares81883(PostKiller))
 

Yeah, I know it will be nice to turn up the boost. It's just a little hard to be enthusiastic about dropping another several thousand into something that you just spent so much money on. But oh well, such is the life of owning a turbo honda I guess. http://images.zeroforum.com/smile/emcrook.gif My plans for rebuild are the usual unless someone suggests otherwise:

-JE 9:1 pistons
-crower rods
-ge sleeving
-not sure yet about the head since the benefits of building h series heads seem questionable

It looks like I will be calling ben to order some stuff in the near future. Also, I would love to do this all myself but I don't have time since its the summer and I have to work a lot while I'm not in school. What shop would you suggest in MD that would do really good work? I know I could go to inline pro, but is there anything closer? I am willing to drive farther though if I know the work will be better. Thanks again everyone.

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (SilverLudeSi)
 

Sorry to hear about that...

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (FBP Si 2000)
 

whats all this about my avatar i never took your avatar , it has allways been a wrx on there.......maybe somethings mest up but it looks like a wrx to me........

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (rjardy)
 

wtf damn. Now im all worried. I am getting hondata and I thought that is supposed to make you reliable, not blow up things in the car. Did you tune it yourself or have a hondata dealer tune it?

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (intekragsr)
 

Prelude engines have notoriously weak ringlands. The JRSC Prelude guys run into the same problem. Everything running fine, but the ringlands cracking anyway.

I wouldn't worry about it with a b-series engine.

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (Holden)
 

I once drove on what turned out to be broken lands for about 3 weeks+, but after the last few days, the compression was so low that the car drove like a snail outside of full spool. Just be careful and only drive if you have to.

Good luck !

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (SilverLudeSi)
 

Hondata might be a good computer management system, but it still doesn't stop parts from melting, breaking etc... and it doens't handle any of the common sense that should be applied.. (i.e. Beating the hell out of it)

beating the hellout of your car just to show your friends?? Ask degradated, he wanted me to beat it once....he has been in the car several times and I REFUSE tobeat it for no reason.. let alone impress some friends... after all they wont pay for it if it breaks...

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (GSRwBOOST)
 

reread his post...he didn't beat his car!! u make it sound like he drove the shit outta it or sumthin....i mean damn, if you can't have a little fun with it at times, then what's the purpose of even having it?

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (GSRwBOOST)
 

Well, I wasn't "beating the hell out of it." I tend to be very careful with my car and I rarely even see boost during normal driving (I shift around 2500-3000). When I say it was driven kind of hard, I mean maybe 3-4 full boost runs to 60 mph within the course of a couple hours. Otherwise than that, it was just normal use of boost, revving the engine to maybe 5k rpm at most, but only occasionally. If I wanted something that I was only going to use at the track, I would have just gotten nitrous. I tend to believe that it was just weak prelude ring lands, but I cannot be sure.

Re: I messed up my engine tonight (SilverLudeSi)
 

under high boost you can expect a little bit of oil shooting out due to inproper crankcase ventilation, but a quart.... well yes that is a problem. that happened to me about a year ago, it turned out to be the oil seal on my turbo, that fucker blew and i smoked out a major intersection etc etc. just thought i would share that story. also, i would like to say in my opinion compression tests dont mean shit. sometimes they do, but for the most part that ive done them they suck ass. example, a buddy of mine had fried pistons and rings, perfect compression. another guy i know did some block damage to the walls, and once again perfect compression. anyways, since you got poor readings then you are lucky that you pinpointed something out. good luck on the rebuilt.