Smoking on start up.

[sportinawoody]

do a search on here on mmr. they dont advertise here for a reason. theyve had so many motors fly apart and they dont stand behind them. i have experienced this first hand so yes , their motors are garbage and they blamed the failure on end user neglect and the motor was n/a being broken in on the dyno and the logs were sent to them and nothing in the logs were wrong. you may not want to accept that but when there are dozens of people that have experienced this and you still turn a blind eye, then you get what you get. i honestly would tear it down completely and totally rebuild it, balancing and all. then you know what you have. total seal AP rings have been very good to me and my customers and friends

 

[Bullitt6301]

Well at this point the motor has been smooth and revs out with out any vibrations. I plan to take it out and replace the Rings, Main Bearings, Rod Bearings a lot of various seals just to clean everything up. I understand what you are saying and I am not "turning a blind eye" I am stuck with what I have and I haven't had any problems up to this point. When the motor was originally put in my car I had some issues getting it running correctly and when I finally took it to a shop for them to troubleshoot and get it dyno tuned it had some issues with blow by for a bit. Well now we are 2 years later and I have been turning the boost up to 14+ psi to make some power out of it and the rings are starting to let a lot of blow by past. So yes I understand your side but I must have ended up with a "lucky" engine. If I can ask a few questions from you? Should I be able to lightly hone the block a bit and put new rings onto the pistons? Also for the crank and rod bearings do I need to machine the block? I am hoping to be able to swap bearings and swap rings and put it back together. Check measurements and have a 2nd chance at getting this engine sealed tight the first time. Also what is a good ring gap?

 

[sportinawoody]

On the bearings, its a matter of choice. Clevite is fine for street duty and occasional track duty. No measuring of the block is necessary. Honestly, id just pull the caps and inspect every bearing and have clearances checked if they are good and mic the crank. Do not use plastigage. That is innaccurate for these apps. The gap is different from supercharged and turbo due to the heat from the heat from the turbo. Ill look upmy cheat sheet when I get home but you'll need to inspect the walls, piston skirts, check wrist pins for freeness, etc. I believe the gap for the total seal AP set is .0055 for turbo but don't hold me to that.

 

[sportinawoody]

That is however based on my bore size. There is a simple equation for figuring this up and can be found on the internet

 

[AutoXRacer]

Have you done a leak down test? I have had good compression tests and horrible leak down tests.

Compression tests are only good for quick obvious problems.
Trying doing a leak down test before pulling the motor.

I'm on my 3rd oil burning built motor now... sigh

 

[Bullitt6301]

No I have not done a leak down yet. I have the kit to do it. Just requires removing the turbo and piping to be able to roll the motor over from the balancer. Once I do the leak down I know I am listening for the air escaping from places but if it is the coming from the crankcase then I assume that is rings?

 

[Bullitt6301]

So, just called MMR. Basically he told me he thinks I have a PCV issue. I told him I am venting both pcv's and the oil fill cap. He says that I am overventing the crankcase. Is that even possible? He said delete the drivers side setup and run a catch can on the passenger side. That should fix the issue. He also said my oil pressures are normal for my setup with a turbo and 5w-20. Hot idle is 15's psi and 2k rpm is 50's psi. I locked out the VCT this last weekend because it was being noisy. That made a big difference in the power, In a good way. It seemed to make the motor a lot smoother down low and more torque. So, I am going to try his solution and see if it makes a difference before pulling the engine out. I mean I do have some pretty crazy crankcase pressure but I just contributed that to the turbo pressures. I have steam coming out the filters while it is idling. Also the filters get soaked in oil after driving hard and it will make a oil mess on the valve covers. I guess the catch can is an option.

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[sportinawoody]

edit:

 

[Bullitt6301]

Edit??

 

[Bullitt6301]

edit:

All I can see is the edit: not to sure what happened?

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[sportinawoody]

if you have breathers on both valve covers then the only way oil can get in the cylinders is past the rings unless your turbo is leaking oil but you will se this in the piping. typical of mmr's phone tech's to lead someone down a dead end path. you may try to gut the pcv out of the drivers side valve cover to let more pressure out but vacuum on the crankcase is the best way to seal the rings but pumps tend to wear out very fast. some have used a hobbs switch to kick it on only under boost. if you follow their advise, you're going to have an intake full of oil. if you want to try an vent the crankcase 1st, heres my advice: gut the pcv on the driver side and run a vented catch can to both valve covers and reinstall the oil cap. you will see steam occasionally from it at idle but if your rings are sealed then you will not get any spray from the filter on top of the catch can but the filter will turn brown. if you are still burning oil after this, then you definitely need to plan on a re-ring

 

[Bullitt6301]

So, last weekend when I had the valve covers off I cut open the PCV valve on the drivers side. So both sides are true venting. My next step was to use a catch can. Like you said if it continues to vent a lot of oil then that means the crankcase is getting too much blow by from the rings? So yeah I probably will plan on a tear down and re-ring the motor and get the rings properly seated. I am sure the motor will make a ton more power with the rings actually seated correctly.

 

[AutoXRacer]

I am sure the motor will make a ton more power with the rings actually seated correctly.

It won't. My first built motor had washed down cylinder walls. No ring seal at all. I had major blowby, but it still dynoed at over 650rwhp and 610rwtq.

When I rebuilt the motor...same power.

 

[Bullitt6301]

WTF.... I have only got this car up to 500 and it would lean out. So I changed to bigger injectors and haven't got it back to the dyno yet. I can only get to 16 psi and then it leans out every time. I am tuning with SCT PRP and I bump the MTF up and it will still lean...

 

[Bullitt6301]

It seems as if the engine just doesn't like going above 14psi.... I know other guys with the same setup that make 600+rwhp... So I guess what the heck am I doing wrong...

 

[Bullitt6301]

I have also noticed that I can never get the MAF Counts above 780. Not sure if it related but I have never seen the counts go above 780. At 12psi it will see 720's at 14psi it will 750's and the most I have ever seen is a spike to 770's on 16psi but it seems like it should be more than that. I have checked all the piping for leaks and haven't noticed anything. I just want this thing to make some useable power.

 

[Bullitt6301]

I am starting to realize there is something wrong with my setup.... There is no way that I should not be making a lot more power on the amount of boost I am running.

 

[Bullitt6301]

Update- I got a catch can installed and the car is not smoking nearly as much. I believe that I might have got a bad batch of oil or something because it is really thin for 5w-20. I am going to change the oil to Semi-Syn 5w-30 and see what if any difference it makes. The top has been quite noisy also which makes me think the oil is just to thin when it heats up. The top end is getting oil as I can see the oil in the valve cover when it is running. Other than the top end lifter noise the motor is smooth and runs great. More to follow.

 

[Bullitt6301]

So changed the oil to a semi 5w-30 it helped a bit but still having smoking issues. I am convinced that I am blowing out spark on 16+psi of boost so going to fix that but I believe my oil pump is going out. I check the cam journals and they still look like new but I have this nasty top end rattle. I am pretty sure I will have to pull it out and change the oil pump.

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[Bullitt6301]

So pretty sure discovered my issues. I haven't drive the car much since it started having top end rattle for the lash adjusters so yesterday decided to pull off the cam caps and see what they look like. These are on the driver side and only the first main cap and the second cap were ruined the rest looked fine. Oil pressure or something else. The cam basically dug grooves into the first main cap. $2000 heads gone. FML, I am really tired of this damn car and all the issues.