Fuck this car.

[V8SRGR8]

Usually the upper ringland takes the beating, but it appears all of those are intact (at least by the photos), and the pieces held in hand look to be from between the rings.

I think that you run an outstanding business and have only heard raves about your customer service so I am by no means trying to put anyone on the spot, I am just trying to understand the failure.

+1000

I do not want this to be a bashing thread.

I do want some fair answers though. I just can't understand how a stock 03-04 Cobra motor can run 700rwhp all day long with very aggressive tuning at over 20 psi on pump, but this built 1000hp motor can't withstand "one little rattle" as was mentioned before. Don't they both have Mahle pistons? **Edit - not the same piston manufacturer - thanks for the heads up!**

It just seems once your staff heard 18psi on pump gas, it was over and done with. Detonation - please send $2500 for repairs. This engine is marketed as a strong one, so, shouldn't it be that? I didn't spend $5000 on it to make 550rwhp.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

 

[Dan Millen]

+1000

I do not want this to be a bashing thread.

I do want some fair answers though. I just can't understand how a stock 03-04 Cobra motor can run 700rwhp all day long with very aggressive tuning at over 20 psi on pump, but this built 1000hp motor can't withstand "one little rattle" as was mentioned before. Don't they both have Mahle pistons?

It just seems once your staff heard 18psi on pump gas, it was over and done with. Detonation - please send $2500 for repairs. This engine is marketed as a strong one, so, shouldn't it be that? I didn't spend $5000 on it to make 550rwhp.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

You will get fair answers, after we give our determination we will send the piston to Mahle for there profession opinion as well.

An 03-04 Engine has different heads and I believe its lower compression than your engine was. Almost a full point! Ill check to be sure everyone has gone home for the day

I typically dont recommend going over 13-14lbs on pump gas.


Thanks

Dan

 

[Freaknazty]

8.5:1 IIRC , while I do agree with the pump gas suggestion , this happened on a dyno not days after with a new tank of gas in it . So as long as the tables were gone off of correctly and the wideband etc. was correct it shouldn't matter what fuel was used . Now I am no tuner nor builder just going off of what I was told and learned along the way so I may be way off .....

 

[stkjock]

I typically dont recommend going over 13-14lbs on pump gas.


Thanks

Dan

Can you elaborate on this as to why please.

 

[V8SRGR8]

LOTS of cars go over 13psi on pump gas and don't fall apart.

 

[US-1]

Can you elaborate on this as to why please.

We've covered that one before. Relates to the quality of pump gasoline available today. You tune the car on one particular tankful so it is safe and makes power. The next tank you get could be a completely different deal even if you buy it at the same station and use the same pump. Could be better or could be worse. On higher boost engines you'll bang the pistons.....or the oil pump gears as we discussed before.

 

[stkjock]

We've covered that one before. Relates to the quality of pump gasoline available today. You tune the car on one particular tankful so it is safe and makes power. The next tank you get could be a completely different deal even if you buy it at the same station and use the same pump. Could be better or could be worse. On higher boost engines you'll bang the pistons.....or the oil pump gears as we discussed before.

SD - yes I know "we" have... I wanted to hear from Dan.

Thanks

 

[psfracer]

Yep, and thats why I always run race gas for racing, cheap insurance. I was also shocked when I read that article on how much pump gas can vary.

But at the end of the day, no matter what the boost / timing, wouldn't one be able to monitor the knock sensor activity? Or are the knock sensors eliminated in the 298 stroker motors? Also what I find confusing is one side is fine, but the other side is not? How did that happen?

 

[one eyed willy]

are the up/down scratches in the cylinder walls normal? i dont remember seeing anything like that when i pulled my heads this past time, 2000 miles on a built bottom,no scratches.could the tolerences been too tight?

that looks aweful,nothing to do with the tuning,i this the piston that broke?

 

[Forward Performance]

are the up/down scratches in the cylinder walls normal? i dont remember seeing anything like that when i pulled my heads this past time, 2000 miles on a built bottom,no scratches.could the tolerences been too tight?



that looks aweful,nothing to do with the tuning,i this the piston that broke?

one eye willie, just FYI, in regards to piston to wall clearances, Livernois uses 4032 aluminum pistons, which expands less than a 2618 JE, cp, or airas. Which means the on a 4032 piston motor the piston to wall clearance would be .0015-.002 and a 2618 piston would have .004 due to the pistons expanding when they warm up (piston slap goes away )

 

[Freaknazty]

But at the end of the day, no matter what the boost / timing, wouldn't one be able to monitor the knock sensor activity? Or are the knock sensors eliminated in the 298 stroker motors? Also what I find confusing is one side is fine, but the other side is not? How did that happen?

No they are not eliminated now the tuner can override them ( which is what happened when my stock motor popped ) but all sensors are still there and active unless locked out .

 

[one eyed willy]

one eye willie, just FYI, in regards to piston to wall clearances, Livernois uses 4032 aluminum pistons, which expands less than a 2618 JE, cp, or airas. Which means the on a 4032 piston motor the piston to wall clearance would be .0015-.002 and a 2618 piston would have .004 due to the pistons expanding when they warm up (piston slap goes away )

so the grooves are normal? dont look normal to me, theres only the one cylinder that looks that bad.

 

[Forward Performance]

so the grooves are normal? dont look normal to me, theres only the one cylinder that looks that bad.

No, no, no....lol. Not normal at all, I was just giving some info on the piston to wall clearance...

 

[DirtyDogOfTheDesert]

Do tuners have the ability to adjust A/F ratio and timing on one bank only ?

NO left and right bank can not be adjust differently.

The PCM can and does make adjust adjustments for fueling bank1 and bank2, but this is not an adjustable table that any tuner has access to.

 

[Dan Millen]

Can you elaborate on this as to why please.

To stay away from all the engineering lingo to make it simple pump gas is not adequate for boost levels above 13-14 lbs unless you lower the compression significantly. You need a certain amount octane to prevent pre-ignition, and its as simple as that. Take the 03-04 cobra it has roughly 8 lbs of boost and Ford went out of there way to make the compression 8.5:1 on pump gas. Now if you more than double the boost and expect an engine to live on pump gas it not a good idea in my opinion.

Now I am sure there are people that run higher boost levels than that and had engines live, I just don’t recommend it. Its mostly because I have tried it and had less than favorable results. Everything has to be perfect and pump gas if far from perfect.

Now this is our shop (please don’t take this as a stab) if you call and have a car with 18 lbs of boost on pump gas and want it tuned, I will usually tell them to take it somewhere else. The exceptions are if the customer is willing to lower the compression, run race gas, or meth injection.

Now someone said knock sensors but my experience with most of the centrifugals is they make the knock sensors very sensitive so I will assume that they were off in this case. If they were on and it did detect knock its possible that it didn’t pull enough.

LOTS of cars go over 13psi on pump gas and don't fall apart.

Yes cars can go over 13 lbs of boost but 18 lbs of boost is more than I recommend.

Just be patient we will look over the parts and I am sure we will talk and somehow come to an agreement. At the end of the day we want you to be happy.

Thanks

Dan

 

[stkjock]

thank you for your comments Dan.... just to clarify for this engineering neophyte.

so the pressure caused by boost levels above 13-14 and compression above 9 cause lower octane gas to pre-ignite and detonate thereby causing failures such as the OP had?

 

[Dan Millen]

thank you for your comments Dan.... just to clarify for this engineering neophyte.

so the pressure caused by boost levels above 13-14 and compression above 9 cause lower octane gas to pre-ignite and detonate thereby causing failures such as the OP had?

I believe that yes, but I wont say till we further investigate. It is what it is and we need to get some answers before we can say what happened for sure.

Thanks

Dan

 

[stkjock]

I'm sure we are all eager to see the results.

 

[EXC06GT]

To stay away from all the engineering lingo to make it simple pump gas is not adequate for boost levels above 13-14 lbs unless you lower the compression significantly. You need a certain amount octane to prevent pre-ignition, and its as simple as that. Take the 03-04 cobra it has roughly 8 lbs of boost and Ford went out of there way to make the compression 8.5:1 on pump gas. Now if you more than double the boost and expect an engine to live on pump gas it not a good idea in my opinion.

Now I am sure there are people that run higher boost levels than that and had engines live, I just don’t recommend it. Its mostly because I have tried it and had less than favorable results. Everything has to be perfect and pump gas if far from perfect.

Now this is our shop (please don’t take this as a stab) if you call and have a car with 18 lbs of boost on pump gas and want it tuned, I will usually tell them to take it somewhere else. The exceptions are if the customer is willing to lower the compression, run race gas, or meth injection.

Now someone said knock sensors but my experience with most of the centrifugals is they make the knock sensors very sensitive so I will assume that they were off in this case. If they were on and it did detect knock its possible that it didn’t pull enough.



Yes cars can go over 13 lbs of boost but 18 lbs of boost is more than I recommend.

Just be patient we will look over the parts and I am sure we will talk and somehow come to an agreement. At the end of the day we want you to be happy.

Thanks

Dan

I am the tuner of josh's car the knock sensors were on and set to pull up to 5 degrees. we datalogged the knock will on the dyno and it did not pull it out seeing as i had 15-16 total timing. the boost peaked at 18 not stable at 18 like a roots. i will agree that pump gas is not ideal for all out racing or hardcore street use but i think it should have taken a little bit more than it did.

We still have no answear of how 2 pieces of ringland fell into the oil pan or how they did. to me i think that that would be highly unlikely.as far as the 03/04 cobra motor yes it has lower comp. and would be more forgiving with pump fuel but i have seen several come in here that look like someone blasted the top of the pistons with a 12 gauge and lived.maybe the pistons on josh's car have a thinner crown? if that is the case then maybe it can't take any sort of detonation. i have clipped several plugs before getting aggressive as all tuners and racers have but that was not the case here we had no issues. also we were told that it looked like ringwash the ruined the drivers side and then it was detonation that is where i get confused seeing as excess fuel will drown out detonation to a certain point.

I have asked for some pics of the pistons which i still am waiting for to see what you guys have told us is wrong and how it happened.i think you guys have a good product but when you do so many engines or whatever parts that you make there is always going to be failures due to defective parts or just general mistakes that is just how it is. don't get me wrong there are plenty of "tuners" that lay waste to a motor and not think twice about what happens or how.hopefully this can be resolved and all parties are satisfied.

 

[marcspaz]

I have been turning a wrench for 23 years. I have rebuilt engines, trans, rears, engineered suspension parts, everything you can think of. Most of the time I did that work because I got screw by some tech or shop owner who didn't know what the fuck they are doing. I found that with some practice I could do things better then the "pros". So now, I do 99.9% of my own work.

Seeing firsthand what an excellent Tech Chris at Excessive is, he is the only person in the country I let work on my car besides for myself. I'm not saying he is perfect, but he is a great tech that treats his customer’s right. I have seen him build and tune 700+ hp cars on pump gas and get years of reliable use both driving on the street and racing.

Plus, I personally have looked at the logs and the tune from the pull when the engine blew. Everything was conservative at best. The car made less than 600 hp on the pull just prior to the failure, and when it popped, it was prior to the peak of the power band, about half way through the revs when it started spraying oil everywhere.

Dan, with that said, I have to tell you IMHO I really think you guys did not machine that block right. Whoever was working on it prob forgot to finish a bank, and it just wasn't right. That is the ONLY thing that is going to cause a whole bank to go bad. Every single cylinder on that bank is fucked, while the other side looks great.

I have to tell you, Josh and I were working on the same build. The whole idea behind buying your 1000 hp block was to have the insurance that at 650-700 rwhp, the thing is gonna hold together. But at this point, unless you guys straighten him out, there is no way in hell I am buying a block from you guys. Racing is expensive enough for the avg Joe. I can't afford to do it twice because a company won’t back there product up when it was running at 40% under capacity at the time it came apart.

I know you guys have a great rep. I have your parts in my car and I love em. But damn son, if you guys don't make good on the warranty or your name is gonna be mud. It doesn't matter what your "experts" say the problem is, you are gonna lose money, and not from just me.