Originally Posted by bcrx7

1. Any idea what AFT (air fuel ratio) you were running in boost? See above
2. You have picture of all pistons? Perhaps one of the head off the block showing the cylinders.
3. You have a picture of the head (combustion chamber side)?

Originally Posted by stigish

Should I be concerned about the ring gaps and take it to a race shop or should I/can I file them myself?

Originally Posted by bmxfuel007

if you have the appropriate tools (feeler gauges, ring filer), it's pretty easy to check. After all of the trouble you've had so far, you don't want to skip one easy step and regret it later.

take your time on this one so you don't file too much

Originally Posted by codrus

Filing rings is easy if you take your time and read up on it first. Go slow (it's easy to overshoot), get a proper ring filer, dress the corners when you're done, and make sure the ring is absolutely level in the bore when you're measuring it. Oh, and mark which ring goes with which bore if you're not doing it one at a time as you put the pistons in.

--Ian

Originally Posted by 99Racer

I suspect the failure scenario goes something like:
- Oil in the pan is cool and thick (ish)
- Oil pump attempts to push oil through - oil cooler adapter, possibly restrictive oil cooler line, cooler, another oil cooler line, oil cooler adapter, then on to the oil filter, and finally to the engine.
- If the resistance at the oil pump is too high going through all the above plumbing, the pressure relief valve located at the pump will open (partly) and dump oil back into the pan. In this scenario, the engine oil volume may be reduced (but may still be high enough pressure at the oil sensor to not be seen as an issue on the NB gauge).

Net effect is borderline oil pressure to keep all the bearings happy. It may be fine on idle or low load but not high RPM or high load or both.

The issue is at high RPM, oil is thrown off the bearings (especially crank) faster than fresh oil arrives. This can lead to oil starvation even though there is lots of oil in the pan, the pump is working fine, etc.

My guess on the cause of failure is too eager a right foot / too much RPM...

Originally Posted by bcrx7

Yes, 5miles is not definitely warm! You need to drive the car at least 15-20mins before doing hard pulls to redline and of course if that 5 miles is downhill, then that is worse. In addition 5w30 is not the best option. Where are you located at? Perhaps for winter, but I would do minimum 10w30 or 10w40 on a boosted engine in summer.

Oh and I see oil cooler block in one of the pictures. Does that oil cooler have some sort of a thermostat? If it doesn't even 10-15 minutes might not be enough to warm up the oil. That is most likely your problem. Repeated pulls on the engine over time with cold oil. On a race track it might take 3-4 laps on a cold engine to get the oil temperature up to what the water temperature is. That's 8-10miles of harder driving. Not stop and go around town.

Reading your profile, it says S/C and Nitrous. Was the nitrous used on this run? What are you running as far as management???

Originally Posted by EO2K

No thermal control on the oil cooler? Ouch.

You probably trashed everything in the VVT mechanism when you filled it full of bearing shards. If you have metal in the cam bearings I would hazard a guess that you probably have metal in the VVT parts as well. Is the little plastic oil filter screen still in place inside the oil control valve?

Your oil cooler is probably also full of metal. Toss it and buy a thermostatically controlled oil cooler kit from someone like Trackspeed. I'm not sure I would be willing to trust the old cooler to actually get clean at this point. The Mocal thermostat used in the TSE kit is pretty much universally accepted by most folks.