Woohoo well I just got my car aligned, and noticed hmm the vacuum is a little low and its fluctuating a little. So I'm guessing oh it could either be vacuum or I blew my engine. On my way there the car seemed fine I was lead footing it a bit since I was a little late for my appointment but they made me wait like 1/2 hr anyway. Then i go to get gas and notice it's starting to idle funny, like it's off a beat or something. So I say hmm I guess I'll go home check oil, check vacuum status, vacuum hoses, and check compression. Well fired up the car and there it goes idling wierd again, I check my injectors to see if one of them was leaking fuel but it was fine. So rev the engine then I see smoke coming out of my catchcan! I'm like oh shit my suspicions were true the engine blew. So to be super sure I do a compression test. 145 50 135 148 bam cylinder #2 (its been the lowest one all the time don't know why) 50 PSI! That it game over the engine finally gave up. 99,100 miles the 2nd piston gave up, didn't quite make it to the 100k mark but it got close.

I suspect maybe the dude that aligned my car might have blown it. Cuz that's when I noticed the engine was idling wierd. Lately it has been idling wierd though. But after the alignment (which finally came out with good numbers) I noticed there was like more than a minute on my timer like 114 and that had to of been the auto timer then. So that gave me an idea of how hard he ran it. I'm like oh that's koo he was hotrodding it a little. Well one night I started up my car and noticed my wastegate needed to be excercised when I hit Spiked 20 PSI (it was awesome too) and that was right after I started it cold. Well lately its kinda been doing that sometimes I get to 12 psi and stuff. Well I'm thinking the alignment too a good hour to do so the engine coulda cooled down a bit and he might have just started it up and romped on the pedal running it at 20 psi down the block and came back. He probably thought it was ok to go 20 PSI and kept on going then bam #2 gives out. That is my assumption though don't know for sure I should probably ask but he could just say I wasn't paying attention to the boost gauge and I'll get nowhere.

Well I don't know if I'm sad or happy. I knew it was coming. The compression has just been getting lower and lower and finally #2 gave out. Feels like having an old relative and you find out they get sick. Then they get worse then you realize they don't have much longer. Then one day they croak well that seems to have happened to my car. At least I saw it coming.

I got most of my engine goodies though so I'm somewhat prepared. Like I said I didn't expect it for another 1000 miles. I just need a clutch, tensioner pulley, and head bolts. But I guess I can tear it down without those and get em later.

it took long enough eh? haha rebiuld and up da boost dude!

Oh yeh you guys that have blown an engine, how long is it ok to drive it. It's only down one cylinder I remember that you can drive it as long as you don't boost. Hehe I better start stockin up on oil.

Damn, that sucks bro. I wouldn't drive it if I were you. 50 psi is LOW as shit. I would seriously look into the possiblity of the alignment place paying for the rebuild. If it wasn't blown when you got there and it was when you left, someone did something wrong.


On the other hand, I have my Clutchmasters Stage 3 that was on my car for about a year/15,000 miles of low power. Since you blew up, I guess you deserve dibs on it if you want. ;-) I'm looking for $450 plus shipping. If you are interested let me know.


________________________________________________________________________________________
Car Sold


http://hometown.aol.com/ohshootuhh/
www.Fast420A.com

i don't understand, why did you uave someone who's aligning your car go ahead and drive the hell out of your car. hellz i get paranoid just taking my car to a aligning place and leaving it there with some mechanic that's just placing on a lift. anyway, sorry to hear it finally gave out, obviously you mentioned before that you tried going over 15psi a few times, that's really pushing it with lack of fuel and no timing retard, so it does sound like syptoms of the crack or melted pistons/rings. just start saving for the howell kit or whatever you comeup with in the junkyards like you usually do..hehhehe! see if you can find a broken down PT cruiser and there you go. as for my time down on the rebuild, i had to wait awhile, about 3 weeks till i got my car back from the shop. then another 1500 miles for the break in and been happy since. also start thinking on bigger injectors and an ignition amp. those are the biggies prior to a new clutch. i would say for right now, be easy on the clutch 'till you can afford a Stage4 CM.

yeh I'm sure the autoxing, highway battle, touge, drag racing, and track racing took it's toll. Well I watched the dude drive off, he always drives the car after its aligned to make sure its drives right. He was gone for like less than a minute so I don't think he coulda damaged it in that timeframe but them again a minute of 20 PSI hehe...
Yeh I did hit 20 PSI that one night but it was just a spike, when i really get on the throttle in like 2nd I always peep at the boost gauge for boost spikes.

So I shouldn't drive it? I just put a tank of gas on it too darn. That's not bad though I think I've gone pretty long with boost compared to most others more than a year and it still drove haha barely.

doh I'd love a clutchmasters but I don't got the money. I'm going for a sachs for now, it should be good enough considering the abuse my stocker took, hehe its still grabbing pretty good too.

Hades- exactly how many miles did you have the turbo kit on the car before it let go? -Sean

Welcome to the blown engine club....at least you can rebuild the bitch in like 2 days time.

Sorry to hear about the engine. At least you've been preparing for it. As for driving the car, I wouldn't recommend waiting too long before doing the rebuild. Driving it around town will not only burn oil, you increase the risk of messing up the cylinder walls, etc, just in case there's broken debris.

I had 60 compression on the #2 cylinder and drove it for about 3 weeks. When I took it apart the cylinder walls were perfect. BUT The piston was only cracked. There was no missing pieces or debris until I took it ok and poked at it a little. So it's just like a 50/50 chance that you can drive for a while. Personally I wouldn't drive it much. The only reason I did was because I had a completely different engine to put it.

awww the little 95 that could, finally got tired hehe. im sorry to hear about the shitty people you dealt with to get an alignment done, what you said about the timer seems like pretty good proof to me.
when your engine is built and you are ready to toss the engine back in let me know, i'd cruz down to your side of the bay and help ya out. i am probably going to pay blacktrax in milpitas to build up my engine with the howell kit, but id like to earn some experience with installing our engines, i plan on doing that part on my own. well man just think, now you will be able to run some nice solid boost with the confidence of a built engine!

sorry to hear about the car. I'm thinking my car is going next since we put the turbo kit the same time. Let me guess TECH 3 did the alingment on your car. They hotrod my car too when i got my alingment by them. Let me know if you need help i'm down in SJ every day.

i hit hit 15psi a few days ago on stock internals, but i had it retard from before a bit. and had bigger injecs. i did not plan to do 15psi, it was a mistake. but my engine is still running nicely.. well for now..hehe


Michael 99gs
HRC Stage 2
Stage 3 process begins gathering parts for rebuild

http://www.dreamwater.net/purplebeast

lol haha hades, my car died yesterday too. i did a compression check today (using my really crappy compression checker kit that can't go over 150 psi no matter what car i test it on) and i got 145-50-0-30?!?! i was like "wtf the needle isn't moving at ALL" i looked at the spark plug in cylinder 3 and it had oil all over it. i could also see the piston through the spark plug well, it was reflecting because of oil on it. pretty messed up. anyways, i'm done now.

Ouch I guess I don't got it too bad your engine just uppin quit on you.

I don't really have a problem with the shop hot roding my car cuz that's what it was meant for but for me to do hehe. I'm guessing it wasn't him though the street was only so long and there's a police station right next to the shop. But my ears are only so good. Testing the suspension doesn't require redlining it through each gear, quite the opposite actually. Perhaps the engine was just getting tired and slowly ate it. Who knows, it wasn't tech3 it was auto inovations in Milpitas.

hmm know what like a dumbass I never recorded how many miles I had. But from my grainy ass pictures I can decipher like 80k. So hmm about 20k turbo from stage 1 to stage now.

well, my alignment shop drives my car to make sure it feels right. When I have turbo, I'll probably have all the controls for boost control hidden so they can't fuck me up. I will more than likely stay around until they finish too so they don't fuck anything up. They should respect ur car. I woulda been pissed if I knew they drove it hard.

haha yeh I'm really anal when it comes to people working on my car. I've probably done like 95% of the work on my car I never pay anyone else work on my car because they might mess something up I just don't trust no1 but myself. Whenever I have my car worked on by someone else I always watch them, like when I was at the shop yesterday I watched him align my car, and boy was my alignment messed up!! bwahahaa if I only had like a 10k hunter alignment rack :( Those camber adjusters are a bitch to adjust also.

Hey man, I use the Hunter machines all the time. I have NEVER had any type of car comeback after aligning it and NOT driving it afterwords. That's pretty much teh point of those machines--not have to test drive it b/c they are soo sensitive and plus he's not using a measuring tape to do te alignment. Make them pay for the motor.

About running the car after blowing it- Intuition says it's a dumb idea. BUT I ran a good 5,000 miles after blowing 1 and cracking 2 pistons. Had a backup block in case I scored the crap outta it, but when it came apart, it really wasn't that bad.

The ring lands tend to stay put on the piston... it actually took some effort to dislodge the pieces of my pistons once I had them out. Pictures of other people's ringlands tend to look similar. I say pull the oilpan, look for chunks of things on the magnets and especially in the oil pickup tube strainer. Also look for sparkly metal fragments in the oil. If you feel comfortable with it, chances are the pistons will stay intact until you pull them, so go ahead and drive it.

Obviously, if you boost, you're going to coat your hood and engine with blowby. Just change your oil & filter really often and check for metal chunks. Also empty your catchcan after every drive, it'll fill up quick.

yeh hehe I know not to boost, if I run the engine remotely hard it starts burning oil, but it seems fine to drive still runs fairly smooth. Its not like the engine blew up, I just noticed it getting slowly worse through out the day, haha I may have just finished it off when I went to go get gas cuz I was rompin on it then. Damn that cylinder #2 why is it always that one that's the lowest O_o it must be that damn manifold it never wants to stay on, wait till I stud the head grrr! But yeh I plan to drive it until school is over with or until I get my Z working properly. I wanted the engine to last a bit longer but I knew it's time was up.

Wow 200+ posts glad to see you guys really care about what happened. Can wait to tear that engine open and breathe new life into it, it'll be reborn MWAHAHAHA!!!

you mean 200 views ;) dont flatter urself...hahahaha jk

Humm we got our kits almost at the same time.. hope mine is not next.. she seems to like the boost and is still driving nice... hehe
good luck with the rebuild.

Damn, $450+ shipping for a Stage 3 with 15k miles? I sold my Stage 4 with about 10k miles for $300 to a guy locally. Guess he got lucky :P Oh, thinking about a Sachs clutch? Heh, funny thing. Clutchmasters uses Sachs clutches. You can clearly see the "sachs" stamp on the outside of the clutch :)

Bah.. you can drive it with it busted.. just pull the wires off the injector for that cylinder. You don't need to be pressurizing the crankcase and making things worse for yourself ;-)

Unplug the injector and go rape honduh's with your 3cyl turbo ;-) If it's like the rest of us, you cracked it on the second ring land..

ttyl

WheatKing