So I am helping my cousing getting his car back on the road but running into some issues

He bought the car with a d16y8 swap, it was originally a dx

The car ran great, constantly revved to 7.5-8k without a hiccup but one day he stepped in the dark territory and revved her to about 9k rpms. The #4 piston gave up and the rod pulled the wrist pin right off the piston, nasty ****

So looking for a replacement motor we could not find a decent d16y8 for a good price locally so we decided to get a d16y7 bottom end and a d16y8 head and put together a mini me with all new gaskets and seals

We got all the parts and got the job done this last weekend, dropped the motor in the car and it started right up on the first try. I went ahead and set the timing and the car was running almost perfect.

Some times the idle would hunt for a few seconds when coming to a stop. I could not get it to idle at 1k without it going hunting, so I set the idle to about 1100rpm to get it stabilized

He drove it all week, around 400 miles(alot I know!) and came to my house yesterday so we can go for a ride in it. He was taking easy on the motor before yesterday, never went past 5k rpms. We decided to take it on a open road and test the vtec and thats when **** went wrong

Vtec kicked in at around 5700 rpm, a little late for me but fine until then. He kept on the gas and that thing was pulling beautifully until it approached the 6500rpms, thats when the exhaust got really loud as if vtec was activating again but this time the revs started dropping and we were going slower, he pushed the clutch and the car stalled....(Insert a lot cursing here)

We got it back home stalling every corner and with a loud noise that sounded as if every sing valve was bent. We took the head off as soon as we got home and now we are trying to figure out what went wrong

Please take a look at this pics and tell me if this timing belt is properly installed, I checked about 100 times before throwing the covers on but its my first honda timing belt so I could be wrong.

If the timing is off would it be enough to bend the valves at high rpms?, what else could have gone wrong that would make the valves hit the pistons? Could vtec has someting to do with it? Maybe the head we got for replacement had a bad vtec?

TIA

 

Doesn't look like it.

 

Doesn't look like it is off on timing. Even if it was it would only be by one tooth which shouldn't cause the bent valves. Mind you i'm new to Hondas, so I may be way off here.

 

Is it throwing any codes?

 

Now I am even more confused, the timing belt didn't look off to me either. dropping the pan tomorrow and see how it looks under there. No codes, this car does not have an engine light though and I don't know to what level the previous owner hacked the wiring

 

Was reading through your post again. Kinda reminds me.of a problem I had with my old drag car. My valve springs weren't stiff enough and I floated the valves. Valves smacked the pistons and destroyed heads and pistons.

So my question is do you know how many miles were on the heads before you put them on? The valve springs could've been weak and that could be quite disastrous.

Once again new to the Honda world, but not to the automotive world in general.

 

Good call, there is a possibility that valve float could be the cause of the problem. We bought the head used on the local yard and they told us it has 100k in it but who knows...

What gets me baffled is the fact hat it ran fine for 400 miles and according to my cousin it was as strong if not stronger than his old motor. I just don' want to put in another head to see the same thing happen again

 

STOP REVING THE CAR PAST THE REDLINE. the factory sets it there for a reason and a little d series does not make any power on the stock cam that high with thier weak stock springs.... u probably floated a valve and smacked the piston

 

was the head resurfaced/milled ? can cause offset when trying to line up TDC for the head.

 

The head was not milled, it was a bone stock head

We never over revved the motor, that happened at around 6300rpms. Exactly why its strange