My overheating the car has exactly WHAT to do with a local engine builder?

I started the car and it overheated. I then found a fan motor had blown out, I changed it. The car overheated a second time. I must confess the car overheated a total of about 4 times until I finally found and fixed the problem. (a ground problem)

 

Nothing, but your oil burning does.

 

bunker, bunker, bunker.... So where do you take your stuff to be done?


Shawn sorry to hear about the troubles. I know what it's like to get something ready to go and nothing happens or you hit issues along the way. THe best advice, IMHO, is that you should shut the garage, take a deep breath and spend some good quality time with your wife and kids. I gurantee that if you keep your eyes and ears open, you'll find your solution without even realizing it. Until then... Relax, and spend time with your family. They'll rejuvenate you. The car isn't going anywhere, and as much as we'd all like to see it run, I think that we'd rather see you enjoying life and the car than hating it after.

 

Not if his rings were destroyed from overheating

 

I feel for ya Shaun . What you need is a mental vacation to put an end to this incessant worrying about your car. Take a break...spend the weekend at Whistler with the family...show your Durango some love ...etc.

You'll be wrenching with a full head of steam in no time .

Good luck!

A.

 

Shaun, you are having poor luck. I can't say I've heard someone run into so many problems on a build up. Its also frustrating to hear about because I don't know if it could happen to a nicer guy who doesn't deserve this aggravation. It seems that if it CAN go wrong, it DOES go wrong. Are you Irish by chance?

Out of curiousity, if you had to do it again, having been through all the hurdles that you have been, what would you do differently? What would you suggest to other guys? I know a lot of your problems have been things that were hard to predict before they happened (and not that I want to have to learn by your mistakes or bad luck, as it were), but you have been through a helluva lot now, and can likely provide some words of wisdom to the rest of us.


I wish there was something I could offer to help with.

 

Oh jeez... very saddened to hear this this morning. I can't believe how this has all turned out after so much time, effort and money have gone into your project. Maybe some of the guys are right; take a bit of a break from the project and return later rejuvenated. This approach works good on software development, so maybe it will work on your project as well. Keep us updated, and best of luck moving forward Shaun.

 

If I were to ever do this again, I would ship the car to Agostino Racing with a blank cheque, tell them what I wanted and to send it back in three months. Seriously. That is what I would do.

Steve: No I did not have any detonation issues. I have been VERY cautious on timing so far as I have still been playing with fuel.

 

Shaun: I'm sending you good vibes right now !!! It may not be much, but at least it's a start.

M3=$93,000 + tax....333hp
911 Turbo= $250,000 + Tax....4??hp
Shauns TA= $100,000 + some wrench time....700hp. I choose the last option!!!

I've driven ALL the car you all dream about (I valet) and can tell you that the only cars worth our attention (other than a Z06) are WAY over $100,000 + tax

Andy

 

Thanks Andy.

Your estimate of the cost so far is VERY close to the reality.

 

Shut up Draco you don't just destroy rings that easily. Whatever, listen Shaun I do feel real bad for you, DO NOT just send Agostino a blank check, its actions like that which makes shops not care about the work & think you're just some rich guy, if you want them to do work, let me call them, act all broke, know what to tell them, then you can send them your car, but this is the way to do it, Agostino made some very impressive cars & 90% of their work is all LT1 including head porting, I've talked to the guys before & they do know what they are talking about, they know the best parts to use in our motors, everything.

But my advice, get on the phone & start calling places, just forgetting about it won't work, trust me, it'll always be on your mind.


Hope all goes well. Now, did you try that crap at Canadian Tire like Motor UP? Sometimes it does help the motor break in.

 

You shutup ********

Ring gap will tighten up as engine temperature increases. Ring gaps must be setup to ensure that the gap will not go to zero, which would result in binding, and "scoring" of the cylinder (goodbye ring seal).

If Shaun's engine overheated, it could have completely closed the ring gap as the temp increased, scouring his cylinders, ****ing up his ring seal, thus causing blowby and even MORE overheating.

 

exactly draco! believe it or not bunker it is pretty easy to wreck ring seal. when my motor was first put together, i had a different carb on the top. i had huge problems with it flooding, what happend was when the carb totally flooded, as in pouring out the top! lol it washed down the cylinder walls, and wrecked the sealing. this all happened on the first day of initial breakin, the motor had 1km on it. now new ring technologies say that you only need like 25km and/or (30 min) of running to set the rings in place, but if anything goes wrong at all in that time period or close to it, if its a bad thing then see ya later seal!

my suggestion is to get a cylinder leakdown test done on it, that will tell you if you have any blow-by and it can only be 1. head gasket 2. rings 3. or the heads i leaked mine down and its not too good 10% blowby at least on most cyl. so my 375hp should be 400hp!! lol oh well gonna do one agin soon!

 

There are a bunch of things Shawn did wrong, no sense in me saying anything, if the engine was burning oil, the overheating in most probably cases didn't hurt it, an engine shouldn't burn oil even when new if properly built, period.

 

Blow-by does NOT seem to be a major problem. I have the valve cover outlet going to a bottle to condense the gases. I collect a little water but no real oil.

But the car is blowing blue big time. At this time I'm speculating that the oil ring has been screwed up and the top compression rings are fine. Does that sound viable?

I'll pull the plugs, do a compression test - although I must say the compression was very low when I first got the engine. It was about 100 psi in the three cylinders I did and I did that before the car had even succesfully turned over.

I may try and do a leak down test as well.

None-the-less, that does not explain why the FAST air fuel ratio out of nowhere took a dump.

Basically I need someone with some experience to come and look things over for me.