Well, I finally got the old motor out and I took some pictures of the damage done when the B17A violently shattered within the confines of the block on the highway. Comments are welcome. Here are the pictures:

The broken rod was in NO LESS THAN 4 MAJOR PIECES. The oil pick up screen was coated in metal debri. The 4th piece of the rod is still attached to the piston. The inside of the block was trashed, and very scratched up.



The windage tray, looking up at where the oil pan would be if not removed. (The bottom of the block/crank.)





The rest of the pictures are located here: http://www.kettering.edu/~thor3026/zother/damage/
And don't worry, the first two pictures are from my engine swap, in which I had to cut the spindle nuts off.


[Modified by mojoGSR92, 7:07 PM 2/18/2002]

 

holy ****. how did this happen? too much boost!?

 

That's an NA motor with no internal work whatsoever. Too many miles on the motor, and I imagine they were hard miles (I bought the car with 131,000 miles, it now has 164,000). The rod just let go on the highway and it looks like it got chewed up pretty good by the crank.

 

Thats nothing, you should have seen my buddies B16 after he went from the top if 3rd to 2nd on an LS tranny. Turns out, it was from a JDM automatic car so it had single valvesprings. THe piston was GONE. As well as the sleeve. Kinda fun to take apart blown motors isnt it

 

that hoe went through the oil pan..........

 

see the journal on the crank, in the pic of the windage tray?
it's really discolored, probably from excessive heat. A bearing probably decided to let go. I'd like to have had the oil from the last oil change analyzed to see if it could have predicted your failure.

Oh well, now for more power...
-Brad

 

That seems to be the general consensus. I was talking to someone else who builds engines and he said it looks like I spun a rod bearing and it slopped around in there while I was at higher RPM's and it probably rattled before it let go. He said the black coloration on the rod, and the blue on the crank indicate high heat situations. I was using 10W30 mobil one with a mobil one filter and was about 200 miles under 3000 miles and was just about to do an oil change.

Makes for a pretty exciting paper weight though, huh?

 

oh wow....that is a disasterous site...

sorry to hear bro...nice paperweight tho

 

ouch.

 

Certainly an interesting conversational piece to hold the magazines down on the coffee table.

 

looks like lack of lubrication or maintnence........you can see the ammount of heat that was surrounding the big end of the rod from the discoloration around it......it looks black/blue

lots of heat............damn.......that's brutal.

 

Well, I religiously changed the oil with 4 quarts of mobil one, and either a Mobil One filter or PureOne Puralator. I just think I finally discovered what the knocking noise was in a big way. (Worn rod bearings.)

The engine still had 3 quarts of oil that drained out of it, even after sitting overnight with a fresh hole in the block. It wasn't a lack of maintenance issue.


[Modified by mojoGSR92, 12:17 AM 2/20/2002]

 

Hey, be glad you got the milage you did out of it. american cars go like half that and die.

Local UAW- asleep on the job!!!!

 

Did you hear a knocking noise all the time or just the first few minutes after starting the car???


[Modified by Josh, 10:45 AM 2/20/2002]

 

Well, unfortunately (as I found out with my old Maxima), even having oil in the engine doesn't guarantee that the oil gets everywhere it needs to. It doesn't take much to clog a small oil passage, and when that happens, kablooey!

 

This Is the Connecting Rod to My Old 92 Gsr It had 186k it just went on the freeway as well oil was changed etc, it started to knock right before sooo must be a problem...






sorry about the quality i replaced the bottem end with a b16a1 and kept the b17a1 head... worked great...

-Joe

 

Knocking noise that was most noticeable right around 3000rpm and sounded like metal knocking on metal. It mostly went away after the engine fully warmed up, and started occuring right around 150,000 miles. I could still slightly hear it after the engine warmed up, but like I said; most noticeable right around 3000rpm but slightly noticeable throughout the rev range.


My hypothesis about B17A1's blowing up in the 160,000-200,000 mile range is based mostly on the fact that B17A1's have one of the closest geared transmissions of almost any OLDER Honda. How old the car is, is important due to the fact that newer cars with closely geared transmissions (The Type R), won't have as many miles and therefore won't suffer similar fates until they do rack up enough miles.

More rev's per mile equates to more wear on the motor. More wear on the motor means less life, and less life means, well...Kabooom! At 70-80 miles per hour I'm churning away at 4000-4500 rpm. That's why I think its a typical problem with somewhat abused GSR's.

 

Sorry to hear of your bad luck. **** happens, now just make the best of it and DON'T waste those paper weights that you will be able to make of the engine parts. My friend is making an end table for his house with his old engine. Crushing it all together into a cube and putting a piece of glass on top of it. I thought it was a cool idea, lol

 

.....damn, another b17a bites the dust