I am now a member of the 'I dun gone blew up mah engine' club. I have two theories as to what was the ultimate cause. One being cruising at ~16+ AFRs (gauge crapped out on a 430 mile one way trip), the other being damage from prior knock (had some issues a couple thousand miles back).

Happened while cruising ~85mph. The noise and following vibration made me think for about 10s I hit something. And then it clicked in my head and I began to yell 'oh **** oh ****'. Idk which cylinder went or exactly how, but it lost most of it's oil in the 1/2 mile until the off ramp. It kept hauling until I pushed the clutch in and let off the gas. I will have a better diagnosis when I tear into it...probably not.

Since I was 20mi short of my destination, I had the car towed back at a cost of $2/mi or $880 after all set and done (403 miles!) and stayed the weekend in Tampa FL. Made the best of it and am taking a plane back to base tomorrow. Sorry all I got is a lame tow pic. Also I am far from sober so if some of this doesn't make sense...yeah.

 

OUch...shitty tow bill.

I ran 16.0 cruising AFRs for several seasons of 1100mi/wk driving without issue...but combined with some det caused my little bro abusing the cars it died the same death a couple of months later.

 

Welcome to the club! 2 blown motors and 3 blown transmissions over here.

 

If your afr's weren't higher than low 16 I doubt that's what caused it to poop.
Previous detonation probably had the most to do with it.

 

won't be the cruising AFR's, I cruise at far leaner than that.

There's no load at cruise so you can't really cause damage, well you can overheat the valves, but 16:1 isn't lean enough for that - and extra timing will help that immensley.

 

I knew i'd be in good company here! I guess it was doomed to die at 138k then haha. As mentioned before, my lc1 had crapped out pretty early on the trip and the last numbers I saw were 16s. I leaned out that part of ve table about 100mi before the failure, but I didn't have a hint of misfire, knock, etc. Guess I can blame it on my noob tuning when I first boosted it last year. Hoping to get a stocker and throw it in for another 5 years of constant abuse.

 

**** man, $880? I should turn my truck into a tow truck.

 

Holy ******* ****.. They charge $880 and do not even bother to pick the car off the pavement?

Even the shittiest of the tow trucks here are the flat bed type. They just load the car up, and off they go.

For that kinda cash, I'd just rent a car for a day and buy a tow strap..

 

880 is an astronomical price to tow 400 miles, you got ripped off like no tomorrow.
Usually its 800-1000 to get a car towed (on a nice flat bed trailer) from CA all the way as far as NY and FL, IE: accross the whole US. 400 miles usually runs about 350-400 bux, no more.

Oh well, **** happens.

 

ug. 880 is unsult to injury. it popped without any warning?

u guys got me curious about my motor. i had reeaaaalll bad detonation last track day. is there anything to look for if u pull the motor?

i'm a bit mystified how a motor can blow 1 or 2k miles later.

 

Yeah the tow price sucked, but it wasn't a cross country shipping company, it was a local tow shop my insurance hooked me up with. Yeah $1000 will get your car coast to coast with a company that does that normally. I didn't have too much room negotiate...got him to take $0.75/mi off and sent it out.

I'm not too familiar with all the failure modes there are and why the engine failed so much later. I wonder if I'll see signs of knock on the other cylinders. I've had 0 knock since installing the MS, so any damage would've been from piror to 6 months ago. And I've got meth injection, too, so it def wasn't recent.

 

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