My B16 turbo recently broke. I was driving away from a red light (not racing, just driving away). Low boost. Maybe 3lbs. Then it seemed like someone shut my engine off.
After pulling over, I tried to restart the car and found that I wasn't able to turn it over. I pulled the engine out and found that the ring lands on ALL of the pistons are broken and one of my intake valves (#4 cyl.) broke. The #4 rod was also twisted and slightly bent.
The thing that gets me: I did not hear any pinging, loud noises etc. that I would have expected from the amount of damage produced (no my stereo wasn't blasting...). I was under relatively low load and the engine completely shut down. As mentioned, it was like someone took my key out of the ignition... I had about 3000 miles on the set up and have boosted to 10 lbs many times in the past with no problems.
I'm guessing that there was some detonation going on, more than likely due to a lean mixture... A lot of folks I've talked to have different things to say about it I want to see what this forum has to offer for possible causes and solutions.
My set up:
B16A
Garrett T3 turbo (turbonetics 35% oversized compressor wheel can't remember A/R)
ZDYNE "Gold" ECU
Mitsu 450cc injectors
stock FPR
stock ignition
J&E 9.0:1 SRP pistons
stock (shot peened) rods
Deltagate
Trust (terribly oversized I/C)
Thanks for reading.

 

maybe timing belt skiped a few teeth or broke that my guess with bent valves

 

what was your ignition timing like? that stuff doesnt "just happen" it was building up for a long time and finally just let loose.

 

Pictures of the wreckage would be helpful. What gets bent and what gets heat discolored tells a story.

 

Would having broken ringlands cause the motor to simply pack up?

 

Well, I don't have my camera any more, but I'll try to borrow one soon. I'm afraid that there isn't much evidence left. the block has already been sent to the machine shop and most of the work has already been completed. I may be able to post pics of the bent rod.
Looking at the wreckage, it seemed like the pistons looked normal. Overall, they still looked new with the exception of the missing pieces (and black on the combustion side). My sleeves looked good as well. The Valve smashed the piston into the side of the sleeve, scratching it a little, but the machine shop was able to bore it out and remove the sratch. It seemed like that was why the engine was seized. (piston spread)
My ignition timing was set to whatever the base ignition map that came with the ZDYNE software/ECU is. I'm still new to tuning so I didn't mess with that since I really have no way to gauge how close I am to pre detonation etc. I'd assume that its a pretty conservative map...
Thanks for the responses by the way.
(I'll post pics ASAP)

 

Also, I'd like to mention that cyl# 1-3 still had bits of piston (some were .5-2 cm pieces) in them and little to no damage on the head. I'm guessing that whatever happened killed the engine pretty quickly since the pieces were there, but not completely embedded in the pistons/head. I could be wrong, that's just what I'm assuming.
Would a fuel pump problem cause the detonation and the engine to die? Why did the engine die? I would expect it to turn for awhile (making noise etc. the whole time....), but it simply shut off....
A broken valve wouldn't completely kill the engine would it?

 

Any other feedback?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by ZhaGg &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Any other feedback?</TD></TR></TABLE>

not without pics