so im getting oil starvation and the coating on my rod bearings are slowly burning up and chipping off.

this happend when i had a stock b20 oil pump. and its a b20 VTEC...

i now have b18C VTEC oil pump. is my problem going to be gone? or is it because the vtec-less blocks dont have oil squirters?

basically i havnt gotten a chance to drive the car on the new oil pump much to find out yet. it took about 3 weeks for my rod bearings to shave up with the non VTEC oil pump. do you guys think i solved my problem by getting a VTEC oil pump or is it really the fact that theres no squirters?

 

bump

 

Have you checked your oil pressure? I know that the only difference between vtec oil pumps and the b20 oil pump is a washer in the internals, and that's it. I have a b20vtec and haven't had any problems with it. So I would check your oil pressure and possibly your pickup tube.

 

how clean is the block, meaning is there a possibility the passages could be clogged?
what about the pickup screen?
what was the oil pressure?

....from my understanding the only purpose of the squirters was to cool the cylinder walls, not to actually lubricate anything...I dunno, I read that somewhere on HT. I dont know how true it actually is, I've never used them and alot of block dont have them. I dont see that having anything to do with your problem either way.

what do the main bearings look like?
was the block align bored?
whats the crank look like?

as you can see theres alot to think about. post some pics with some answers to these Qs

 

the crank is fine i threw away my first set of bearings the ones that shaved off badly. it basically sounded like a spun bearing. heres a bit more explanation

the oem bearings i left alone when i did the b20/vtec conversion we checked them out they were completly fine. so 2-3 weeks later of driving it the bearings were just fred the coating on them was shaved off. luckily the crank was fine, smooth no color change

anyways to shoten it up it cant be clogged cuz we cleaned out the whole crank and considering the fact that the bearings looked almost new then they decided to take a **** 2 weeks later makes me believe that it has something to do with the vtec conversion. I mean its true that probably the squirters only cool the cyl walls and i have not yet had this problem but thats also because i havnt been able to drive it in needs a tune still.

its my girls birthday ill snap some pics maybe 2nite of the 2nd set of the bearings

 

still up for a bump if anyone has ideas!

 

you dont need squirters, and your crank is probably shot, if you were "shaving" rod bearings and it shaved off badly, there is a good chance you messed up your crank. are you sure that the crank wasnt scratched up where the rod bearings sit on it? if so i would reccomend you changing the crankshaft along with new bearings. its much easier to run an oem crank with oem clearances then running customs bearings on a cut crank

 

as I said the crank is fine, it has been fine for 10 years. basically the stock rod bearings that came from factory were beautiful, no marks or nothing and they were ten years old.
when we pulled out the pistons were professional..... we use protectors and we clean up the crank really nice before the pistons go back in. the crank is fine theres no doubt about that

 

did you measure the crank journal to see if the taper was in spec? just eyeballing it isnt good enough. also the non vtec bearings,and clearances are set to not exceed 7,000 rpms. i would personally go to 8,000 but thats it. did you measure what the clearances was? figure out what your rpm range will be and set the main/rod bearing clearances accordingly

 

that cant be because i spun my motor to 8k when it was just stock b20 and the bearings came out looking beautiful.

im telling you guys i know it had something to do with maybe oil pressure or pump or pickup perhaps..

the b20 motor came apart just fine if there was something wrong with the crank there would of been something wrong with the bearings also.

and i dont believe theres such thing as "vtec bearings?" i hear honda bearings are just standard size bearings.....???

 

please post some pics of the bearings so we can see what is happening to them....

you should still mic the crank out even if it was fine after the first tear down, whatever the issue was to tear up the bearings, it could of also torn up the crank.....

how did the rest of the motor look... cams, rockers, mains?....if its a oil pump or pick up issue, you will usually see indications all over the motor, because everything is being starved not just the rod bearings. Now if its an oil passage clogged thats another story.

detonation if bad enough, can also cause damage to the rod bearings. although I have never seen it. most of the people I know are smart enough to not drive around with the engine pinging left and right

He wasnt referring to vtec bearings, he was just stating the fact that most vtec motors have larger clearences... Id have to double check that personally, I cant remember specs worth ****.

Im not trying to insult anyone here, but whats the possibility that they were installed incorrectly or the clearences were not within spec when assembled the second time?

what bearings did you use? honda bearings come in different thicknesses as do some aftermarket bearings

what did your clearences come out to?

 

if your so sure you know what it is why are you here asking us? try to put a gsr bearing on a ls/b20 rod and come back and tell us if they are the same. also FYI honda has at least 5 different size bearings as i know of all within .001.
you said you took it to 8,000 as a non-vtec. i told you i thought that was the safe limit for ls bearing/clearances. i never said there was anything wrong with the crank when it was non-vtec,but when you converted and it spun the bearing it usually always trashes the crank

 

I understand that spun bearings thrash the crank, but it wasnt a spun bearing it was very odd. nothing like iv ever seen before, it sounded like minor case of a bearing that just bearly meltd to the crank. but when we pulled them apart they were not spun just cylinder 2 and 4 were the worst it lookd something like this but WORSE. these are pics of the 2nd set of bearings the ones i drove on for about 3 weeks

excuse my shitty camera but as you can tell 2 of the bearings have more of a scaring then the others, but they are all slowly getting there

 

thats not bad. what does the mains look like? have you ever used plasticguage? i would reinstall the bearings in the rods on the crank and see what clearances you got. i think there gonna be to tight. for your rods you want about .017 clearance like a vtec engine. if there not close get a set of acl race bearings. they give you a extra .0005 clearance. also check the main clearances.you want them at least .015. you want the mains slightly tighter than the rods. remember oil pressure comes from the bearings.
also have the rods checked for "out of round" that will not help any

 

you should of started it off with a b18c1 oil pump...i've done this build before with a gsr oil pump and water pump..everything came out good

 

its a b20 which are obd-2. all obd-2 oil pumps b-oil pumps are the same reguardless.

 

I dont know if anyone has asked this but what are you revving too? To be honest though they dont look that bad.

 

are you guys out of your mind by saying they dont look that bad?

these bearings are 2 weeks old in the motor and your saying thats not bad.....

the FIRST oem bearings that i pulled out (the ones that have been in there for 10 years) didnt look this bad.....


there has to be a diffrence in the oil pumps... im sure that non vtec oil pumps dont pump out as much as vtec. im gonna read into this ill let you guys know what i find out, any thoughts would be appreciated i would hate to keep going thru bearings.

 

Thats about what Ive seen when I pull bearings, granted there not 2 weeks old. But I've pulled a few that have been beaten on for a few thousand miles and they looked like that as did my stock ones. The question really is have they shrunk in size considerably. Next time plastic gauge it so you'll know for sure.

 

Are you running ARP rod bolts? I would never take a stock NON VTEC block past 7200 rpm unless it has rod bolts. That may be one problem. Your bearings look like there may be some crank scoring or possibly trash(metal debris, shavings) in the oil galleys casuing premature wear. Have you measured each rod and main journals on the crank? Can you explain the noise?

 

great questions. and yes i do have ARP rod bolts so i can spin it to 8k but i dont take it to 8k often.. maybe once or twice tops a day im not one of those people that beat the dog **** and hit 8k at every stop light.

"the noise" it practially sounded like a spun bearing exept it wasnt as loud and suprisngly when we took off the bearings they were just really sahved but no scoring on the crank no marks, nothing they felt super smooth. THO i did not measure it the crank felt and looked fine. no color change nothing at all, not even one rough edge. a honda tech from "kiwi motors" hes been doing hondas for 29 years he told me the crank is fine so i took his word for it hes a close friend and wouldnt feed me bullshit.

 

heres something i forgot to add in. one day i felt a dramamtic loss of "vtec" literarly and i had a crazy idea that maybe my stock b20 oil pump was starting to take a ****? i have not yet felt vtec with this new pump but if it feels stronger or the same like before it could of been maybe that my oil pump was maybe taking a ****?

 

cant find any info anywhere on honda b series oil pumps

any links?

 

Investing in the right meters pays off in the end, ie oil pressure gauge. Then you wont have to guess if you dont have pressure. Detonation will kill rod bearings aswell. Do you just have some ebay chip or is it tuned? If there was no oil pressure the vtec shouldnt come on unless that function has been disabled in the ecu

 

check part numbers through honda if you dont believe bseries obd2 oil pumps are all the same

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