l

 

****. Sorry man. Awarded you a cat for carnage pics, but would have much rather seen big boostages with no carnage.

 

Cried a little bit watching the vid, even knowing what was coming next.

On the coattails of this, maybe you'll be able to break even if the YT channel goes viral!

 

That's heart-wrenching to see. So sorry, man. Godspeed.

 

RIP. Man, the highs and lows of building a car. All that work on the motor (which was very entertaining to watch) gone in a moment (not as entertaining to watch).

It's part of what makes a car build so exciting. So much work that could explode at a moments notice.

 

Damn, I swear I looked away from this build thread for 2 days... Another one bites the dust. Good luck with getting it back up and running.

That sucks. I've theorized about something like that happening with launch control due to pulling a static amount of timing regardless of KPA load and commanded timing. Not a fun way to confirm that theory/concept.

Wild to see the oil pan bend like that. I would've expected it to crack or shatter.

 

Carnage photos

Where piston?



Head actually looks salvageable, as well as most of the valves.



As for the shortblock... nothing is salvageable.
Oil pump leg is shattered. The body of the pump also took some hits and is seized.




Windage tray is mangled. That was expected.


Pan is probably toast. I might take a shot at hammering it back into shape as I've nothing to lose, but not expecting much.



Mmmmm... piston McNuggets, with a side of rings.


And of course, a nice hole in the block/girdle plate.



Since the valves look largely OK and not bent, my theory of valve to piston contact is out. I didn't see any signs of melty piston or detonation in the shrapnel I recovered, so I think it had to be rod.
So either a rod stretched/bent and shattered, or the rod bolts snapped.

Sidenote. Everyone online has been overly helpful in trying to "help me find a motor"
But finding a motor isn't an issue. There's 20 listed within 50 miles of my location. Or you know, the two(three counting the one with the hole in it) sitting in my garage.


The issue is the exploding rod took out every single expensive and hard to get component of the oiling system.
Pickup? Large dent in it. Scrap.
Oil pump? Cracked, seized. Scrap
Windage tray? Mangled like a tin can. Scrap
Oil pan? Dented and half a side collapsed. Probably scrap.

If only one of the above components was damaged I could throw together something inside a week and have it running enough for an event. But having every single bit of the expensive Kpower swap components reduced to scrap is just too much to try and tackle in the timeframe I have. That's not to mention the custom items I built, like the water pump plate and alternator bracket, which are both severely dented and might have to be rebuilt from scratch as well.



Car will be rebuilt. As to the timeframe and to what extent... thats TBD. But yall know how I roll at this point. If something breaks... I build it better for the next round.

 

 

I think this pretty much sums up your engine failure:

I'd like to see a strip chart if you have high speed datas. Engine speed, each cylinder IG, fuel, boost press, t/c slip %, EGT?
This is a perfect case for DBW control to limit tork rather than just fuel & IG. You'll be able to limit tork per gear, which will allow you to control slip % within the safe realm of IG retard control.
You're already pushing this engine pretty hard, then you add traction control on top. I'm suspecting weird crank torsional vibration (and supa high EGT) due to basically being WOT/high engine speed with heavy IG retard and throw in random cylinders being dropped. Highest crank shaft torsional vibration is at the front of the engine (which is why ze germans love their rear timing drive setups), which caused #1 rod failure.

 

Annnnnnnd we are back
I took mostly an entire month off of working on the car. After the non-stop push push push of the previous 4 months to get the car back together and running, I was nearing burnout, and adding in a hectic work schedule had left me in a state of permanent exhaustion. A month of not coming home after a 10-16hr shift and not feeling the need to start welding, cutting, filming or editing was a godsend.

That was a ton of good information. I have most of that data on hand, minus EGT(something that's being adding soon). I didn't know that was the reason for rear mounted timing chains, I always figured it was so they could turn what should be 15min jobs into engine out affairs.
While I don't think my flawed TC strategies did that motor any good or helped things, after tearing it down completely I can confidently say that was not the end cause of the failure.
The remains of #1, followed by 2-4. AWOL, banana, BANANA, banana.


"A stock block K24 can generally take 5-600whp reliably" was a phrase I saw get tossed around so many times in various Honda forums. Yeah sure, if you have a bigass turbo that doesn't spool till 6k and only run it 8 seconds at a time. With a small turbo like mine that spools closer to 3K and making peak torque at 5k, plus all the track hours it's already seen, this motor never stood a chance when I hit it with 280kpa and rode the revlimit off into the sunset.
Nope, every valve in #1 was slightly bent or nicked. Upon further inspection, the head had gouges deep enough that I wouldn't really want to use it unless the need was truly dire. Its being retired to the boneyard of "mostly broken things to rob parts off of". WIth the windowed block definitely scrap, and the head mostly scrap, I picked up a "fresh" junkyard motor to make my next victim. Except when I arrived at the yard to put my hands on it, I was told "yeah Jimbob is right out back pulling it out of the pile, here take him this can of brake fluid to help unseize it" Uhhh what? I wanted a runner. "Yeah it's common for them to seize up while sitting, some brake fluid in them to unlock them makes them good as new and we never hear anything else about them"
Annnnnny waaaay I pushed the issue a little, both the K24's they had on site were locked up from rust and wouldn't unlock with me standing on a 4ft breaker bar, so after some hey and hawing back and forth I negotiated them down $200 for a complete, seized motor.

Behold, the "good as new and we never hear anything else about them" motor, complete with seized rings from rust and enough buildup in the cylinders to stop hurricane Katrina:


The cams and rockers also sported deep rust etching near the rear breather port, so I pulled the aforementioned boneyard'ed cylinder head off the shelf and played mix and match with valvetrain components until I had a complete, non-rusty set that would be serviceable.



Behold, a completely torn down K24Z3 motor on the right destined for the machine shop, a scrap block and crank in the middle, a valve cover filled with banana rods and rusty cams behind it, all overwatched by my original rodknocked motor from many years ago, pulled out to have parts robbed off of it.


Machine shop? A "new" engine filled with rust? What is going on now you might be wondering? Well last week the shipping gods decided to have all my packages show up on the same day, so I came home to greet $2K worth of engine parts sitting on my doorstep.


Behold, Phase III, "**** You, All The Boost"

 

In my mind, the second the guy at the junkyard mentioned the motor being a little stuck, I knew it was time to take the plunge and build a motor. Any stock motor I put into the car would suffer the same fate of the previous unless I turned down the boost. But for me, once the boost **** is turned up... it doesn't turn down. I built the current car, aero, drivetrain and gearing for a powerplant making 600whp+. To have what it is now, but run it at ~350whp would be a crime. A slow, unfulfilling, unremarkable crime.
A rusty, crusty, cheap motor would be the perfect base to start with, and with two broken motors already in the garage, I would have ample spare parts. As of this morning, the raw engine components are at the machine shop for them to do their thing, so in roughly 4-6 weeks it will be back in my position for final assembly. Which is great, because I'm eyeing a Road Atlanta event in early November for some... redemption?


Getting back into the swing of things, I've been going through and salvaging what I could from the motor RUD. You may remember I was mourning the huge dent in my water pump plate, something which I had spent sooo many hours designing and welding on, and was not looking forward to rebuilding from scratch. So before I did that, I said **** it, what do I have to lose, and tossed it in the press. To my suprise, with some strategically applied hydraulic force and a file to smooth things, it ended up straighter than it was before it took a rod to the knee.


With that win, I looked at the Kpower oil pan, bent to hell and back, said **** it, what do I have to lose, and started beating it with a hammer. To my surprised, with some liberally applied 2x4 and hammer action, I took it from this:


To this:



To actually, somehow, bolting up flat to a spare block! I was stunned. I had to do a few passes to repair broken weld seams, but it holds water, and the 'ol MK 1 eyeball tells me it sits just as flush to the block as it did before. Considering these pans are almost $1000 from Kpower this was a yuuuuuge win.



I finally caught some of these in stock at Professional Awesome. My delrin skidplates do OK and I'll keep them on hand for emergency purposes, but they wear quickly and are a little time consuming to make. Plus these Ti skids will make cool sparks in the brake zones! Everyone loves cool sparks!


If you watched EP9 of the "Building the Ultimate Hillclimb Miata" you might have noticed me snapping the wire of my door handle pull when I panicly yank on it. Lesson learned, don't use 20g electrical wire for load bearing purposes, teflon coated tefzel or not. I realized, like an idiot, I literally had cans of steel wire on the shelf, I just had to braid it myself. So dual strands of .025" safety wire, braided together with a drill, and I have a door pull that WON'T snap on me the first time I yank harder then normal.

 

With the realization that I would now be consistently able to push big boost numbers into my motor, my painfully small china intercooler looked more and more out of place. Additionally, even in 90* ambient temps I had been struggling to get this motor up to temp with the huge triple pass radiator and EWP, while intake temps would jump 50* in a single pull and be slow to recover. So to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to double the size of my intercooler, increasing the cooling for the air charge, while slightly hindering the air to water cooling for the radiator.

Nothing off the shelf really suited my needs, either in sizing, inlet/outlet placement, or price, so I said fine, I'll do it myself.
1x Garrett intercooler core, P/N: 703518-6005
1x order to Send Cut Send to save me a ton of time cutting aluminum sheets


Chinacooler? Dwarfed in every aspect. For scale the Garett core is 24" wide, 12" tall, and 3" thiccccc


And a lot of welding later, intercoolage.



Got heat exchangers?



Picked these up from another racer for a good deal. 15x11 Jongbloods, 275 A7's, two years old, but unused and currently wrapped in plastic in my basement, waiting for their time to shine.

 

Wow, great update! Good work with the oil pan, that's a huge win. Excited to see the continued development of the heat exchanger stack and ducting.

 

*Jaw hits the floor*

We are so back, baby.

 

Love this build. I don't post much on here but I have a very similar build to yours, K24z3 same turbo full caged track car. I blew up my first totally stock engine within a few laps on track, it was tuned super aggressive low rpm high boost. I have been running this year with a built engine (stock sleeves but rods/pistons/valve springs). The built engine has been great at "low" power 400whp 10psi. The next thing to figure out is the what is the limit of stock head gasket without an o-ring. The water pump setup is awesome!

 

*OP says he took a break*

*posts more progress in his off-time than I have completed in 3 years*



Also.... *me looking for EP9*

 

Ooof, that blows. I got about two years of track and street use out of mine before it emptied its guts, so I guess not even 400whp is "safe" when you let the turbo eat all it wants in the low end.
I went back and forth on sleeving this motor, but ultimately decided not to. It would have been at least another $1200 once I factored in shipping the block to a reputable shop. I'm really hoping with headstuds and fresh mating surfaces I don't run into headgasket issues, fire rings are such a pain when it comes to having the head on and off. What ECU are you tuned on? I'd love to compare notes on spark timing tables, I tuned mine to what I thought was MBT on the dyno, but in hindsight I think there was still another few degrees and fair bit of power left in it.


To be fair you've had your hands full with a move and keeping the population stable
And errr... I guess I got a little ahead of myself, which is what happens when you schedule an upload and then walk away from YT for a bit. EP9 drops this upcoming Saturday and is the last bit of content I have filmed, edited and uploaded. There will be more coming eventually once things really start happening.

 

Running a haltech 1500, map is attached download the NSP software from their site and you should be able to take a look at it. My map might be leaving some timing on the table, told the tuner to error on the safer side. I have a few track weekends running this tune and has been great so far. Kpower told me to use the .030" headgasket for the weisco pistons FYI.

 

This is seriously fun to watch. I haven't spent any time on your youtube channel, I'll have to get on that. But great work man.

lol @ the "brake fluid frees them up and we don't hear anything else after that"

 

Took a little bit longer than initially expected. Lead times from every machine shop I inquired at were loooooong
But Friday, I got the call, "shortblock is done, you can pick it up now or wait till next week when we finish the head"


Wasted no time getting it into the garage, painting the block, and prepping everything. As time allows over the next week I'll begin assembly.


Bottom end list:
Eagle Rods with ARP hardware
Wiseco 11:1, .5mm overbore pistons and rings
ACL main bearings, King rod and thrust bearings
Block decked, overbored .5mm, mains line honed.
OE main bolts
OE crank, polished and balanced along with the entire rotating assembly
ARP headstuds