The engine is apart and the damage has been totalled up. I could get away with a cheap rebuild by reusing the crank and conrods but I'm upgrading to 4340 steel just to be safe. The block is going to be punched out +.060 and new JE 13:1 pistons installed with longer con rods. Displacement will be 468.

Damage:
Started pulling the engine out. Removed all the spark plugs. #4 was mush. #7 and #8 had bent electrodes. Pulled the intake. There was a small piece of piston sitting in the lifter valley. Looking inside the intake ports I could see the head from #4 intake was missing. It was sitting in the intake port of #1. Pulled the heads off and the #4 piston had a big hole in it. The head got a little chewed up but should be repairable.

All the con rods look good. None of the bearing caps had let go. A few are little tight on the wrist pins and #4 should be rechecked for straightness but I'm buying new ones anyway. The other 7 pistons are questionable. A few have pieces of piston or valve inbeded in the tops. I'm scrapping all of them since I'm boring the block out again. The crankshaft is perfect but a 4340 steel crank is going in. The block survived and the overbore will clean up the marks in the cylinders. The cam and lifters all survived.

Other than I'm converting over to alcohol and will need some time to change the fuel system around, the engine should be put together and dropped back in the car before Christmas.

Next year WILL see a 10 second timeslip!

I'll have some pics on my web site soon. I took a bunch but don't know how well they turned out yet.

Just to get an idea on my rebuild costs. All prices in Canadian funds. Machine shop work is unknown at this time. Should be less than $500. Head repairs should be between $500-$1000 but thats a guess. I want the heads completely checked out again.

Crankshaft $840
Pistons $1366
Con rods $532
Rings $192
Bearings $124

The only other parts I'll need is a gasket kit.

 

Well that is good news I guess.Sucks that it blew in the first place.But next year you will go even faster.

What compression ratio are you going to be running?



I can't wait to hear how it runs when you get it back togother!

 

13:1 sorry, but he said it in the first paragraph.

Sounds like one helluva setup Stephen, I know you'll keep us all posted how it goes.

 

Very first paragraph, 13:1. The old pistons were around 10.3:1 and I was running 92 pump gas. No more pump gas for the new combination of parts.

This isn't the first engine I broke. It's the fourth in 2 years. The first one was a 383 SBC that I totally destroyed. Pulled the heads off and threw the rest out.

Last year I broke 2 BBC. Both times I broke a head that couldn't be repaired when the head of a valve stuck in the top of the piston and punched a hole through the head. They also cracked the cylinder wall that had to be sleeved. This damage, although it looks bad isn't as bad as last years engines.

I run bullet mufflers so it isn't as noisy. I need to be able to hear the engine or tire spin. Even with the mufflers there was no indication of the engine about to fail. Many drag cars are going to mufflers. The noisiest cars are Sportsman cars. 13 and 14 second cars running open headers. I've stood beside 8 second dragsters that were idling and you could talk without raising your voice.

 

opps sorry about that.

 

i never had the privledge of blowing up an engine yet!!
maybe because i am slow and just have stock thirdgen's...

 

Sorry to hear about the lousy end to your season Stephen. I am looking forward to next year to see how your new setup runs.

 

I stripped the last of the engine down today. Pressed off all the con rods. The one with the damaged piston is definitly bent. None of the rod bolts let go. Just goes to show that a cast crank and 3/8" ARP rod bolts can take some abuse. I'm not reusing the rods anyway but will keep the 7 for some other engine or a swap meet.

I have a new 4340 crank already but I'm waiting for the new JE pistons and 4340 rods. I'll get the heads to the machine shop later this week for repairs and checked out. Once the pistons arrive, the block can be punched out. Have the rotating assembly balanced after that and it's ready to be assembled again.

I'm just glad it didn't happen on the first race of the season. Only 6 months before the track opens so that gives me lots of time for the winter projects.

 

Here's a picture of the piston and small parts pulled from the engine. I've tried different angles and lighting and just can't seem to get a good pic of the damage to the head. That is a hole in the top and you can see the con rod inside. At least the head of the valve didn't stick into the top of this piston like the engine I broke last year. It broke off and was rattling around in the intake ports.

 

OUCH!

 

HOLY SHlT!!!!!!!!

 

Are you really buying 1400 dollar pistons?

 

$1400 Canadian.

JE, lightweight, floating pin, race pistons for a longer rod, +.250". I could have cheaped out and bought SRP pistons but they were only slightly lighter than the TRW ones I was using. I should have gone to a higher compression ratio. 13:1 will be fine but 14 or 15:1 would have been better. Of course everything will need to be rebalanced again.

When you're spinning an engine to high rpms, 6000+, you want a very light rotating assembly. I could have bought a crankshaft that was about 10 pounds lighter for close to twice the cost of the one I did buy. Cutting 10 pounds off the crank is like taking 100 pounds off the car.

I'm still waiting for parts before any machine work can begin. I haven't recieved a phone call yet about my heads so they're either still rebuildable or they haven't looked at them yet.

 

I feel your pain. I just grenaded a motor a couple of weeks ago during a test n' tune at the local strip. My poor TrickFlow heads. 11 valves are shot, along with some nasty gouging to the aluminum.

 

Stephen, what caused this to happen? Was it because the pistons that you were using were not strong enough or just not enough octane?

 

I really wish I knew. There is nothing wrong with the short block. The crank and bearings were fine. The rod bolts were fine. The pistons were forged.

The only reason a valve would break is if it hits the piston. I don't have the final damage assessment yet for the heads but I was told they are still repairable. Apperantly there's some broken springs included in the damage. That would let a valve stay in the cylinder and allow the piston to come up and smack the valve.

Head repairs that I know will need to be done:
Resurface heads again
New springs again
At least a pair or 10* keepers
At least 1 new guide
At least 2 new valves (Int/Ex)
14 guide inserts (changing cast iron guides to bronze inserts for the conversion to alcohol)
Clean up combustion chambers (One looks something like that picture above)
Another complete valve grind.
Recheck spring and valve guide installation so that they can handle .638" lift.

I'm guessing it'll be close to $1000 Canadian just to get the heads fixed.

Still don't have the parts for the bottom end yet. I've been designing my cooling system and fuel system on paper for the last couple of weeks now. I don't need the huge 19x31 aluminum rad any more and I need to increase my fuel system capacity to feed an alcohol engine. I'll be using a rad and electric fan out of a 91 Geo Metro. Same rad system as a Firefly or Sprint. It's very small and light and still might be overkill. What I need is a good tranny cooler for a rad. Gotta love running alcohol.

 

Stephen,
Do you have a certain somebody that you go through to have your heads done? If not, I can give you the name and number of the place I went through. They replaced all 16 guides, 2 seats, and 11 valves on my Trickflow heads. Plus, they welded up all the gouges and resurfaced them and did a valve job. It ran me a grand total of $250 at the shop and another $159 at Summit to get the Trickflow valves. Not too bad considering the extent of the damage.

 

Shipping to the US is not an option. I know of at least 5 shops here that do race heads. Mine are at one that's owned by a racer. He was in Pomona for the last week. His son represented division 6 in Junior Dragster.

The springs will be the most expensive part. I wasn't expecting it to need springs again. I was only expecting around a $400-$600 bill. It may still only be that much. I have a 400 block and crank that's he's interested in. That and maybe a sponsorship decal and I can get then done for even less. He does sponser a few racers who have had work done at his shop. I told him there's no rush to get them done like last time. I'd like to have the heads done by at least the end of the month. Last time he had them finished in 2 days. Since the short block isn't even started yet that may be too early but the sooner they're done, the better.

 

Sorry to hear about your loss...

A good friend of mine runs alcohol in his 75 monte 396. He uses a Big @ss dominator carb that I am sure cost him a pretty penny.

The thing that gets me about the car is at idle, you WILL tear up from sitting in the car (d@mn fumes).

The car runs low 10's here in chicago...I'd be curious to see how it did in Canada with a little more altitude density.

-Doug

 

Gotta love Aluminum.

Nothing you cant fix with a lot of welding and shaping.

 

Man, 4 engines in 2 years. That is unreal. Who is building them?? I see 9 and 10 second bracket cars , that race all season, sometimes more than one event in a weekend, go a whole season before freshening engine up with bearings, rings and valve springs only. I have over 130 11 sec timeslips and about 30 10 sec slips with Nitrous and have had no problems. The 350 in my brother's truck has been built since '98, and he over 300 12 second slips, and he shifts at 7000. We did change the valve springs about a year ago or at about 200 passes. It sounds like the valvesprings either are not matched up with the cam, or they are being run too long without replacement. Are you using a Solid Roller because they require a lot of maintenance and replacement of the springs if it is a super high lift, radical design. Are you running a single spring?? Double and Triple springs lessen the possibilty of failure. It just seems that after 4 engines you could have bought a really nice professional built engine by now, and be a lot faster than 10's How many passes are these engines averaging? I bet that has been mighty expensive over the last 2 years. I really hate to hear about it ,though, I wish you better luck with your new one!!

 

First engine, 383 SBC, got 200 passes. It was basically a street engine that came with the car. I changed the heads and carb but the bottom end was totally stock.

Second engine failed I think because of piston to valve clearance. The pistons were flycut on the rebuild and failed again shortly after that for reasons unknown.

Engine #4, the last one, was probably also from piston to valve clearance since that's about the only way to break the head off a valve. I was getting coil bind late in the season and had the heads fixed. Shortly after that I changed the cam again and broke a valve. Theoretically the new cam should have given me better piston to valve clearances. Solid flat tappet cam from a hydraulic one. Increased lift on the cam card but roughly the same lift after valve lash. The new cam is also ground straight up instead of being ground 4* advanced. This should have increased the intake valve to piston clearance even more.

This new engine should be the last of the changes so once everything is checked for clearances there should be no more changes to affect them. The only internal change I would want to do after this one would be to go to a solid roller cam but that requires too many other changes to the engine to make it work properly. There are no bigger cams available for my engine from the one I have unless I go roller. Any other changes would be things like aluminum heads or intake/carb changes.

The current cam is .638/.638, 270/280 @ .050. Comp 924 double springs and the heads have been modified for the increased lift.

It's been a few weeks now since I ordered my parts and they still haven't arrived. A deadline of having the engine back together and in the car by Christmas is getting really short. I want to get the engine in soon because of all the other modifications I want to do over the winter. First week in May (season opener) comes up quick when you're not finished. The engine needs to be in before those projects can start. I'm expecting the parts within a week now. Then it's off to the machine shop and I have no idea how busy they are at this time of the year.

 

13:1 is where alky really starts to fly...thats gonna be fun.....we are currently working on upping the compression in the truck to around 15:1. that should make us some nice power