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...:-(

underb00steg6

iTrader: (2)

the overheating sounds like you have a blown head gasket. the inconsistency in cylinder 3 sounds like maybe the piston rings are done. 100 is way too low to boost ...i believe 150 is ok but risky. Sounds like you might have to rebuild your whole motor. Well thats i would do.

solareclipseauto

rebuild the motor, your rings are probably shot

snowman0520

mayb something deformed bc of the overheating like cylinder wall?

JDMFreak

i hope i am reading this right, you got it professional done..and it hasnt been that long right? why not take it back to them?

Del Sol SiR

iTrader: (2)

Ouch Chris... Thought the setup look good, even the #'s from Church was cool. I too have been experiencing running hot, forced me to build the bottom end before it got worse.

TeamNextGenChris

i'd say that the overheating definitely contributed to the problem.i wouldn't expect Shaun or the people who installed the kit to take responsibility for the kit.the first time it started to get hot you should not have driven it until the problem was fixed.
as a side note,i've never had any heating problems on my car(turbo C1,dual core rad).if you are,something's wrong.i even ran my car for a long time with the stock rad-even in 90 degree heat,it never ran hot in city traffic or while cruising along.i've also never had any problems like that with any cars i've built kits for.

also,DELSOLEMITE-how does your car overheating have anything to do with having to build the bottom end?maybe you misworded that,but that doesn't make any sense.
Chris

Del Sol SiR

iTrader: (2)

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by TeamNextGenChris &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
also,DELSOLEMITE-how does your car overheating have anything to do with having to build the bottom end?maybe you misworded that,but that doesn't make any sense.
Chris
</TD></TR></TABLE>

dunno, maybe misworded... basically I have a high mile motor 155k+ in my Del Sol and it was recently turbo'd with modifications only to the valvetrain. After several months of driving it and pushing it to its limits on a conservative street tune from XS Engineering, its been running a little warmer than usual, like 117 Celsius. It use to run @ 85-90. Radiator, fan, water pump, thermostat and temp switch are fairly new, and fluid conditions and levels are what they should be at, so after looking at all the possibilities I've narrowed it down to what could be wrong with my car. It could be something internal in the engine or I need a bigger radiator. Since running stock internals on a high mile turbo'd engine is iffy, I've decided rebuild the bottom end of my engine, to make sure that life is extended and that its built to handle the turbo set up...

cappelhans

i'm afraid you guys are probably right about the blown headgasket/piston rings - i can't think of any other explanation for the symptoms...

all the guys who worked on my car did an excellent job and are professionals with a lot of integrity. that said, i took the car in several times to troubleshoot the overheating and looking back i think it was dismissed too easily. at this point i've concluded that major smoking and massive blowby probably points to a blown headgasket - and low compression in a cylinder probably means cracked piston/ring.

in the end i should have done more research on the risks associated with turboing an older (if low-mileage) engine - i was told that at ~8lbs boost the stock internals would probably hold up. which they did. for about 15 minutes...

i'm planning to replace the headgasket, piston rings, valve seals and the pistons(if any are cracked)...and put a 5lbs spring in the wastegate to keep the boost at a safer level.

live and learn...

btw Chris what kind of build did you do to your engine before you turboed it - i'm really set on getting mine to run cool and reliably...?

DohctorVtec

Well open her up see if there is water mixed with oil in there if so you got a blown head gasket I know that much from my first engine swap .. had an LS pput in my car took it for a ride on the highway got it up to 130 got off then all of the sudden it stalled white smoke started coming out of my exhaust the whole 9 yards

TeamNextGenChris

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by cappelhans &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">
btw Chris what kind of build did you do to your engine before you turboed it - i'm really set on getting mine to run cool and reliably...?</TD></TR></TABLE>
cooling sytem upgrades consist of only an OEM Del Sol VTEC dual core rad,with a slimline fan(the fan wasn't to upgrade cooling,just to give more clearance).
the engine itself is internally stock.i did a full tune up(water pump,timing belt,etc)when installing it.
i've built kits for high mileage cars and they had no problems.i've done a 10psi kit on a 200k mile GSR.it runs great with no problems at all.i've also done a 150k+ LS with no problems...not to mention stock 1st gen B16s that are,what-like 14 to 17 years old?
if the engine is in good mechanical shape to start off,and is kept up on maintenance,there's no reason it should have any problems assuming you don't ask too much of it(too much boost),and tune it right.
Chris