Well some of you may have followed my lil write up I did when I build this motor back in 04. Here is the link to Part 2 that I wrote in Feb 04. The images are down, but hopefully our server will be back up soon.
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=773739

I have also posted a few updates after I built it, like dyno sheets and etc. I have tested a lot of turbo's, manifolds, and much much more on this motor. This motor has been in my daily driver for awhile now and roughly has about 20,000 miles on it. I have about 400+ logs of WOT pulls on this motor. Unfortunately the motor died last week to low oil. "Endyn catchcan fills up ALL THE TIME" I was about to get a custom catch can made, but it took a **** before I realized how low my oil had gotten. But none the less, the motor had to come out anyways, it was just unfortunate something like this had to happen. All in all I am very very happy with the outcome of the motor even with this incident. This motor could have easily gone another 20,000 miles after tearing it apart.

So here are some pics.

This was the first time I have ever used ACL bearings. I am very pleased with the results. If it was not for my catchcan filling up all the time this would have never happened. I did not realize how low my oil had gotten, I wasn't even beating on it from what I remember. Here are the pics of the ACL bearings. I did not take pictures of the spun bearings, not much to see there. Overall with the amount of miles the motor had, and even with the low oil consumption the bearings looked really good. All the main bearings looked real good other than some of them having some lil bits of copper on them. BTW the bearings that spun were bearings in rods 3 and 4 and those were just plain screwed up.

You tell me, these look decent to me.






Here is the copper I was talking about. A few of the bearings have this. I am guessing it's from my headgasket cause that is the only copper I can think of.


Now there have been threads about CP pistons and piston to wall clearance. I have had nothing but good experiece with CP and have never had any issues. The motor was bored 84.5mm and use CP built in clearance. Here are the cylinder walls now. They look good, other than the fact that I built up some surface rust while the motor was sitting for a few days. Nothing a hone can't fix. But even with a spun rod bearing, there was no damage to the cylinder walls from what I can see and feel. I'll have the machine shop take a look at it when I bring it in.





Here are the pistons, and this is the only concern I have. I'd like to reuse them if possible and just hone the cylinders. I'd like to try to stay 84.5 and save myself a rebuild. All the pistons show normal wear on the skirt except number 3. The number 3 pistons has the most visible wear on the skirt, but it is not the same time of wear I see from detonation and etc. So I am not sure exactly if it is okay or not, hopefully from the pics some of you may have some advice. I did look at cylinder 3 and it feels perfect. I have seen a few motor with spun rod bearings and most of the time I see the cylinder go with it, usually requiring more than just a hone. There is a small chip on one of the rings on number 3, but it did not scratch the cylinder wall.



Piston 3-These 3 pics below







One thing I did notice after looking at the pistons again, ALL the pistons on the exhaust side is rough, above the top piston ring. Why is that? If you look at this picture below and if you look at the area ABOVE the top piston ring, it looks a lil rusty. Well that area on all the pistons is rough, while the intake side is nice and smooth.


Most if not all look like this below.



Piston 3 on the left.


I don't know how to describe piston 3, it's not like deep scratches. It almost feels like it has a texture to it, but at the same time it's not really a rough texture.





Modified by BodyKits NW at 3:43 PM 9/13/2007

 

did you have any coolant getting by?

 

For the 20,000 miles you have on this motor, it looks really good. The crosshatch is still apparent so I agree with you just wanting to hone it.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by turbodohcsi &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">did you have any coolant getting by?</TD></TR></TABLE>

I don't believe so, my headgasket looked good. I didn't have any weird overheating issues. I guess I could have had a small possible leak, but I doubt it. Why do you ask? There was no water to oil mix when I took it apart.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SuperTeg95 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">For the 20,000 miles you have on this motor, it looks really good. The crosshatch is still apparent so I agree with you just wanting to hone it. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Yes the crosshatch is very apparant and a few people have said the exact same thing. I had a bitch of a time getting the crank pulley bolt off, had to heat it up and it finally broke loose. My friends that helped me said the exact same thing. If I need to get new pistons so be it. I was hoping to just get another set of 84.5 and just have it honed.

 

Didnt read in the other link but what oil and how often did you change it?

 

Well before all my oil shot out of my catchcan I was running Chevron 10w-30. Nothing fancy. Broke the motor in on the dyno. I change my oil every 4-5,000 miles. Just depends. From what I have seen taking the motor apart, the motor had tons of miles left in it. This was just a stupid mistake, but it's okay.

My action 2md clutch which I have had for over 20,000 miles needs to be replaced anyways, and I have to repaint my engine bay as well. So in a way it was meant to be, I was also curious myself on how the engine looked inside.

I need to order another set of rods from Robert@Rocketmotorsports. I'm actually glad he recommended me to try to the ACL's and his rods. I'm very happy with the results.

 

A rich fuel mixture can be bad for your bearings. It could be part of reason for the pits on yours.

 

Is it just me or is there alot of scoring on those cylinder walls?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by SuperTeg95 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">A rich fuel mixture can be bad for your bearings. It could be part of reason for the pits on yours. </TD></TR></TABLE>

Well I wasn't rich at all. It made it's best power a lil under 12.0 on 92 octane. I made 415@12psi. The pits could have been easily from the contamination of the oil, as well as driving the car while it was knocking. I actually wasn't driving the car when this happened. I was letting my friend borrom my car so I could borrow his truck. But who knows, the condition of the bearings are actually really good, other than the ones that spun.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by white90rexsi &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Is it just me or is there alot of scoring on those cylinder walls? </TD></TR></TABLE>

The camera and flash make it look bad, but they are actually really good. I was surprised that the spun bearings didn't damage or scratch the walls. The real damage was the crank, and the 2 rods which have really bad heat marks on them. I am just going to replace all the rods.

 

I know I don't have many posts but in my opinion you might want to look into getting your pistons coated. I know when I worked at my last job my boss would take motors that ran really well and had something silly go bad and when the cross hatch looked good and the pistons had that slight scuff mark on the sides like yours do all he would recommend to most of his customers is having them calico coated and the bores re-honed and he never had any issues.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Reyke &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I know I don't have many posts but in my opinion you might want to look into getting your pistons coated. I know when I worked at my last job my boss would take motors that ran really well and had something silly go bad and when the cross hatch looked good and the pistons had that slight scuff mark on the sides like yours do all he would recommend to most of his customers is having them calico coated and the bores re-honed and he never had any issues.</TD></TR></TABLE>

I was actually thinking about the same thing. I know a few people that does awesome coatings. I am going to wait to see what the machine shops says tomorrow.

 

I am curious to why all the pistons on the exhaust side has a rough texture above the top piston ring. If you look at this picture below and look above the first top ring it looks like a rusty area. Well that area is a lil rough, is this common? The intake side is smooth, but all the exhaust sides are like this. The actual dome itself looks normal. Do you think I may have had some slight detonation at one point, just weird it would be in that area. Just kinda odd to me, but at the same time I don't take a lot of motors apart. I put them together and don't usually see them again LOL.

 

from the look of the bores and how the pistons look you where getting contact between the two..

 

That is a possibility. I'll be taking it to the machine shop and they will check the bores out tomorrow. It seems if anything did get damaged, the piston took most of it cause the cylinders walls look pretty decent to me and the rest of the people that have seen it up close today. But even then, the pistons still look decent. I have seen skirts much much worse then mine from detonation, these ones you can't even feel. Like I said my only real concern is the area above the top ring. The skirts seems to be okay. I'll most likely get some new pistons, but we'll see the condition of the bore and if I can just hone it then I will stick with 84.5mm. If not I'll have to go up to 85mm.

 

That sucks about the catch can filling up and you getting lack of oil in the crank.

Your cylinder walls look slightly scuffed probably due to the 0.0035-0.0040" piston-to-wall clearance right? The crosshatch looks great. I rebuilt my motor with crosshatch looking the same with a degalzing and putting in some SRP slugs. I'm at 20K miles right now too.

I also put in ACL's on the rods, but not the mains as you have done. I am tempted to drop the oil pan at the next oil change and inspect the rod caps just to see what is going on. I was never at your power level though. Good luck with your next rebuild.

 

The copper is one of the inner layers of the bearing. If you're seeing the copper, then the bearing is being chewed up. It may have happened before, after, or concurrently with spinning the rod bearings.

Forged pistons and the extra clearance needed naturally scuff the bore in my experience. The amount of wear for 20k miles of driving looks pretty good on your block.

I recommend changing your oil more often than every 5k miles. It will help you monitor oil consumption more diligently.

 

that scuffing could be because of high egt's/timing aswell as the timing being to much pressure atdc puts stress on the rods/bearing.
just my .02
after reading you lost oil, i guess that explains the bearings.

 

Ahh, that is what the copper is. Well I am only assuming that the bearings started to look like that after the low loss of oil. The car was in fact low on oil for more than 2 weeks. So for it to spin some bearings, and have this many miles on it, I was quite surprised. I was always curious to how the motor was holding up.

 

If expansion did occur, and the skuffing took place, I think it would be most likely happen during the time I was low on oil. I don't think my piston to wall clearance is a issue. Like I said, for the block to have seen low oil, more than once, and having 2 spun rod bearings..I think it looks fairly good. It is just hard to diagnose what happened cause since I spun a rod bearings it is hard to say if that is what did it. I have just been looking at the rest of the bearings that did not get chewed up a majority of them look brand new, with a few having that copper showing up. But we'll see what happens at the machine shop today.

 

Well, got the results from the machine shop. Actually a lot better than I thought. The rods are actually fine, he said he can resize them if need be when I get the new crank. But no worries on the rods.

The bore is in good shape too, he said he was actually surprised that my motor was making 400whp daily. There isn't a lot of High HP hondas around here. The shop stated that I could easily stick with a 84.5mm piston and they can just hone the motor for them. The piston to wall clerance will be only slightly larger than the recommended .035 CP builds into there piston, but it wont be off by much. They said the walls were in good condition, and that is the one of the reasons why I can just hone it. On top of that he stated that the piston to wall clearance could be slightly looser for what I plan on doing. And we all know that there are people running a larger piston to wall clearance with no isses with the CP pistons. For the amount of power I plan on pushing down when all is done, it will be fine.

So all in all, I am happy with the outcome. I've dealt with this machine shop before, so I know they know what they are doing. On to the rebuild.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by BodyKits NW &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Ahh, that is what the copper is. Well I am only assuming that the bearings started to look like that after the low loss of oil. The car was in fact low on oil for more than 2 weeks. So for it to spin some bearings, and have this many miles on it, I was quite surprised. I was always curious to how the motor was holding up. </TD></TR></TABLE>


yea man the inner part of the bearing is copper so if you scratch one and see copper its time to change it. they use a few different types of metal to make them.

also I wouldnt change the oil every 4-5k miles on a turbo honda...the oil still gets alot of fuel and contamination and it breaks down the oil quick. so it needs to be changed often. good luck on the rebuild

 

I usually change my oil more often, but I was kinda curious what the motor would take. I have no problem rebuilding it. Kinda taught me a few things, and the outcome is what I expected. Too the rebuild!!