951 engine, what will break first?
#16
Race Car
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Austin TX, drinking beer in the garage
Posts: 3,602
Likes: 0
Received 7 Likes
on
7 Posts
Yep. Was on E85, 1.5 BAR boost and 7k rpm redline. Pulled like a horse but ultimately died without warning while cruising at 70 mpg in 5th in vacuum. The car had never been mechically overrevved past it's intended 7k rpm redline, but it did at one point suffer a hydrolock situation. While testing the iniectors on my megasquirt, a glitch caused the iniectors to stick upen and fill all 4 cylinders full with E85. I wae not aware of this and went to start the car. It spun a few degrees then stopped, qnd I tried the starter a few more times before I picked up on what was happening. I pulled the plugs and spun it over on the starter a whole bunch, and it started and ran fine after. The motor blew about a year after that. I always changed the oil every 3 months, ran M1 15w50 full synthetic, but the car got driven hard as hell at every chance I got. I'll never know if that hydrolock contributed in any way to the motor's demise. Maybe it ever so slightly bent a rod...who knows. I was never able to recover the piston that went through the oil pan; it got torn off along with half the small end of the rod. The crank had a huge chunk of material ripped off the rod journal where the rod had obviously welded itsself. The broken rod was bent like a banana and turned blue, and there were two holes punched through the borr by the broken ene of the rod swinging around.