SoCal Jet Boats
Tech Talk => Engine Mechanical / Electrical => Topic started by: sportinwood on August 13, 2010, 06:40:17 PM
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Makin a long story short...atleast attempt to:
Spent 6k+ (in april of this year) and had a 454 built after i grenaded the old one. Somehow after 5-7 river/elsinore trips I noticed my oil pressure dropping and i found myself adding 2 quarts on the spot. Put it on the trailer, had black exhaust/oil on the back of the boat and minor smoke out the oil fill cap at idle. Didnt notice any pinging or knocks, ripped the motor out and sent it back to where i had it built.
Stopped by his shop today, 2 pistons are toast and the other 6 have knicks and dings on the tops.
The crank, rods, cam, etc. are all ok according to him.
What he told me was my fuel lines (3/8") were too small and the fuel pump was big enough to keep up with motor. (kept it from the old motor which was a stock 454).
He also mentioned a possible vacuum leak near my carb.
I am far from a mechanic, but is it possible to cause all this damage by lack of fuel?
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timing wrong hitting pistons
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Makin a long story short...atleast attempt to:
Spent 6k+ (in april of this year) and had a 454 built after i grenaded the old one. Somehow after 5-7 river/elsinore trips I noticed my oil pressure dropping and i found myself adding 2 quarts on the spot. Put it on the trailer, had black exhaust/oil on the back of the boat and minor smoke out the oil fill cap at idle. Didnt notice any pinging or knocks, ripped the motor out and sent it back to where i had it built.
Stopped by his shop today, 2 pistons are toast and the other 6 have knicks and dings on the tops.
The crank, rods, cam, etc. are all ok according to him.
What he told me was my fuel lines (3/8") were too small and the fuel pump was big enough to keep up with motor. (kept it from the old motor which was a stock 454).
He also mentioned a possible vacuum leak near my carb.
I am far from a mechanic, but is it possible to cause all this damage by lack of fuel?
Get some high quality pictures......I call bullshit on the fuel line being too small.......I have proven 3/8" fuel line to be good for up to 500 HP without issue.
GT
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Get some high quality pictures......I call bullshit on the fuel line being too small.......I have proven 3/8" fuel line to be good for up to 500 HP without issue.
GT
X2, Not gonna go into detail on Moo, controversial subject, but rest assured, a bit more HP than that even, and after dissassembly, pistons, plugs, rings were perfect!
Ray
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ill work on getting pictures. its all torn apart at his shop. He claims it had around 550 hp.
a timing issue could have done all that damage?? what is the recommended timing on a motor like that?
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Get some pictures up
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cam timing problem...NOT ign. timing....among other things too..post pics :)
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here is the damage. :banghead:
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few more of cam / heads
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Gonna say it out loud so I can regret it later......Lack of quench area. piston overheated, either too much piston to chamber clearance or wrong piston/head combo..
GT
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Makin a long story short...atleast attempt to:
Spent 6k+ (in april of this year) and had a 454 built after i grenaded the old one. Somehow after 5-7 river/elsinore trips I noticed my oil pressure dropping and i found myself adding 2 quarts on the spot. Put it on the trailer, had black exhaust/oil on the back of the boat and minor smoke out the oil fill cap at idle. Didnt notice any pinging or knocks, ripped the motor out and sent it back to where i had it built.
Stopped by his shop today, 2 pistons are toast and the other 6 have knicks and dings on the tops.
The crank, rods, cam, etc. are all ok according to him.
What he told me was my fuel lines (3/8") were too small and the fuel pump was big enough to keep up with motor. (kept it from the old motor which was a stock 454).
He also mentioned a possible vacuum leak near my carb.
I am far from a mechanic, but is it possible to cause all this damage by lack of fuel?
A number of questions come to mind. What was the static compression supposed to be? How much ignition timing (total timing) were you running? What fuel were you running?
I don't think the 3/8" fuel line would be the issue, I recently dynoed a 468 Chevy at 606 HP,, with a 3/8" line. I am using 1/2 fuel line on the 632 cu in engine that I have ready to go on the dyno now.
I think I can see marks indicating a piston was hitting the cylinder head, but would not make such a statement based only on these photos. The deck height, combined with gasket thickness would equal the "quench" that GT mentioned.
It's possible a number of factors combined to cause the problem. If the compression was marginally high, and you ran some bad or cheap gas,, or 87 octane instead of 91 octane,, combined with a vacuum leak, etc etc.
Years ago I build a 9.2-1 compression engine for a friend's Suburban. His kids drove it to the river admittedly at 120 mph at times,, towing a trailer. When the engine temp was showing to be too warm, they continued to run,, (backed it down to 100 or so). They not only burned a couple of pistons, but the block and head got torched, like a fuel dragster,, about 1/4" material gone. I knew it had been tuned on a reputable chassis dyno, but also suspect the boys bumped the timing up looking for more power.
Boats (particularly jet boats) get run hard, often for extended time periods at higher rpm than you normally run a street engine.
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he said i was at 10:1 compression. im not sure the different types of compression there is. ie 'static compression'.
always ran 91 and i believe the station out in needles even had 93 oct.
as far as the timing, pretty sure it was 30*.
My next observation is why the motor didnt make a whole lot of noise while I last ran it. If 2 pistons are not firing and its not running right how could i have not noticed?
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Messy.....You gotta start over....I don't see anything good here...sorry :sly:
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next question: who should have to pay...we havent discussed this yet. if he wants me to pay i will most likely take whats left of my motor and go elsewhere.
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If the shop set up the carbs/timing/everything else so all you had to do was turn the key....and you didn't touch anything, then they're responsible. If you took home the longblock and assembled the rest of it and tuned it yourself, I would say that you're responsible. Improper bottom end assembly breaks pistons, it doens't burn the ring lands off of 'em.
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well, i took it home, installed motor and took it back to him to time/break in and make sure everything was working well.
first trip out i had problems with the distributor so i bought a new one and he set it and timed again.
so if he doesnt agree to fix it i guess ill be packin up and lookin elsewhere. :-\
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If he set it up and tuned it...then I'd say it's on him.
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well thank you for everyones help and input. i will keep an update on how this all unfolds.
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Is it just me, or am I seeing the insides of more and more motors lately? :banghead:
Ray
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Funny part is that most of them ain't Oldsmobiles >:D BWAH HAH HA HA HA
Summer is 2/3 gone and people have put a quite a few hard passes on stuff in some cases. It does seem like there is a whole lot of shoddy assembly going on though. Do your research people. You all know that sage old advice about Fast, Reliable, and Cheap right???
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Mines down too. WTF. gettin tired of it. sucked water. pump intake came loose . smashed the hell out of a push rod.vaccume pump was set too high.water and metal in the mains but not too bad. dam efi rev limiter was set a 7800. boat poped out and reved to 9500 in less than a second at that gawd awfull elsoner trip. just a ton of bad luck for a few of us. tryin to keep my head up and get back into it before the season is over. Been too depresed to put up my own thread and pics.
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anyone look at the TEAM THREAD ANYMORE...I posted about this stuff :sly:
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Your a team member, most of us are not and do not have access to that :beer:
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Your a team member, most of us are not and do not have access to that :beer:
What I posted was:
I have noticed that 9 out of 10 people having their mills gone through on this site are having engine failure :thumbdown:
Two reasons:
1. being cheap
2. Cutting corners,bad assy work,bad machine work,come back after come back :thumbdown: :thumbdown:
END RESULT DO IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN! :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:WTF
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.
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JUST TO CLARIFY....
WHAT I MENT TO SAY IS THAT IMHO... SOME
MACHINE SHOPS ARE CUTTING CORNERS THESE DAYS TO MAKE A QUICK PROFIT...AND MY SCJB FRIENDS ARE STRUGGLING WITH THEIR ASSY... THAT IS NOT COOL ;)...NOT IN MY BOOK.
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well after i get everything squared away i may be sending some pm's to some guys on here for some future work. shoulda done that in the first place :screwy:
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update on this mess:
He isnt budging on his fuel line story. He is saying that was the problem and NOTHING else.
He is saying the 3/8" line isnt right because with a T fitting off the two tanks, through the filter, pump, etc is too much restriction to the carb.
He is agreeing to not charge for any labor, but i have to pay for parts. which totaled to $1,660 which includes all pistons, rings, bearings, gaskets, seals, etc. with a bigger fuel pump, fuel filter and regulator (which he states was part of the problem).
SO i need some opinions on what to do... ???
do i fork over the money, take my motor somewhere else and pay more, take him to court. :banghead:
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2 things you can do. get a different profeshinal mechinic to give you a written statment about fuel line diameters to hp. kraig at bds is a total tech freek. or do a search. I would call him and tell him your delima. 562-693-4302. have your build specs ready when you call him. compression, cam info, heads. basicly your whole set up. he will tell you what size fuel line and pump n reg you can get away with as well as cfm. hes been building race cars since the 60's. personally I dont like him, he's a know it all.
#2 run your motor after being built with the same fuel line set up and see what happens. If nothing happens then you know he is full of it. mabee make a bet on the amout of the rebuild but not till hes done with it so he dosent sabbatouge your motor. thats kind of chancy.
also do some reasearch on the fuel line set up and rub it in his face then threatin to take all the damaged motor parts, witch you for sure you should keep, by law they have to give you your old parts back. take those parts, pictures, and write a basic note of what happend, then go to a different shop to diagnose it and tell you what really happend. the other shop has no reasion to lie.
there's also smalls claims court you can use to scare hime if he dosent cover the rebuild since it was most likly builder error and threatin him with reporting him to the better buisness bureau, sp sorry.
If the fuel line in fact was to small you would have had a ton of detenation, poping and lots of sighns before you would have hand grenaded your motor, that dosent seem like the case.
personaly I would not let that builder touch your motor because it sounds like his head is so far up his ass, theres a good chance he will f something else up. I would make him buy the parts that were damaged and go to a different builder to assemble at the least. dont tell him that untill he gets the parts in the say thanks but no thanks.
these are just some of my ideas. hope it helps Jimmy.
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wow!!!! you have a bad taste in your......... this guy (motor builder) is a ....... . In your post i thought someone gave you infor that the 3/8 line is enough to run this motor . why wouldn't the dam fool tell you this when you had at his shop. oh the blame game now your fault make me wonder how many other motors been in this boat that ran fine.to much advance and cheap gas might do this but can't see a 3/8 fuel line doing this your stuck in a rock and a hard spot .good luck keep us posted :banghead: :banghead:
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I'll preface this by saying I'm bit drunk....but not too drunk, momma gets mad when I'm too drunk.
Go grab all your shit out of the machine shop you're currently dealing with. Get it back to your garage...have a few beers.
I saw your WTB post for some SRP 212157 pistons. Why are you looking for these? These are 496 stroker pistons...you have a 454.
Anyway. Unless your motor made 600+ hp, a 3/8 fuel line will support it. I was making considerably more than that with the same fuel line, and it worked fine. When it stopped working fine, it popped like a sumbitch that even an infidel would recognize as badness and get the fawk outta the loud pedal.
Cut your losses. Grab your shit, tell him to pound sand.
Send your motor down here... Me and Romper will put something good together for ya. We don't do warranties. but you won't need 'em.
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I saw your WTB post for some SRP 212157 pistons. Why are you looking for these? These are 496 stroker pistons...you have a 454.
I had 212156 in it before, I think he was planning on resurfacing cylinder walls which would need a bigger piston.
anyways, what ill probably end up doing is grabbing all my parts and pieces out of his shop.
The question I have is can a shop / person look at a motor thats in parts and pieces and find out what exactly caused all of it?
If I can find a shop that can find out the problem and have them write up a description I can take this guy to small claims and make up some ground.
So PM me if you are a jet boat shop / motor builder and interested in looking at a torn down motor.
Let me know of any other way to go about this problem...or if this is it. :beer:
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Your too far from me to come over. my good friend is a builder and great if you ask me. If you post as much pictures as you can and a detailed description of what happened, where the timing was at, and all the parts used in your app. my builder and many on here my be able to figure out what went wrong. I do small claims all the time in my buisness and its very easy to do, fast and simple. Like lakes only said. If this builder set up the build in the first place then how is it your fualt for a builder error, ie too small fuel line. he should had changed the fuel line or warned you at the least. If it was timing and bad fuel, i still think it would fall back on the builed if he set the timing, you have to run the motor to set the timing, dont you think he would have relized that wile setting the timming while the thing was popping or detenating. cause of bad fuel? that or he didnt give 2 $hits and just wanted it out of the shop. Keep in mind boats are way different than cars. use a builder that has boat motor expiernce. boats are touchy sensitive nasty sons of bitches. Kinda like my women. lol jk
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the valves in the pic look ok, but the pistons look like you had bad detenation. a few of those pistons look like they were pounded by the valves, ie very bad cam timing. were any of the valves damaged. looking at the piston skirts, (sides of pistons) looks like they have very low hours. you can still see the machined lines on them. did you bend any valves or break a rocker or bend a push rod= improper cam timing or builder not clreancing the pistons=putting clay on the pistons, assemble heads, turn over motor and check to see if valves hit the clay. It looks like something broke or came apart. we need to find out what that was. what kind of timing chain, gear drive, timing belt was used? tell me about the builder. what type of shop, What type of work does the majority of the shop do? high performance, normal cars forighn or domestic, boat shop, servicing or motor builds etc? If the builder is offering to repair with out the cost of labor it says something.He knows he did something wrong and is not telling you. be stern, get your new parts from him for free. tell him you know he messed up and you just want the parts and will have a expiernced marine performace motor builder assemble it the correct way. If he refuses then you tell him youl see him in small claims court and will bash his shop by reporting him to the better business burueu. In the mean time lets figure out why your motor broke so you can lean like the rest of us, what not to do as you already are.
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good call ROMPERSTOMPER with you on that
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Looks to me that there were more issues, the residue on the pistons are from excessive oil coming by the rings. I believe you said there was oil all over the rear and had to add. The cam looks to have some wear. Sure is a mess for 6000.00. The bores are all scored, the heads show excess oil. 3/8 fuel line never did that damage.
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thanks for all the input on this. to keep you updated, i picked up my motor today in parts and pieces. i now need to find a shop that is willing to look over it and find out why it happened.
so any shops or builder referral would be appreciated. I know there are a few on the forums here.
:beer:
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I can help u....Just dont have the time to assemble engines right now. ...too busy....call my cell 562-661-0905. :) I can only do the machine work....hope that helps :thumbup:
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update!
I am happy to say that I had my motor rebuilt by another builder. Did a great job and took her out for thanksgiving for the first run. :thumbup:
Now the not so happy update, I still have to take the 1st builder to small claims. I personally have never had to deal with anything like this. Anybody have experience with small claims as far as paperwork and what i need to make sure i get my money back.
thanks
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The Judge will make the final decision. Present a strong case with statements, pictures, and a expert engine person to go with you if possible. A expert person will definitely help you.