[MeetMrGlock]

update: the motor needs a teardown

i picked up the car in md on may 14th and put ~200 miles on it in dc, va, md and wv in every kind of god awful metropolitan driving condition imaginable. on saturday the
17th i did "trackdaze" hpde at summit point in wv. the car was spectacular in every respect...except for one:

background: before our "big bore" pro stage1 motor was built by jeremy at cobb, there had been some big engine failures attributed to inadequate oiling. most of the manufacturers including cobb started cross drilling their cranks to correct it. the problem no one anticipated is the impact crossdrilling would have on oil pressure. with a rash of failures recently on crossdrilled cranks, now we know and one again, cutn edg is going to become the poster child for another issue. how appropriate.

so here is where we stand: the motor is very healthy now but it won't stay healthy for long with the current oil pressure at high rpm, where the 08 pump is fairing no better than the 04 pump. we are seeing 60 psi at 7k rpm, which is exactly what phil was seeing before we installed it. the problem is not the pump. the problem is the crossdrilled crank. as a side note, when i originally reported that cobb was sponsoring the project, i mentioned we were building the motor around a new stock crank and not one of the 2-3k billet cranks cobb was using those days in their pro series. i didn't have that much money laying around after the original failure that gained so much notoriety for the project and i couldn't ask cobb to shell out for one. just so you know, i have the money for one now but we are going to use the stock crank. it is not the problem; it's the crossdrilling.

so, the motor is coming out again. phil's wrench, steve, is going to tear it down and replace the crank and do everything else normally dictated here, i.e., new rings, brush hone, redeck the heads, replace (and re-machine) the head gaskets and check the tolerances everywhere, etc. we're also going to replace the prototype gt65 kit (one of only 3) with a production kit while we are at it. i will probably send the charge pipes out to crucial for heat dispersal coating. i also had a discussion with phil about headers and i decided to stay with the stock crucial-treated manifold.

given the fact this engine started off an a one-off "big bore" prototype, we are going to need some technical assistance from cobb to ascertain the parts lists they used in the original build.

meanwhile, the turbo is going to be sent to roushe for a freshening and phil is going to make sure all of the details, wiring and other loose ends in the engine bay that have resulted from so many engine swaps and year long diversions this project has taken are cleaned up. i've been describing it as the scarecrow in the wizard of oz. no fewer than 6 different entities have had their hands on this thing over the last 2 years and it looks it. we're going to take this as an opportunity to clean up the details that could not be adequately addressed previously because of its vagabond history and long periods of time out of my supervision.

the only good news is, we were watching this issue closely enough to address it before a catastrophic failure. if you have a motor with a cross drilled crank AND you are beating on it under track or street conditions, watch your pressure at high rpms. this is a relatively hot topic with the engine gurus over on nasioc and iwsti.

we expect to be back up and running in 3-4 weeks.