Learning the hard way, Episode 57, "Stupid Ways to Kill an Engine"

Illustration for article titled Learning the hard way, Episode 57, Stupid Ways to Kill an Engine

It wasnt catastrophic failure more of a fizzle, First let’s run through the photos.

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Oil pump pickup with bits of metal
Oil pump pickup with bits of metal
Illustration for article titled Learning the hard way, Episode 57, Stupid Ways to Kill an Engine
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Scoring along the walls, this represents the majority of cylinders and pistons.
Scoring along the walls, this represents the majority of cylinders and pistons.
Theres a fragment still embedded in the bearing
Theres a fragment still embedded in the bearing
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The Turbo oil Return fitting location wasnt decided until the exhaust was finished and the engine was in the car. It occurred to me the only return location was the sump just under the crank pulley, so I drilled and tapped the the fittings in car. This left shards of aluminum floating around in the oilpan and laying in the crankcase, draining the oil afterwards evidently didnt remove many of the bits of aluminum.

Illustration for article titled Learning the hard way, Episode 57, Stupid Ways to Kill an Engine
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The shards got sucked into the oil pump getting flung under the pistons to get caught in between the cylinder wall and piston marring the surfaces.(which caused the blowby that was leading to turbo drain issues). It also got caught in the main bearing surfaces leading to the wear shown above.

Next step will be a rebuild using stock components save for Cosmetic head gaskets(potentially a lower compression ratio closer to 9:1 instead of 10:1) also plan to balance the pistons/ rods since I’m in there.