So I have a fully built h22a hooked to a CTR tranny in my ek hatch. The motor is fully built for N/A. Various brian crower, skunk2 and aem parts. I was driving the car in my home town, nothing over 35 mph. I revved at a crack head making the motor go up to about 7,000 - 8,000 RPM. (RPM limit of 9,000). After wards i drove off and it was okay. As i was pulling into my drive way maybe 5 minutes later I heard the motor ticking. So i popped the hood, gave it a tiny rev to 3,000 RPM and it knocked, once it went back down the tick was louder. I shut the car off, and pushed it into the garage to pull the oil pan. After I pulled the oil pan, I found out I had spun a bearing, as well as a backwards rod cap. The rod was in there the correct way however the cap was installed backwards from the previous engine builders. I inspected the crankshaft, it has the blue-ing haze on it still and I did not see any scratches, even on the journal that spun a rod bearing. I inspected the rods as well, all were straight with no signs of slapping or scratching. I also inspected block as well to see if the rods were smacking the cylinder walls, they are not. I looked at the oil pan, cleaned through its contents. I had shavings from the previous bearings but nothing serious. I also found a valve keeper in my oil pan, so I pulled the valve cover off. All the valves have both keepers still so I'm very confused where this extra keeper came from. Anyways, I put new rod bearings in and put it back together. I started it up and it started completely fine, idled normally, almost even better then before. After 10 minutes of double checking everything and leaving the motor running at idle, I decided to go test drive the car to see if I really fixed the problem - it did not. As I was accelerating into second gear I could hear the motor ever so slightly knocking. (My window was down). I turned around and drove it back home, I did a couple test revs while coasting, nothing passed 3,000 rpm. It would knock upon revving, but once it backed into idle it wouldn't knock anymore. So then I got it up to about 25 mph in third, and it started to knock very slightly at idle, almost as if a valve was ticking. I pulled into the driveway and it was ticking louder then before so I shut it off and haven't done anything to it since. Anybody have any ideas?? Any help would really be appreciated as this vehicle was my daily driven vehicle. Mods list: JDM H22A closed deck, F20B rods, and crank, H22A pistons, Golden eagle sleeves, ACL bearings, JDM H22A head, brian crower valve springs, valves, retainers, keepers, cams, skunk2 cam gears. P.S I got the car back from the tuner shop 6 months ago, I feel like its too soon for rod knock?? It's on a conservative tune at 251whp 158 wtq. only 50 more horse then a stock h22a from Japan, and 3 lbs of torque less then a h22a from japan..

 

Backwards rod cap and leftover parts in the oil pan == incompetent builder. Unfortunately, the only way to find out what you've got now is to strip it and measure everything.

Pull head, look for P2V contact. You can borescope it if you can get a hold of a decent one.

That rod and piston need to come out and be checked for roundness, then re-seized as needed. If there's a rod cap on backwards, there's a greater than zero chance the builder shuffled them around too.

That rod journal needs to be checked and diagnosed by a competent builder. Might be able to polish. Hard to say over the internet.