[Project] Meissen's LT1 Rebuild Thread

[meissen]

Car has been driving really damn good but as the car warmed up the rpm's would get a little lower. We thought it was because it wasn't tuned yet so we didn't worry too much.

4/24/2009:
Well, on the way to Woodward (22 miles away) it stalled at every light. Stupidly I pushed on, made it to Woodward, and immediately wanted to give someone a ride to show how strong it was pulling when it'd drive. It was pretty obvious that I was making a big mistake and I tried to get it back to Auto Euro but alas it was dead and wouldn't start. After letting it cool down I was able to get it to crank and start back up, I limped it a few miles but I was having to apply gas and brake at the same time at the lights to keep it running. The oil pressure was in the red zone on the gauge cluster - but I honestly can't remember if I had "0 pressure" or any at all. As soon as I saw the oil pressure that low I said enough's enough and called the flatbed to have it towed home.

4/25/2009:
Drained the oil, gold metal flakes all over. Bearings are bad and there's some silver particles in the oil filter ("maybe from the cam break-in?" is what Joel thought). Anyway, I'll let the pictures do the talking...






















UPDATE!
http://www.mifbody.com/vbulletin/sho...&postcount=308

5/13/2009:






5/16/2009:







5/17/2009:




5/23/2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg4UwF0Epew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_CPswSsTiM

I drove it out to Steve's shop yesterday (Memorial Day) evening and Steve said I should have it back tomorrow evening if everything goes right.



http://www.mifbody.com/vbulletin/sho...&postcount=317

I want to definitely send a big THANK YOU to Craig and Jon - they were a HUGE help with helping my dad and I haul ass on getting the LT1 back together. We received the LT1 on Wednesday the 13th, Thursday we went to the Red Wings game, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we hauled ass and had the LT1 installed and tried starting it on Sunday night. It wouldn't start, was back firing through the intake.

And that's where the problems started - Although everyone will say it's impossible to do it, I was able to successfully install the Optispark with the dowel in the wrong slot. I indexed it wrong, apparently, and I hardly used any force to push the Optispark into place... it just slipped right in. So, Monday the 18th we tore the front of the engine down to get to the opti. What really helped was I took the cover of the optispark off so I could see where the rotor was. Then I was able to hold the rotor in the correct position so the dowel would go into the CORRECT slot. We started it Monday night but it was backfiring still and it was too late to keep trying to fire it up and get it running right.

Tuesday the 19th we figured it out that we had two of the spark wires (3 and 5) reversed, so we swapped those and that fixed the problem - the car was running alright but we could also hear a banging noise.

Wednesday Craig came over and we were able to figure out that it the banging noise was coming from the dustpan so we thought that the flexplate was cracked.

Thursday I had class.

Friday we didn't do much of anything with it... I can't really remember why but whatever reason we just took the night off.

Saturday we found out it wasn't that the flexplate was cracked it was the weight on the engine side of the flexplate was sticking out too far and there wasn't enough clearance to the starter so it was whacking against the starter as it spun. We took the starter out, took a grinder to it, and reinstalled the starter. We gave it just enough clearance for the flexplate's weight and TADA it was running great! Did a LOT of data logging along the way to make sure it was running OK and everything was good.

Lowered it down onto all four tires and then took the videos above.

Talked to Steve yesterday and he said it was safe to drive out there so we did. Hopefully should get it back tomorrow night.


Also, I need to give a big THANK YOU to Kyle and Joel for giving me tons of advice along the way. When I ran into all the problems Dr LT1 earned his name and helped me out a shit ton.

So, big thanks to my dad, Angie, Craig, Jon, Dan, Kyle, and Joel for all their help. Another big thanks to Ryan [ThreeHonks], Jeff [DetroitMuscle], Kyle [MP81], and Liz [..y'all know who she is..], for keeping the secret. Ryan found my "help!" thread on LTxTech.com and Jeff caught my dad buying o2 sensors and spark plugs at O'Reillys and put two and two together.

[JoeliusZ28]

[s.reef]

sorry to hear about this brian

[ICEPICK]

mad thats sad, check the walls, maybe replace the cam bearings, thats what the filter is for, new cam.....


but never drive a new build without #1 breakin 20 min. minumum,
#2 very important. the tune.
#3........get it rebuilt befor may 30th.

[MP81]

**** Brain, I'm so sad to hear this.

[meissen]

The "veins" that you can see in the pictures of the oil in the pan leads us to believe there was gas in the oil caused from my impatience of starting the car and running it with the 30# injectors before giving Steve adequate time to get out there and flash the PCM. Gas got past the rings, into the oil, messed with the lubrication and caused unnatural wear on the bearings. While we can not explain the oil pressure issue 100%, we think that's a second issue that compounded our problems but the main issue is those bearings.

That said, while I backed the car into the garage, there was no knock, no unnatural noises, no whining, squeaking, etc. When I first started it, there was a little clatter noise but the last time it was ran before it was shut off the oil pressure was in the red - probably should've primed the oil before actually firing it up today to move the car. When we got the car in the garage, we opened the hood and my dad opened the throttle a little bit (not a high rev, just enough to bring the rpm's up to 2 grand at the very most). We didn't hear any knocks or anything.

So, at this point, without checking the bearings, our thoughts are that we wore/scored the bearings to the point that we took a part that had 60,000 miles of wear and tear on it and now it's at the equivalent of 200,000 miles.

And here's the idea my dad had: Put fresh oil back into the engine, let it run and warm up, then drain the oil again. Now.. we know there's going to be the gold dust in there because we can't really "flush" the oil all out and put fresh oil in with no more dust. But, if there's not as much dust, no knocks, and no oil pressure issues, we might be able to limp the car around and play it by ear at least until the Meet & Greet. After the Meet & Greet, depending on how it's driving, then we can tear it down and replace the bearings then.

We called Craig to put him up to date and on his own he said "At this point, I think what you need to do is put fresh oil in it, let it run, drain it out, check for the dust and then go from there."

Depending on how much dust we see when we drain the oil the 2nd time, at that point we can try lifting the engine up off the motor mounts with the cherry picker, drop the oil pan, check a couple bearings to see how bad they're worn, and check the oil pickup tube too.

[MP81]

I think that sounds like a pretty good prognosis, Brian - and a decent way to check to really see what's the deal by changing the oil.

Let us know what you find.

[Formula Z]

probably be good to change the oil/oil filter a couple times. get something that will measure true oil pressure and see. good luck b

[white96TA]

sorry to hear this brian , I agree with changing the oil a couple times

[Nasty Z]

Sorry to hear about this, hopefully everything turns out ok.

[WMCCjames]

Oh man, this is bad news. Changing the oil won't do squat...your bearings are toast. Pull the motor out and tear it down....figure out what went wrong. Running the car more will only hurt the engine more, fresh oil or not.

[meissen]

Well we went to Murrays and one of the guys that we've gotten a lot of advice from through the buildup thinks the reason why the car wouldn't run/start last night was due to heat soaking the cylinders. As the car cooled off, it allowed the cylinders to "free up."

Anyway, he also told us to put oil in the car and run it around the block. I did that and datalogged while I did but we were having to hurry up because of the storm coming in. Nothing like driving around the neighborhood while the tornado sirens are going off. Thankfully got it in the garage just as the marble sized hail started falling.

And yeah, James, you're 100% right. The oil didn't do anything.



This is my data log from just yesterday when Will and I drove from my neighborhood, out to 24 mile rd to Hayes, up Hayes from 24 mile to 25 mile, then through the neighborhood. The red line is RPM. pink is speed, black line is Spark Advance, and Blue is Spark Retard. Note the blue line staying at 0.0 most of the time and only spiking at the beginning and two times after that. Everything is pretty normal, pretty smooth.
Good.jpg













And now the bad... this is the data log I just did after we put oil in it and I drove around the block. Note the blue. The Spark Retard was jumping on it's own but we noticed a few times that when the spark retard spiked so too did the knock count.
****ed.jpg

[bigjon88]

Man wow .......

[JoeliusZ28]

mad thats sad, check the walls, maybe replace the cam bearings, thats what the filter is for, new cam.....


but never drive a new build without #1 breakin 20 min. minumum,
#2 very important. the tune.
#3........get it rebuilt befor may 30th.

not to disagree with #2 but the tune is probably not what did it, running 30 pound injectors uncalibrated was. I've got nearly the same engine as brian, just a little hotter setup... and ive put 2000 miles on it untuned. The PCM knows how to keep conditions safe within its calibration, but it doesnt know how to recalibrate itself.

[meissen]

Well, tomorrow we're going to drop the engine out the bottom again.

We haven't 100% decided "how far" we are going to go.

Part of me wants to just yank the crank out, take the crank to get machined if it's scored at all, replace the bearings to match the crank, and then put her back together with a new oil pump and tacked pickup tube just for insurance... after this there's no way I don't want to have that insurance.

Another part of me thinks shit while I'm there I should replace the piston rings... if I'm doing that, I might as well replace the pistons.

Another part of me (and hearing Sean's opinion on it) is to take it all the way down to the bare block and take it to be machined and spec'd out to make sure the block is good... like Sean said, it'd suck if there's something with the specs of the block that isn't right and we redo the bearings and have more issues.