Report that engine failure

[N1GTR]

Oops yeah posting from a mobile sucks sometimes

Fair enough it just seems logically the next step

[EdGTR]

R32 Gtr

Should have done the turbos before the rear ones wheel came off!

Car has PFC, Apexi intake, cat back and removed boost restrictor so 1 bar boost.

Lots of oil changes with castrol r 10w60.

For those running ceramic wheels at 1 bar good luck! They do eat engines! The wheels come off and explode and the bir fly backwards up past the valves and do a real good hone job. i know it the exhaust wheel because the ittake side of the turbo is perfect and there is no abnormal shaft play and the bits stuck in the head and pistons are deffinetly ceramic.

Had 80000 on clock and let go at about 5 grand in third not even full throttle. The front three bores still have original hone marks and the engine had never been opened.

Do your turbos!!

[rich81]

1993 R33 GTS-T

Turbo front seal gone.

Car had Apex'i from front to back - S-AFC, AVC-R, pod filter. Unknown 3" cat-back, stock cooler and turbo. One of my passengers fiddled with the S-AFC, but since I was a complete retard and newbie at the time I didn't consider the consequences of basically throwing a careful tune out the window.

Poor maintenance by a n00b owner... poor choice of oils, flogging it too hard on ~14psi with stock cooler/turbo in the hot Brissie weather.

Checked compression in all 6 cylinders to make sure it wasn't blowby, but then inspection of intake showed oil accumulation (a LOT of oil) after the turbo, accompanied by the occasional howl from the turbo under boost and a general lack of power.

Ended up selling the car as-is because I was flat broke and couldn't afford to do anything to it. I loved that car... maroon with white Kaiichi Tsuchiya wheels and dumped squarely on its nuts by a nice set of Cusco's.

[RBceffy25]

Engine/Car: 1990 A31 Cefiro S1 RB25DET

Type of failure: Possible head gasket/head failure

Factors influencing the failure: Possibly detonation?. About 2 months before failure engine overheated after installing FMIC. Cooler pipe fouled the rad. fan. performed immediate oil change.

State of tune of the engine: Standardish. full 3'' exhaust with stock dump and gutted cat, pod filter and CAI, Blitz DSBC on 10psi

Suspension and tyres:Tein HE coilovers F&R, 235/45/17 Talon Triangles F&R (possibly the worst tyres ever made)

Oil used and service interval: Motul Turbolight 4100 10w40 strictly every 4000km

General comments: Car is used as daily driver. I took my Ceffy for a bit of a spin one night. Ran fine but before I parked it up for the night I noticed it developed what sounded like a miss. I have just done plugs bout 1000k's ago. Went to start her up next morning and sounded like a motorbike/lawnmower and I thought coil pack maybe. Pumped the throttle twice while running and it blew a heap of what appeared to be steamy smoke out of the exhaust then idled ok but still with the miss characteristics. I shut her down and checked my oil level which was down a little but no milk in the oil cap and then check coolant only to find it had turned to a milkshake.

[RB26DETT 240Z]

Ouch!!!!

Duncan, you are very unlucky with so many failed engines. Hope you do your own rebuilds!!??

[Duncan]

ahh a mix of unlucky, mistakes (mine and others), and running the car harder than pretty much anyone else one here.

and most importantly i don't care about covering up failures....lets share knowledge

[toddys13]

interestin gear!!

[toddys13]

sounds like a good idea but

[faustini]

In an attempt to quantify the major causes of failure in the engines we so much love in our cars I want forum mambers to take a few minutes out to report the failures they have had/witnessed and the circumstances. I suggest the following format to help reveal as much as possible. Pictures are not necessary but can be emailed to me if available. In particular I am interested in RB26 failures but all are necessary to establish the elements of concern. PM your friends to get broadest involvement in this survey on behalf of the forum members.

Engine/Car:

Type of failure:

Factors influencing the failure:

State of tune of the engine:

Suspension and tyres:

Oil used and service interval:

General comments:

R32 GTST

Engine cutting out while driving, revs limited to 2.5k rpm

Issue : f**ked AFM.

engine pretty well tuned and serviced.. R32 gtst skyline.. thrashed like always

[faustini]

R32 Skyline GTST

after engine conversion car seemed to have a chronic nasty rough as hell knocking/ clunking noise at low RPM, at higher RPM the noise went away. Problem affected acceleration and idle

All of my mates thought that I had bought a dud engine that had run a bearing.. If that was the case the noise would have got worse at high rpm not disappear.

Solution: Took it to a mechanic who did the ol screw driver to the ear listen. told me to take it home and pull of the gearbox.

Turns out the flywheel was loose.. 1 bolt sheared, 2 bolts half out and 3 bolts only finger tight.

bolted it up, ran like a dream

[faustini]

R32 GTST

Engine cutting out while driving, revs limited to 2.5k rpm

Issue : f**ked AFM.

engine pretty well tuned and serviced.. R32 gtst skyline.. thrashed like always

Had taken off crank angle sensor and realized the little guide pin was missing. ended up replacing that cam, did the belt as well. boosted off from service to test and cut out as soon as I left the driveway. replaced AFM eventually

[faustini]

R34 skyline. GTS25de NEO tiptronic transmission

160,000kms pretty tidy in and out.

Problem when starting car from cold.

Took about 3 starts for car to finally start correctly.

First 2 starts the car would turn over, rev up to 2 or 2.5k rpm then instead of dropping and holding at 1,000rpm revs would drop to 0, car would stall and die.

Car would successfully start on turn 1 or 2 if the gas pedal was pressed down an inch or so,, splutter blow some smoke then start.

3rd crank car would start, blow some smoke then drop revs down to idle eventually.

When car was warm would start first pop.

Solution: was fiddling around with cables on the engine. Was told it could be TPS but doubted it as it would be a constant problem not a cold only issue.

Noticed a plug was loose ontop of the engine on the little box that the cam cover air lines plug into.. noticible if looking at a NEO engine,, under the NEO cover right next to the oil cap.

Plugged it in. started first pop in the morning, after work, and this morning.. Seems to be problem solved.

[DVS JEZ]

you can ask that again!

actually your 3 questions make we want to take a pic of the genuine nissan carboard guides I was running (you can tell they are factory because they have "NISSAN" written on them. But I am too drunk to bother getting up

not factory, can't offically run them

what AFRs you run with your tune? sounds like you could richen up the mixture a little to help cool things down

[hapa8u]

good god im shitting myself after reading this thread ..

[gurumaster22]

Engine/Car:

1989 R32 GTR (RB26DETT obviously)

Type of failure:

Loss of Compression (Read: Catastrophic engine failure!!)

Factors influencing the failure:

One of the Stock Turbos deciding to let go and the have the turbine travel into the engine to have some fun.

State of tune of the engine:

Stock

Suspension and tyres:

Stock Suspension, Bridgestone G3 on Stock Rims.

Oil used and service interval:

Serviced every 5000km, used no oil until the failure. Then used most of it in the km's after the failure.

General comments:

Probably should of changed the turbos earlier...

But now the the GTR gets a new forged engine!!

Cheers,

Alex

Edited November 19, 2010 by gurumaster22

[Duncan]

Engine/Car: rb26dett / r32 gtr

Type of failure: Approx 1000klm and 5 race days. Second set of turbos failed with oil starvation so I pulled the motor down. Main bearings showed major oil starvation issue, although none had actually spun yet. Got an oil analysis on the motor (see this thread) which showed high levels of iron (5x normal), fuel (2x normal), and bearing material copper/lead (100x normal). Based on those results I stripped the motor and got an engineer to report on it. Based on the oil analysis and bottom end disassembly they said the failure was due to oil starvation and poor lubrication - related to sump design and fuel in the oil respectively. However when subsequently stripping down the oil pump we found a bolt head in the oil pump intake which was the real cause of failure

Factors influencing the failure: see above!

State of tune of the engine: production race car motor

Suspension and tyres: bilsteins, eibach springs and kumho or federal semi slicks. sticky enough to drive around corners on 2 wheels

Oil used and service interval: Redline 5w50 and Motul 5w50. Oil changes after every 3 race days. Interestingly the engineer's opinion was that the tune was OK despite having 7% fuel in the oil, AS LONG AS there were more frequent oil changes. I will now be using oil quality testing to understand how often I need to change oil in the race car - at $40 it is cheap compared to 10l of redline at $40/litre. Yes, $400 oil change.

General comments: As Moeller said....."trust nobody"!

[GTR_JOEY]

First failure

1992 Skyline GTR

Siezed engine

Mods: full exhuast, apexi pods, twin plate clutch, coilovers

I have no idea what oil

Was drving from Melbourne to Albury and experienced a lack of power and a pretty sweet grinding noise coming from the engine. Turns out there was no water in the radiator and the engine had seized up. Funny thing is water temp Guage didnt move from its normal position. Inspected the radiator and the drain plug had been removed ( not sure if some one was playin silly buggers with me or by some unfortunate event the thing came out)

SECOND FAILURE

1989 Skyline GTR

Lost all compression in sixth, stripped down the engine and turned out to be an broken piston ring land

Engine was rebuilt with standard internals and had done about 10,000km

Mods: Apexi FC, GT lemans turbos, full exhuast, nismo clutch, apexi air filters, nismo 550 injectors, N1 pump, N1 water pump, tomei sump baffle

Power 285RWKW

Oil: Royal purple changed every 5 thousand, though i did only 2 oil changes in the time i had the car

Suspension: Racing logic coil overs, Federal 595 265/35/18

CAUSE: NOT TOO SURE MAYBE SOME ONE COULD HELP ME OUT WITH THAT ONE, looks like the cylinder got mega hot and possibly grapped the side of the bore as it felt like there was a bit of scuffing in the bore

Edited April 10, 2011 by GTR_JOEY

[Rolls]

Engine/Car: rb25det/R32 gts-t

Type of failure: Exhaust cam snapped into three pieces causing pistons to meet valves, cap no. 1 was scoured but the rest of the cam caps were fine, plenty of oil so absolutely no idea how it snapped into 3 pieces.

Factors influencing the failure: Absolutely no idea, most random failure ever!

State of tune of the engine: Forged rb25det with pistons, acl bearings, rod bolts etc, highflow turbo, nistune, gtr injectors making about 240kw

Suspension and tyres: semi-semi slicks, stiffer springs and shocks, quite soft though, nice for daily driving.

Oil used and service interval: Motul 8100 x-cess 5w-40 ~5000kms

General comments: If anyone can explain how you can snap a cam into three pieces with no bearing failure and plenty of oil then please let me know!

[DVS JEZ]

oh yeah forgot about this one, i was trying to find out cylinder specific failures on different engines, mainly due to piston failures, ill have to start reading which cylinder seems more common.

[Deano 1]

oh yeah forgot about this one, i was trying to find out cylinder specific failures on different engines, mainly due to piston failures, ill have to start reading which cylinder seems more common.

lol we will find out in a couple weeks anyway bro, when we bolt em my new turbo setup hahahaha