Re: beaterX project thread
 

I can't help tomorrow scheides, gotta hang out with a buddy i haven't seen for a while, told him i would already. I am sure you will get along fine without my infinite wisdom though, lol.

I will make it next time ya need a hand for sure.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Can't you just plug the battery in, and the starter wire, then take a screw driver and bridge the positive battery cable on the starter to the solenoid spade, make pretty sparks and get the nut off.

Also, it could be the air hose you are using. A smaller diameter one acts just like an oil restrictor for a turbot. Get a better hose, try again. Just borrow, don't buy, I should say. All you need it for is one nut.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Not sure fatty, I'll tkae a look.

Murlo no biggie, I'm fucking shot from life/work right now I just can't deal with the car tonight. Just gonna lay low so I'm not a big POS at Mark/Ali's party tomorrow and just deal with the car later.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

^Call me and I'll give you a hand quick. Once you get over this crank pulley fiasco I'm sure u will feel a little better.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

If you're messing with it this weekend then I could come hand tools or bring you a beer or something. :)

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Son slow down! You cant even get parts for awhile! Dont burn yourself out!

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Spent a massive 20 minutes on the car today woot. Ended up hooking up most of the harness again to get the starter to turn over; two pops and the crank pulley bolt came loose! Just as I got the pulley off Anna came out and reminded me I was supposed to be helping with other stuff, gah. Ended up working the rest of the night for work, boo.

Fuk it will deal with it all this weekend.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Nice. Always feels good to get over a hurdle.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

LOL a really basic and simple hurdle. The biggest hurdle for me is finding time to even touch the car. I couldn't find the T55 socket (long skinny one not short and stubby) described in the howto for pulling the stock headbolts os I hope what I have will work, otherwise I'm just pulling the longblock/trans all as one tomorrow.

Enough whining, no more updates till I have carnage pics.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Super hung over from Mark's party last night but Kody came over for an afternoon/evening of 'do work son.' Had the head off after about two hours and the motor on the floor a few hours after that. On to the carnage pics.

Head off, piston#1 at TDC. Problem?
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3492.sized.jpg

Head looks like it ate some shit. Just run it or should I get this cleaned up?
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3501.sized.jpg


Good productive use of a saturday evening:
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3509.sized.jpg


Piston out of cyl1, top ring missing about 1/3 and lower ring siezed in place:
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3503.sized.jpg

Ouchie. Close-up of sides of piston:
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3507.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3508.sized.jpg


Now close-ups of the cylinder walls. Just damage everywhere. Not sure what causes this but yea, not super pumped.

Cyl1(rear then front):
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3511.sized.jpg
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3512.sized.jpg

Cyl2(rear then front):
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3513.sized.jpg
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3514.sized.jpg

Cyl3(rear then front):
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3515.sized.jpg
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3516.sized.jpg

Cyl4(rear then front):
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3517.sized.jpg
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3518.sized.jpg


And finally, close-up of little damage on piston#4
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3519.sized.jpg


So yea there it is. Gonna finalize what to do with the engine rebuild next week but MAP is offering me an extra nice deal on their new X-beam rods for the evoX. Comments/diagnosis/suggestions welcome!

Special thanks to Kody (GG_9_SE) for the hand today, couldn't have done it alone!

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Ouch, that looks rough.

Does it look like a .020" overbore will take care of this or not so much? Tough to tell how deep it is from the pics.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

What do you mean you don't know what caused that? The pistons lost chunks when you detonated and rubbed them against the cylinder walls before spitting them up into the chambers and munching your pistons.

Just detonation mayne. Get that block sleeved and some uber pistons, your free x-beam rods (hardy har, clever name for x parts, lol) and knife edge the crank for elitism. 1000awhp, go.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

I think he wasn't expecting damage on all of the cylinders since he didn't mention all of the pistons chunking. I've heard that bits can visit more than one cylinder before they exit although I'm not sure how that happens.

How does the turbo look?

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Haven't checked the turbo for shaft play or anything but did look pretty closely at all of the fins on both wheels and w/o removing the covers to be sure, they appear to be all there.

Just talked to Shawn (simulatedwood) and he's leaning towards TTP's theory where the rings are gapped to tightly from the factory. Running good (high) timing for extended periods causes EGTs to get high and the pistons/rings fully fully expand causing the cyl wear that can be seen on all cylinders. There doesn't really appear to be detonation pitting on top of the pistons (maybe I should go take closer pics of all piston tops to verify), and he said that perhaps the knock I was seeing was induced after the ring failed.

He's the second person to mention 'cold seizure' on snowmobile engines where the piston warms up faster than the cylinder wall/block, causing a similar outcome.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

TTP's theory is interesting, but most other shops seem to disagree with them. I am not sold either way, but apparently the 4g63's have similar tolerances so who knows. I hate the idea that TTP could be right though, lol.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

How do the rest of the pistons and head look?

Considering how uniform the scoring is across all cylinders I'm inclined to believe the piston ring theory as well.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Yup, fukin hate TTP but who knows. Maybe the clearances are similar on 4G63's but there's some other reason that it does this sort of thing on the 4b11t?

The rest of the head looks fine, the rest of the pistons just have carbon build-up; I'll snap some pics later today.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Holy shit, the motors already out..nice work!

Looking at the pictures, Id say it is a combination of detonation and clearances, it did get hot on the exhuast side and caused bad things to happen.

Scheides, definitely have the head looked at, Ron @ RS has a vacumn tool to determine the condition of the valve seats, id give him a call. You might be lucky and just clean up the rough spots in the valve pocket on the damaged one and be done. :)

Re: beaterX project thread
 

If the assumption is expansion/contraction then the metal composition could be different, even if the clearances were the same.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Good work mane!

Re: beaterX project thread
 

I wouldn't expect OEM engine components to vary much.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Between 4G and 4B? I'm no engineer but I don't assume that tolerances being the same between those two engines means very much.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

4G63: Iron block

4b11t: aluminum block, (?)sleeves

That's all I was sayin. Perhaps expansion rates are different between the two and thus tollerences for the level of power/torque/boost that we enthusiasts like to run don't play well together.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Pretty sure the sleeves are iron on the 4b11.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

So I was expecting a beater not a Evo X lol

Re: beaterX project thread
 

I'd lean toward tune/detonation(caused by bad gas? maybe, but that tune is too on the edge IMO).. Then you can say those circumstances lead to the other theories as well(as a secondary effect).

I wouldn't use that head as is. Needs to be decked or cleaned up however possible(if possible). Those pits will make your tuning window smaller/attract the possibility of detonation.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Did any of the other pistons look all detonation ravaged like #1? Wonder if there was something going on with that injector or just the bad Duluth gas.

Higher timing lower EGTs. The scoring on the other cylinder is a little weird. Question is whether the damage was causes by parts from #1 getting into the others, the tight gap theory or something else. Were the spark plugs on the other 3 cylinders eaten up from det or look like something hit them?

Re: beaterX project thread
 

If this was a tight ring gap problem there would only be cylinder wall scoring, I see piston damage from the top of the piston to the top ring land and bellow. This looks like a case of to much timing for the boost/octane level for your setup.

~John

Re: beaterX project thread
 

I have to agree with Mr. Fatty on this one. That seems like a good case of detonation. Just because not everyone of the cylinders is fukked, doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't detonation. A friend of mine pulled apart one of his engines, after it went boom, and one piston had a hole in it, the others looked fine (from the top at least). Were you running a pretty aggressive tune on this beast? That, with crappy gas...prob caused your problem. I know I am just reiterating what others have said, sucks to hear doood!

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Yea I'm kinda contemplating getting the injectors flow tested but the rest of the pistons looked fine aside from the scoring and the one rough spot on #4.

All spark plugs looked fine and the other three combustion chambers on the head look great. I'll take closer pics when I dissassemble the sensors/tstat housing/exhaust manifold off of the head; it's obviously going to have to get looked at.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Finally, this thread is a proper project thread now!

Good work Scheides and Kody. I'll be there to help you put it back together.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

The only piston that looked like it didn't have any damage at all was #3. #1 was fucked, #2 had some slight pitting/ gouges on top, and #4 had a bur on the side the scratched the intake side of the cylinder wall. The only marks on the head though were on the #1 dome, and just barely into the valve seat. Hopefully you won't have to touch the head, but who knows. Deffinatly lemme know when its going back together! :D

Re: beaterX project thread
 

I would use a TIG welder to smooth out the pitting in the head. Then deck it, keeping the heat as low as possible and keeping the over all head temp low so you do not have issues with the valve seats.

~John

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Sorry this is gonna be kinda long-winded, tons of things up in the air right now.

So even last week I started putting the feelers out to national and local shops to see who was busy, who had parts, who could do what and end of the day I am keeping the rebuild process local. We are truely blessed to have shops like DB Performance and Modern Automotive Performance nearby and I plan to use them to the fullest. Both shops have graciously held out their hand and it makes it tough to try and decide who to have do what. Ultimately my timeline and my wallet are going to be boss but if I had a little more of each I wouldn't bat an eye to drop the entire lot off at either shop and let them do it all.

Everything continues to be on backorder, but a few things are coming through: MAP has some of their new x-beam rods ready to rock. I may skip the GSC S2's in favor of Kelford 214-b's since they're in stock, but neither GSC nor Kelford beehive valvesprings are available until the end of november, so I am leaning towards Supertech duals. I will hold off on the cam decision for a few weeks while the motor is getting rebuilt and make the decision later.

MAP has all their machine shop tooling in-house and goddamn are they REALLY eager to use it! They seem to have a steady flow of motors going through so they're not a bad choice. DB thinks they can turn around the motor pretty quick too so really its anyone's guess at this point as I have full confidence in both's ability to produce a strong, reliable shortblock. I'm hoping we can stay away from political 'favorite shop' games and just keep nose to grindstone here as I probably need the help of both shops to get everything done in the timeframe I want: 2.5 weeks.


When I bought my house about 5 years ago my dad made me the most epic workbench ever. Thanks dad, putting it to good use now :)

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3533.sized.jpg

So looking at the head, the damage is not nearly as bad as I remember. As long as there isn't damage to the seat itself like John suggested a few passes with a TIG with some skilled hands and then a nice deck job should do the trick. If there is any damage inside we'll just have to deal with it and go from there. I'd love a MAP stg4 port job on it but the is gonna be tough to justify the $$ and their porting department is like 6 weeks out which TOTALLY blows my timeline.

Here's some more pics of the head, exhaust ports (looking for particle damage) cyls 1-4:
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3534.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3535.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3537.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3538.sized.jpg


And the CC's, cyl's 1-4:
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3540.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3541.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3542.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3544.sized.jpg


Also examined the turbine wheel for damage, only thing I could find is a *slight* ding in the turbine wheel, but not sure if it is really anything (I've run worse turbos for years on DSMs).
http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3545.sized.jpg

http://www.scheides.com/albums/evox-...3546.sized.jpg



So yea, bought some beefy rubbermaid totes to transport the block and head in, we'll see where things end up over the next few weeks but I am PUMPED as it looks like this thing will be coming together before too terribly long!

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Looking good man! I'm excited to see your build coming along so quick, 2.5 weeks, holy shit! lol. That is crazy fast, I will be very impressed if you get it all back together by then, good luck :)

Re: beaterX project thread
 

You need help, I'm there. I'll try to keep an eye on this thread too.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

It is ambitious and maybe overstated; gunning to have the shortblock back by friday 11/19 so I can put the block/trans back in, bolt up accessories and turbo and then drop the head on as time allows soon thereafter (and make final cam decision accordingly).

Re: beaterX project thread
 

Ambitious, sure..but with your resources and skills and desire I have no doubt you could get it done!

I think the kelfords are great for sure, but personally I'd vote wait it out for the GSC s2's ;) But you have rode in Zwinger's car and mine so you know how they both feel more or less and they are close in aggressiveness.

Re: beaterX project thread
 

good luck scheides! hopefully everything goes through man.