Pete’s right,…attending the Euro TA round, getting your engine fixed, what’s the difference. Just get it running again…
He’s not right about the VHPD though, as far as I know its still in the back of SimonE’s car and I don’t think running 30% power is really gonna cut it.
Good to see you at Donny if you do fancy a day out,…
Really sorry to hear this jamie, car looked great at tdi.
Im sure you’ll get it all back together and we will see you back on track soon.
Just dont let scuffers put all his weight back on over the closed season!!
So sorry to hear about the problem. No refund necessary. Worth it just to follow your progress until disaster struck, at any rate.
Seconds after posting the above, I opened my emails to find I had already been refunded. Thanks, Jamie. I understand how felt you about the financial aspect from the outset but it was a pleasure to try to help.
No refund here either, use it to make sure you have an epic year next year 
Gutted to hear the news Jamie. Let us know when / if you ever find out what definitively was the problem. I have never held a very high opinion of Accusumps.
Also not convinced on the accusump. Had too many problem. Initially holding oil and spraying near exhaust then lost an engine at Spa. Wouldn’t use one again. Dry sump all the way although dry sump still worries me on cold start.
We pulled the engine out today and initially things were looking quite positive. Although messy with metal debris, there were no holes visible in the block, the valves were all there, the turbo seems to be ok and the charger also. However, as we started stripping the engine of the loom and all of the bolt-ons etc, we found a nasty looking crack in the back of the block behind cylinder no.1. Balls!!!
Anyway, we then went about stripping the rest of the stuff off to get back to the bare block and then pulled the head off. This is what we found. Can you see what’s missing???
So, it looks like our whole engine problem is due to major piston failure in cylinder no.1. In fact, so major that there nothing left of it apart from molten ally globules and lots of mess. And it’s really unfortunate that as one of these globules was falling down towards the sump, it got caught between the bottom of the darton cylinder liner and the rod (at 7,000rpm) which in turn caused the block to crack. So what could have been a simple matter of just replacing a piston and liner etc has turned into pretty much the whole engine being scrap.
It’s worth noting that cylinder no.1 rod isn’t even bent which is a surprise and that the big end bearings even feel ok. So we’re very, very impressed with the quality of the rods we used. There is also no sign of detonation whatsoever and no sign of head gasket failure.
So, we can take good and bad from this experience. The bad is obviously that we now have to somehow build another engine from scratch. The good is that we can almost 100% say that the failure wasn’t anything caused by us, i.e in the engine build, mapping, fuel, Accusump (as I thought) etc, and that the failure was most likely just down to a single faulty piston. All the other pistons and bores still look absolutely lovely when you get up close to them. Needless to say we’ll be emailing the piston supplier shortly to ask them for an explanation and for their suggestions on where to go from here. All the other parts we chose seem to be working very well indeed.
Ouchie!!! Seen melted pistons in my time, but that’s taking things a little far! 
Well I’m certainly no engine connoisseur, but I’ve never seen a piston completely missing. What’s your thoughts on a possible cause then John??
Nope, me either!!! That’s the million dollar question. Ultimately temps have done for it, the difficult bit is why its happened so suddenly and totally, after a relatively long time of being OK.
No 1 is the end of the fuel rail from memory on Honda’s and they are a dead end rail, but not sure if you still run this? We recently changed Christians to feed fuel at both ends of the fuel rail, and return to the regulator out of the centre, as we were getting a slight drop off of fuel pressure at high revs/boost on the dyno. And we run 2 x 044 pumps, as we were always concerned that although one was just about OK, we would rather run 2 and give them an easier time, than one and absolutely cane it. Am sure that Simon has this monitored though.
Other than that, either long term heat cycles have killed it, or a sudden failure of a dodgy piston as you have already suggested.
Was it always missing!
Just imagine another 25% BHP if you had had 4 pistons from the outset! 
That is quite amazing… a real bugger about losing the block. I hope ‘winter’ gives you all the opportunity to re-build and come back in style next year mate. 
I’m sure Mr Erland will have lots of engines that look just like the one above.
… Oh no… here we go again!!! 
WOW, that certainly is quite impressive. Good luck with the rebuild matey.
Slight update. The engine is completely apart now and there was no det on the other pistons. What was found though, was a slightly bent gudgeon pin on one of the other pistons. So this sort of backs up what we thought was the cause in the first place.
Of course he will!!! All Honda K20’s do that when you push them over 200bhp. They’re useless, cheaply, poorly made, heavy horrible things.
Correctamundo sir 
Normal service is resumed 
Good luck with the rebuild fella