Oh what a day

The Oily Bits S1 Specific Topics
1

Head out to the track for a open day, just finished all my re wiring, moved engine down and did a whole lot of other bit’s, removed about 20kg’s from the car and overall created a better package.

Last few days put a couple of hundred km’s on the car and remarked to my mate yesterday that I have never had it this good, started first turn from cold, oil temps, pressure and water temp were perfect.

Did a 20min session this morning, car felt very loose almost lost it on a fast sweeper so came into the pits, flat right rear wheel, turns out it’s a bad valve. No problem head home and change wheels or get someone to bring me slicks i thought. Move car out of pits and hear a little knock.

Car had been perfect on track, apart from flat, but temps pressures were great, thought I could really start pushing it a bit later in the day, 100m down the road and an almighty bang, shut motor down and coast to a stop. GREAT BIG GIANT FREAKEN HOLE IN THE BLOCK.

I had moved my rev limit down to 7800rpm a long time ago as it was futile to rev it further as the 2l had such good torque, I could just as well have revved it to 9000rpm it would have lasted the same amount of time.

I am gutted, don’t even want to look at it to take photo’s but will tomorrow. If there had been a hint of knock or anything I would have suspected something but as I said it was better than ever for the last few hundred km’s since we checked the bearings which were all fine.

Either I will have to build my last k series motor, only have enough parts for 1 more or move to the non k series engine thread with an audi motor, in any event I am getting tired of these motors, Best service I had was from my 1.8 which I revved to 8600rpm all the time fully expecting it to break, it didn’t, now I come over all soft and limti rpm only to have the motor put a leg out of bed.

Anyone want the fancy up and over exhaust system and some roller barrels

2

Gutted for you Jason. You have such a sorted car, considering how much harder it must be to get spares.

If you go the Audi route, have a chat to Maddog (Expat Durban boy) who is building a Rotrex supercharged Audi. Should be fairly tough at any rate. One can get a lot of power out of them.

By the way, has your car done the Gydo Pass hillclimb in the past?

3

Sorry to hear that Jason, but I hope there’s something to be learnt on here (for us who want to use the K).

But other engines do it too when it’s asked to do more than it was intended to, like this Honda:

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v629/Uldis/HoledK20.jpg[/image]

It seems they don’t like > 8.5K RPM, as in this article I found on an american magazine:

[image]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v629/Uldis/10KK20-2.jpg[/image]


Maybe if you post the pics we can all do a post mortem online analysis?

4

Thanks guy’s will try and get some pics tonight, I’m in that awkward phase you sometimes get to in relationships where you know you will have to see her again but try to avoid it, so i will work up the courage tonight.

I have to agree that any engine will go bang at some stage in hard use, however I worked out that the motor was running at around 95% max rate, BMEP piston speed etc, at 8300rpm, so having kept it below 8 should have made it’s life a little easier. Also components used were of good spec so should be able to live at 80% capacity for a reasonable amount of time.

I am sure there is a contributing factor to this, but I don’t think it is RPM related.

5

Jason,
I know it’s a sore subject but have you broken down the motor or taken any pics yet?
We’re all on the edges of our seats…
Very sorry to hear about your misfortune mate.
If you don’t go the K route on your next build I may be interested in those roller barrels.

Mike

6

So here it is, difficult to get in and see without taking the motor out so I had to point and shoot, but looks like it might have snapper the crank, although I am welcome to any other theories of doom. Nothing definite till I strip which could be a while.

[image]http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/exige297/DSC00003.jpg[/image]

[image]http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/exige297/Block1.jpg[/image]

Some pics of how good it was starting to look after the re wire:

[image]http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/exige297/DSC00030.jpg[/image]

[image]http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/exige297/DSC00048.jpg[/image]

[image]http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/exige297/DSC00058.jpg[/image]

[image]http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/exige297/DSC00050.jpg[/image]

7

well it says it all, broken rod bolt, explains the lack of any impending signs of doom, on a positive yet irrelevent note the bearings were in great shape, those that were left so apart from the bolt the bottom end was in good shape.

Got to do alot of steam cleaning though which I quite enjoy, almost makes it worthwhile doesn’t it
[image]http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f107/exige297/BrokenRod.jpg[/image]

8

So you’re going to fix it then?

9

To be honest it is all dependant on crank state and whether or not the engineering shop can do something about removing a liner from this block and inserting it into the spare block I have with a cracked liner.

The general consensus at the moment though is that it will probably go together as a 1.9l. I am really stuck between a rock and a hard place because of race regs and force fed cars here, if I put an audi motor in the car, which I am tempted to do more than you know, I might end up with a car I can’t race.

Stripping my 1.8l this weekend gave me refound hope of just how good the motors can be, all was in perfect order and it revved to silly numbers for 5000km’s and was wet sumped. So yes perhaps a sensible 1.9 might be the way to go for racing purposes.

I find the thought of fitting any other brand of NA motor hard to digest as I have got a good gearbox clutch package for track use and going to road ratio’s would really annoy me.

Duratec is not an option, laying out to match the parts I already have will be so expensive I can just as well rebuild the k every season after this. And let’s face it fitting steel rod’s and crank to a duratec is no cheaper than a k.

But to answer your question definitively Uldis - maybe

10

Jason,
What type/brand of rod bolts were you running? ARP???

11

Just as an aside, NMS make excellent replacement rod bolts which I happen to stock, they are ARP equivalents but are slightly more eleastic which lessens the possibility of breakage.

Dave