Rod Bearing Failure...

[Alessandro]

good luck drew

[Kyoshi71]

Originally Posted by DublinM3

The S65 if run on proper boost levels is a good motor to boost.

Sorry bud. You can "get away" (in some cases) with a SC but any engine w/ 12:1 is not good to add a SC.

I started a thread once asking if anyone had contemplated lowering their compression to around 9.5:1 before adding a SC and it died on the vine. Actually, Pencil Geek was the only person also interested in the topic.

Originally Posted by DublinM3

I think ESS has proven with a high volume of kits sold without any failures it is really about making sure you keep keep boost levels and tuning within reason.

Boost levels and tuning within reason obviously makes sense. However, you have no proof that ESS has had no failures.

Originally Posted by DublinM3

High boost on this motor can lead to detonation which will take out rod bearings.

I think everyone needs to chill out on the whole rod bearing/M3 thing. (Yes, I am aware of the part# change for '08 cars.) Detonation doesnt just "take-out" rod bearings. Rod bearings can prematurely wear over repeated exposure to detonation but you'd probably pop a hole in one of our cast pistons at the same time, if not before, your bearing fails.

[Malek@MRF]

Originally Posted by DLSJ5

A few things to point out -

1. I've been running 9psi for over 10K miles on the motor, currently no other kit runs this much boost.

You answered the question already as to why.

9-11 PSI of boost on a high CR motor with 91 octane fuel.

Of all the motors I have built and tuned and done analysis on, I would never run past 9 PSI unless the car had race fuel. Even then, the CR on those motors was 10.5:1 let alone 12.0:1. Even then, we modified the fuel systems to run at 3x the fuel pressure to better atomize fuel to reduce chances of detonation. I highly doubt gintani did any of that here.

If you want more boost and for it work properly, do lower compression pistons. A thicker head-gasket is a band-aid method of doing it as well as it affects timing and combustion in a negative way and are often prone to failure themselves.

[J08M3]

Argue as you like, I still think it's not a very smart idea to boost this high compression engine if you plan on having it last a long time.

[Gearhead999s]

The one thing that I do know after 35 + years of being around race motors of all sorts is that detonation kills rod bearings .No suprises in this thread to myself.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by alpine335i

Good luck with the rebuild bro. Gintani FTW with excellent customer service. Keep us posted.

Originally Posted by Oshin02

Gintani, Wow...they are covering the long block? Thats some real customer service right there. Most FI companies wont offer this at all.

Originally Posted by img

Hey man, Sorry about your car!
Hope to see it up and running soon.

Originally Posted by signes

Saw the thread title and was having S54 flashbacks... Glad you're getting it sorted out right with Gintani.

Originally Posted by mikewads

Sorry to hear that Drew. I hope the re-build goes smooth and your back on the road soon.

Originally Posted by DOUT

Sorry to see your motor blow, hopefully it will be up and running again soon. The car is a monster!

Originally Posted by 1º

damn bad news, good luck with repairs. anyway i like that gintani seems to be stepping up to the plate and keeping the forum informed about this

Originally Posted by erm324

Wow sorry to hear that...

...not for nothing but that is a large amount of boost for such a high compression motor - can't say I wasn't expecting something like this.

Anyways, good luck with the rebuild and I'm glad Gintani's covering it - great customer service.

Originally Posted by Jaypod

Sorry to hear Drew - glad to hear Gintani is getting you fixed up.

Originally Posted by Brosef

sorry to hear the news - that really sucks. props to you for being candid and keeping the community in the loop regarding the root cause here! and of course, props to Gintani for standing behind their products.

hope you get back on the road soon.

Originally Posted by HP Man

+2

To the OP, sorry to hear about your situation -- hopefully a teardown pinpoints the cause and people can learn something from it. Props to Gintani for stepping up to the plate.

Originally Posted by Dave07997S

Hope everything gets worked out bro...don't let it get you down.

Dave

Originally Posted by elp_jc

One more vote that's insane to boost the S65 engine, especially to 9 and 11 psi when the bearings are known to be marginal already. Good luck man.

Originally Posted by Alessandro

good luck drew

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by pbonsalb

Did the engine actually run out of oil or just low on oil? You should get the low oil light long before that happens. Certainly no oil would be destructive quickly. 2 quarts down, probably not.

This engine has been run harder than nearly all S65, but running hard does not usually lead to rod bearing failure. It may lead to a more destructive sort of failure. By the old school standards I am used to, the compression is very high for 9 to 11 psi boost, but the engine sees that for just a split second with a centrifugal supercharger. AA has been running 12-13 psi through the small HKS blower on the 11.5:1 CR S54 in the E46M3 without issue, though VF and ESS with the bigger Vortech blower stick to more like 9 psi.

Figuring out which would help the future modding of these motors.

Not sure, but I lost a lot of oil and yes the oil light did come on. All good points, I ran a lot of boost on my VF kit, but mostly while doing spirited driving it was with race fuel and Meth. I believe ESS runs lower boost on their E46 kits as well. All of the S54 failures with SC's were broken pistons, I can't recall any with thrown rods.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by Jason

Please keep this thread on topic. Off-topic posts have been (and will be) removed. Thank you.

Sorry to hear about your engine Drew please keep us updated and good luck.

Appreciate that Jason.

[gixxer_kidd]

Hope you get up and running soon Drew. I check youtube every once in a while (okay more like on a daily basis) to see if you have any new vids up

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by DublinM3

The S65 if run on proper boost levels is a good motor to boost. I think ESS has proven with a high volume of kits sold without any failures it is really about making sure you keep keep boost levels and tuning within reason. I think Drew would agree as he found out that anytime you make the decision to push the limits as he did you run a much higher risk of failure. High boost on this motor can lead to detonation which will take out rod bearings.

Thanks for sharing your story with everyone Drew as it will hopefully open some eyes to what the limits of this motor are and the risk involved if you decide to push them. Hopefully your car is back on the road again soon.

Thanks Dublin, some good points, hopefully we can have some concrete answers soon.

[spdu4ea]

Originally Posted by J08M3

so we have 1 N/A blown out of how many N/A .... and at least 4 or 5 S/C blown out of how many S/C?

Forum sampling is not necessarily indicative of real life. There are hundreds of Supercharged cars and I'd wager most are on forums. Of the 20,000+ E9x M3's, perhaps only a couple thousand are on the forums.

Then consider that the average guy willing to drop $20K+ for more power probably drives more aggressively than the typical M3 owner. When Midge Lyfcrisus notices that his strange little intermittent tick has gotten worse during his morning commute, he's going to take it to the dealer to be fixed before anything catastrophic happens. But for Smokey Andretti, that strange little intermittent tick might be the only warning he gets before the connecting rod decides to do a little remodeling at 8000rpm and 9psi.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by Kyoshi71

I think everyone needs to chill out on the whole rod bearing/M3 thing. (Yes, I am aware of the part# change for '08 cars.) Detonation doesnt just "take-out" rod bearings. Rod bearings can prematurely wear over repeated exposure to detonation but you'd probably pop a hole in one of our cast pistons at the same time, if not before, your bearing fails.

You're right generally detonation will take out a piston before a rod bearing, the Gpower cars had broken pistons, one had a melted spark tip that broke off, the AA car and I threw a rod. I'm not sure what AA found on the pistons or rod bearings, but from what I remember the spark plugs, besides the cylinder that had the rod fail obviously, they looked fine after the failure no clear signs of detonation, but it's hard to tell in pictures to properly analyze spark plugs.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by spdu4ea

Forum sampling is not necessarily indicative of real life. There are hundreds of Supercharged cars and I'd wager most are on forums. Of the 20,000+ E9x M3's, perhaps only a couple thousand are on the forums.

Then consider that the average guy willing to drop $20K+ for more power probably drives more aggressively than the typical M3 owner. When Midge Lyfcrisus notices that his strange little intermittent tick has gotten worse during his morning commute, he's going to take it to the dealer to be fixed before anything catastrophic happens. But for Smokey Andretti, that strange little intermittent tick might be the only warning he gets before the connecting rod decides to do a little remodeling at 8000rpm and 9psi.

Excellent points.

[MspiredM3]

Drew, so sorry to hear about this man. I remember Sina and I trying to help you diagnose the ticking noise the few times that we met up, I guess it wasn't anything normal

I'm sure you will back on the road soon givng all those exotics grief.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by gixxer_kidd

Hope you get up and running soon Drew. I check youtube every once in a while (okay more like on a daily basis) to see if you have any new vids up

Thanks man.

[DLSJ5]

Originally Posted by MspiredM3

Drew, so sorry to hear about this man. I remember Sina and I trying to help you diagnose the ticking noise the few times that we met up, I guess it wasn't anything normal

I'm sure you will back on the road soon givng all those exotics grief.

Thanks Mike.

[powertrip]

My heart goes out to you Drew . Your engine had perhaps the hardest life of any on this forum, so the fact that it lasted this long is pretty impressive in my book. I'm not surprised that Gintani stepped up to the plate, as they have proven to me that they truly care about their customers.

While your car is down we should meet up and see what kind of NA numbers you can get with my car on the VBox .

[J08M3]

Originally Posted by spdu4ea

Forum sampling is not necessarily indicative of real life. There are hundreds of Supercharged cars and I'd wager most are on forums. Of the 20,000+ E9x M3's, perhaps only a couple thousand are on the forums.

Again, I disagree. Of the couple thousand N/A (or however many) are on this forum, the percentage should still be the same of how many blow, compared to how many don't. The sampling is large enough to get fair numbers

[J08M3]

Originally Posted by spdu4ea

Then consider that the average guy willing to drop $20K+ for more power probably drives more aggressively than the typical M3 owner.

This is just a completely made up fact as well

[pbonsalb]

You do break stuff pushing the limits, but that is often part of learning how far you can go. I lost an S52 due to excess boost for the available fuel. It would be great to be able to diagnose the issue. In no particular order:

1. Compression too high for the boost and octane, causing detonation that hammers a rod bearing. I would hope to see some signs of detonation on the piston in question.

2. Defective rod bearing. They are not known to fail and this engine has been been asked to put out more than 50% over its stock horsepower. People often don't add back the blower drive power when calculating crank from rear wheel horsepower on supercharged engines. They can take considerable power to drive. The proper correction factor for a supercharged engine running the blower hard is probably more like 25% than the standard 15%. If this engine made 600 rwhp, that would mean crank power was more like 750 hp. I actually backed into this calculation once on my formerly supercharged E36M3, using injector duty cycle and fuel consumption and estimated BSFC and it seemed reasonably accurate.

3. Low oil due to failed supercharger seal. Again, I would not worry if the oil light came on to show 1-2 quarts low, but I would worry if it went below that level and I would definitely suspect oil level if the oil ran out. How much oil was left in the pan?

4. Detonation based on excess oil pumped through the intake into the engine as a result of the failed turbo seals. How oily is the intake manifold? Some oil is common -- forced induction tends to suck some through unless a breather filter is used or a dry sump with pump.

Then the question is what do you do?

Rebuild with lower compression?

Run less boost?

Run higher octane? Meth is pretty good, but you need failsafes and it is hard to have one on a supercharged car since there is no boost controller to trigger to low boost via an auxiliary output when the meth flow monitor detects blockage (this is routinely done on turbo cars). You might be able to install an electrical solenoid or pop-off valve on the intercooler plumbing.

We look forward to your continued advancement of S65 hotrodding.

[MspiredM3]

I agree with spdu4ea, he has valid points.

[J08M3]

Originally Posted by pbonsalb

Then the question is what do you do?

Rebuild with lower compression?

Run less boost?

Run higher octane? Meth is pretty good, but you need failsafes and it is hard to have one on a supercharged car since there is no boost controller to trigger to low boost via an auxiliary output when the meth flow monitor detects blockage (this is routinely done on turbo cars). You might be able to install an electrical solenoid or pop-off valve on the intercooler plumbing.

We look forward to your continued advancement of S65 hotrodding.

I'm curious as well.... What's the best solution? It would be great to see an S/C M3 with an engine that was built with that intent from the ground up. Huge project though.