There’s a sound that, even if you’ve never heard it before, is instantly recognizable as bad. Worse than a too early alarm after a rough evening, a screaming baby on a plane, or your drunk uncle droning on about how the “real” government put chemicals in his soup to turn him into a zombie, this automotive equivalent of the shart …
The timing of the failure is ironic, but the duration of the time this obviously defective rod survived surprises me. Were those stock rods? GM began improving the quality of their rods as far back as the vortec 350 truck engines of the late 90s, and the LS bottom ends are well known to be very robust. However, for an endurance race car, I would expect an aftermarket rod would be used.
I really liked this car.
Interesting. There was a spate of LS1 and LS6 engine blowups on track where the PISTON turned into granola and the free swinging rod and wristpin beat the cylinder wall apart, sometimes clear through to atmosphere.
It is hard to do a postmortem when all of the metal bits are Grape-Nuts and they are thoroughly distributed to the other cylinders and the ground. I am of the mind that those failures probably started with dropping a valve.
My favorite carnage photo was intact piston rings resting on the passenger side control arm of a CTS-V.
If this is the end of the project, what was the final cost of the build?
I am fascinated by the photo of the entire driveline dropped out of the bottom.
WOW We saw a lot of oil Pan Failures in NASCAB
As mentioned earlier it is hard to determine where things went wrong with all the bit and bobs of metal scattered around.
Good luck
Did not end that quickly though, flew home, Chrysler would only fix it at there leasure 4 weeks +-, ,the case was not broken, they "repaired" it, no compensation, no transportation etc, memory warrenty then was maybe 1000 miles.
Never darkened there show room floor since.
The world has changed in many was for the worst, but in the case of Co s standing behind the product mostly better!
You never know.
The laws of physics say that a part will break as soon as the stress on any point is greater than the strength at that point. And yet, things break in half sometimes just because you looked at them hard, instead of when they're being beaten to death.
I snapped an axle half-shaft on a Civic once. Doing about 5 mph navigating out of the parking lot at work.
CrashDummy said:If this is the end of the project, what was the final cost of the build?
It's a tricky tickertape because the natur eof projects is ccasionally doing stuff multiple times until you get it right, and none of those times are free.
You could probably duplicate the car pretty easily for under $40,000, though.
Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) said:The timing of the failure is ironic, but the duration of the time this obviously defective rod survived surprises me. Were those stock rods? GM began improving the quality of their rods as far back as the vortec 350 truck engines of the late 90s, and the LS bottom ends are well known to be very robust. However, for an endurance race car, I would expect an aftermarket rod would be used.
I really liked this car.
Yeah that motor had been through a lot by the time it broke. I'm not sure whether the failure means the rod was stronger than I gave it credit for despite a defect or if it just had a short life expectancy at high load. I tend to think the former, since I rarely hear about failures like this in these motors.
And, yeah, I really liked it, too. It'll probably be a while before I build something this fast and easy to drive again.
I missed this - why did you use a 525 hp LS3 that was built by a third party and not a GMPP crate? Were those rods "upgraded" or OE parts?
JG Pasterjak said:CrashDummy said:If this is the end of the project, what was the final cost of the build?
It's a tricky tickertape because the natur eof projects is ccasionally doing stuff multiple times until you get it right, and none of those times are free.
You could probably duplicate the car pretty easily for under $40,000, though.
Another aspect of magazine projects is that parts are not always purchased at full price. You'd have to keep pretty careful records of what the street value of the parts are, and nobody really likes adding up what a project car costs :)
JG Pasterjak said:CrashDummy said:If this is the end of the project, what was the final cost of the build?
It's a tricky tickertape because the natur eof projects is ccasionally doing stuff multiple times until you get it right, and none of those times are free.
You could probably duplicate the car pretty easily for under $40,000, though.
Do you have a final parts list for the car? I am not in the market at all but I am sure there may be others out there that would like it.
Keith Tanner said:I missed this - why did you use a 525 hp LS3 that was built by a third party and not a GMPP crate? Were those rods "upgraded" or OE parts?
This was my thought as well. I have more confidence in the gm factory build than a rebuilder, but admittedly don't have experience with either yet.
Teh E36 M3 said:Keith Tanner said:I missed this - why did you use a 525 hp LS3 that was built by a third party and not a GMPP crate? Were those rods "upgraded" or OE parts?
This was my thought as well. I have more confidence in the gm factory build than a rebuilder, but admittedly don't have experience with either yet.
A lot of "crate" engines are engines that didn't pass QC for assembly line use, by my estimation. You'd get them with the cam timing two or three teeth off.
We always treated crate engines as an engine kit that was preassembled for ease of shipping. They always got disassembled and fully gone through.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Teh E36 M3 said:Keith Tanner said:I missed this - why did you use a 525 hp LS3 that was built by a third party and not a GMPP crate? Were those rods "upgraded" or OE parts?
This was my thought as well. I have more confidence in the gm factory build than a rebuilder, but admittedly don't have experience with either yet.
A lot of "crate" engines are engines that didn't pass QC for assembly line use, by my estimation. You'd get them with the cam timing two or three teeth off.
We always treated crate engines as an engine kit that was preassembled for ease of shipping. They always got disassembled and fully gone through.
All the LS crate engines we ever received from GMPP were solid and consistent. They were always engines that were in current production, though.
Only LS failures we have had were in aftermarket "upgraded" parts.
First off I would never run the GMPP crate LS3 in a dedicated track / race car due to the powdered metal rods and hypereutetic pistons. They are simply not strong enough nor durable enough for track duty use. Not sure who's rods were use in the BluePrint crate LS3 motor, but per their website they note that the short block is fitted with;
So it may not be fitted with the more desirable aftermarket; 6.125" forged rods, forged pistons and ARP bolts.
BTW, this was my favorite project car and helped me greatly in building my own C5 dual purpose street driven / track toy. Yes I have a spread sheet of all the modifications and their cost. And yes the total just recently crossed the $40K barrier with my doing 99% of the wrenching and with none of the aero aids or true race car prep things such as a cage and safety equipment.
In reply to deaconblue :
many of the modern GM V8 are actually powder metal forged.
during the sintering process they get removed and hit with a forging press to then to through final sintering at the end. pretty strong stuff, the hellcat spider gears for the LSD are powder forged as well.
I know exactly how powered metal parts are manufactured and believe me they have their place. Some of the components parts that we manufacture at work are powdered metal forgings. I believe that the OEM LS rods are made from GNK P/F 11C60 material, at least the Gen III engines. They were done so to produce a consistent and fairly strong part that required minimal finish machining and had the lowest possible cost that meet the design parameters required. Now if they were using say the GNK P/F 4260 material, they would be much better/stronger connecting rod, but also much more expensive. That is also the reason why the 6.125" rods in my LS engine are 4340 alloy forgings with ARP 8740 bolts. Not only are they stronger than the OEM powdered metal rods, but they are much more ductile as well and they can handle a lot more abuse than the OEM powdered metal rods. As always, YMMV.
In reply to deaconblue :
spot on my friend
In reply to OHSCrifle :
You mean like this?
jerel77494 said:In reply to OHSCrifle :
You mean like this?
I always got a kick out of that famous photo. There's a crankshaft company literally sponsoring the car. Talk about money not well spent....what a disaster for them.
A 401 CJ said:jerel77494 said:In reply to OHSCrifle :
You mean like this?
I always got a kick out of that famous photo. There's a crankshaft company literally sponsoring the car. Talk about money not well spent....what a disaster for them.
The crankshaft was stronger than the block!
I guess it is fairly easy to find early 392 Hemi heads because the blocks were far weaker, and the racers used up most of the blocks. Each block came with another set of heads.
The Ford 427s were the same way... have heard of stories of people racing Cammers who had to hold the bottom of the engine up with a floor jack when swapping engines between rounds. The Boss 429 was a game changer but still overshadowed by the mighty Elephant.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I threw away 90% of the receipts from my LS Miata swap. I didn't want to know, and I didn't want my wife to find out. :-)
Still cheaper and faster than a Porsche.
grubinski said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
I threw away 90% of the receipts from my LS Miata swap. I didn't want to know, and I didn't want my wife to find out. :-)
Still cheaper and faster than a Porsche.
While Miatas are incredible, there is something magic in the way a 911* feels to drive. The driving position, the steering feel, the way they handle.
*not a 964 or 996 or anything soft and neutered like that. Need manual steering and a shifter on the floor with a CV boot as the shift boot
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