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4" down pipe Hand blended transition. Its smoother than it looks painted the non-stainless steel headder wrap manifold to turbo pipes installed old 3" vs new 4" I like the way this came out. 4" straight through to the cut out, 3" to the rear mufflers, 2" waste gate merged in
Took it to the dyno with the new 4" dump pipe, the new heads, and a new turbo. Its made 660whp instead of the old 647. New is solid, old is dashed. Between the cam lobes and cylinder bores wearing out, I think I'm loosing hp as quick as I am adding it. Post dyno I parked the car on my slanted drive way. An hour later there was a serious oil spill under the car, roughly a qt. With the car in the air, its clear the rear main seal was pushed out due to excess blow by. I'd done 10 dyno pulls. I pushed the seal back in with some screw drivers, but I dont really expect it to work properly anymore Decided to buy a GM smog pump and run it as a vaccuum pump. It comes on only at full throttle, as I've read they do not work well under continous use. I converted the existing PCV lines from an atmospheric catch can vent to PCV->catchcan-> intake with check valves The hope was all this suction would keep the oil in. Also added a PVC Vacuum sensor w/ data logging. It shows the pump can pull 1" of vacuum. The pump does help notably on the street too, the crank case never gets over +0.5in Fabbed a pump bracket Fits well under the headlight Next there came a loud rattle from the transmission at idle. The bolts holding the flywheel to the engine had backed out. Bought a long wrench, and thinned it out with a grinder to fit between the flywheel and converter to re-torque the bolts Took the car drag racing. At the 1/8th mile mark, the power disappeared, just like at the standing mile event. Still ran an 11.2! Data log shows no oil pressure (20 psi only) on launch, or for 5-6 seconds after. Also shows the turbo died and stopped making boost. Bought another new turbo.... And an accu-sump Install finished
Last edited by Kyleg250z; Sep 22, 2022 at 06:20 PM.
With the new accu-sump in, oil pressure was much higher and only dropped to 27 for a split second. The car dumped oil on the track at the start line, out the rear main seal and I was ejected from the track
There is no point to pull the engine and only fix the rear main seal. This engine is so tired, and clearly its been loosing oil pressure for long durations on each drag racing run I've done. I expect it would fail at any time if I kept going. We'll do a new forged bottom end, carry over the nice heads, and see how much boost and hp all this can make!
I found a great quote to sum up this project. "There was a point where we needed to stop, and we have clearly passed it. So lets keep going and see what happens!"
Kyle as always I love your progress and the thought of you in your garage playing mad scientist with this bad boy! I love it man. Keep up the hard work!
Turbo out Accessories off Headers off Engine mount failed again, only 100 miles on it this time. Probably a heat related issue with 2 exhaust pipes nearby Intake off, lift plate on Close up of the crazy oil set up. Only about 20 fittings involved.. Lots of parts. No where to park the daily driver for a while First stage separation! Liftoff! Shes out Lots of oil to clean up Engine stand bolts are on order..
Teardown time Found the Turbo Bearings! More turbo bearings Dang.. Oil pump is trashed! Rod bearings were replaced by me ~1000 miles ago. Worn through to the copper, about to spin? Main bearings are scored up, but mostly intact. Crank has some grooving. These are the original 175,000 mile bearings. Pretty amazing Both engine mount bushings have failed. Thinking about going solid... Camshaft is in good shape except for a big chip on lobe #1. Lifter #1 has matching damage. I wonder what happened? Cam looks pretty good, but will be scrapped due to lobe damage Cam bearings worn through to the copper. Cam journals looked OK though. Maybe thats from the 20W50 Oil I was running, haha. Very bad design on the oil pan. Think this is my main issue. Aerated oil from my turbo scavenge pump is being put in at the red fitting towards the top of the pan in this image. Right near the pickup The rear part of the pan is sloped on a ~30 degree angle, encouraging the oil to leave the lower sump on launches. The holes in that baffle plate are too big to do anything at all. Will be cutting up and modifying this POS oil pan which has killed 2 turbos and ruined this engine. I wish I could go dry sump, but there is no space left to fit a pump due to the turbo manifolds and turbo exhaust.
There are four major design flaws in the oil pan, which caused the engine failure.
There is a 30deg ramp at the back, under the angle plate with the circular cut outs. On acceleration, oil goes up this ramp and away from the pick up
The "wings" have no hole to let air in. If the pickup sucks the center part dry, oil will not flow from the wings to the center, as air cant get in to displace the oil. There would be a vacuum in the wing area
Aerated oil from the scavenge pump is being dumped into the wing of the pain, below the oil level, adding a lot of air to the oil. This will be re-done to dump the oil into the head instead.
The capacity of the pan is only 3.5 QT!!!!!!!!! That's less than my old 2.5L Toyota.. Just wow...
Here's the work done to hopefully fix the oil pan. The newly added bottom adds 1.1 QT, and is just a few mm above the lower subframe for ground clearance Found more turbo bearings Cutting out the poorly designed parts Planning where the trap doors could go Cutting the bottom out of the pan Used a Jigsaw to cut the bottom out Making a new bottom. Made a paper template, traced it onto Aluminum and cut it out. Used some tape for a mock-up fit. Tack welding Fully welding inside and out on this new piece Welding finished Time to attach it for good Paper template with some off-the-shelf trap doors Turning the paper templates into real parts Added a hole to let air into the "Wings" then tacked into the pan Test fitting the rear wall. This prevents oil leaving on acceleration. There was a 1" lip added to the top of this rear wall, forgot to grab a picture. The lip went forwards so that oil could not go over the top of this pan Bought an Escalade oil pick up. Cut up the CX racing one, and the new one to make one longer pickup that will reach to the right spot in the new pan. Pickup test fit on the old engine. Depth is perfect! Also welded in a support leg to position it.
Last edited by Kyleg250z; Nov 27, 2022 at 04:44 AM.
Welded some new fittings on the valve covers for a new turbo drain/sump system -8AN for turbo oil to return to the head. Having the oil drain down the head tot he pan should give it time to de-aerate Found a guy on Ebay to make me custom Delrin busings. I'll add a heat sheild too, hopefully they last Also got a set of solid Aluminum ones as a last resort Greasing the ARP studs with their provided grease One on! Two heads on! Measuring for pushrod length to the 0.001". I'm using short travel hydraulic lifters this time, with a very tight tolerance on pre-load. Ordered custom pushrods to match Almost ready...
I found ground up turbo bearings in the heads, and a few of the rockers felt gritty. Making a whole new set of 16. DIY was about 200$ cheaper than buying fully assembled Removing the awful stock trunions Finished up! note how the needles just fall right out of the stock GM trunnions on teardown. They apparently have a tendency for self-disassembly at high lift/high RPM. The new bearings are captive with retaining rings.
Also got a set of solid Aluminum ones as a last resort
