Hey guys..

I know the reasons why apex seals blow.
To much boost not enough fuel. Detenation.

My question is: What was the driving situation
when you blew your motor??

1. Racing thru your gear 1-5 to redline?
2. in 4th or 5th gear while cruising then WOT?
3. Down shifting then WOT?
4. Forgot to Shift???

To name a few situation..
A curious thought..

Thanks.

 

3rd gear at 14psi and 7000 rpm going up a hill.
-Jedon

 

You'll probably see that the most common failure is the coolant seals. Usually people overheat the engine before they blow the seals.

 

My very first engine....I wanted it to blow...

3rd gear, 15lbs of boost (dialed it for more...but that is where it blew) on the track.

YEAH!!!!

 

my engine went from orings, not apex seal.

 

The second.....Dunno...what happend. It just went durning hard driving.

The third.....nothing....ha!!
______________________________

My vert...had the plug prob from electrolysis on the first original engine....didn't get to blow it.

:@)

 

mine went at 3500 rpm and 5-7lbs of boost.

 

Mine popped during a full-throttle 4th gear pull to 130mph on a cold night. I was low on fuel with an old fuel filter and running 13psi.

 

Mine let go at about 5000 rpm in second. Coolant seals started leaking about 10,000 miles ago but copper block weld cured that; now apex seal gone.

 

My situation was exactly the same as DamonB, but I never had any coolant problems. Engine went from running perfectly to death.

 

all I did was crack an apex... at the track on 13 psi... they said it was because my pettit ECU had too much advanced timing. I bought it used and it was programed for more mods than what I had.

 

KZ1-
how would a engine blow at 3500rpm and 5psi??
is that even possible?


DamonB
Whats this copper blockweld??
You take the engine out to do this?
or was it some kind of additive??

thanks

 

Copper block weld is made by CRC and it's available at the auto parts store. It's used for fixing blown head gaskets or cracked blocks. It has what looks like copper particles in suspension in a fluid. You must NOT have any anti-freeze in the system when you do this; just clean, distilled water. After the treatment you refill with coolant. Follow the directions on the bottle; it worked perfectly for me, but I caught my leak early when it was small.

My motor didn't blow from detonation, I think she finally just got tired after 97,000 miles.

 

WOT, didn't realize I blew it until I got off the gas and the idle was bad.

I ran through 1st, 2nd to around 7500 rpm.

Didn't notice a loss in power during the run.

Blew a rear rotor apex seal, about a 1/8 inch piece was embedded in the face of the rear rotor near the apex, and scored up the whole rear rotor.

thesaint

 

Me neither, but it is the God's honest truth. My brother was on the laptop, I could tell driving. I was just cruising on the highway. He says" ahh Phil you may want to pull over" about a good 5 seconds of +100 knock readings. When I came to a stop, it idled at 9" vacuum and ran like ****. Actually i was so pissed that when I merged back into traffic I gunned it, had pefect boost pattern too, lol. lots of smoke though.

anyway, I have the log of the run from my PFC on my computer somehwhere it shows where the knock started and what RPM, boost, etc.

 

my coolant seal has been compromised, I used the partical sheist and it seemed to work....for now anyway.

 

so how do you keep the coolant seal from blowing?

 

Mine went on a wot run cannot remember what gear. i had been having problems with a high rpm stumble, found out the fuel pump was loosing power. So wot lost fuel pressure, heard the infamous ping let of but it was too late. Would not even idle, funny thing is I looked at all of the apex seals through the exhaust port and none were missing. Oh well, several thousand ($7000) and I'm waiting on a single, new ported engine, and all of the other bull*&%# it takes to upgrade.
Nick

 

Don't overheat the car.... If the car overheats, it can warp the coolant seals (thus not making a seal anymore).

 

ok, so a severly vented hood.

 

I blew mine in 3rd gear, wot, 18psi, trying to tune in my new turbo.

 

lol, if you overheat the engine that much, I suspect that even not having a hood on the car wouldn't help. I doubt the heat would tranfer out of the engine area quick enough to not cause any damage.

However, just because the car might pop a coolant hose off or something that causes the temperature to sky rocket to the top doesn't always mean the coolant seals are toast. If you immediately shut the car down, most of the time you won't cause any damage.

 

well, having a vented hood is gonna let ALOT of heat out of there. and over time, Im sure it adds up. I mean a GOOD vented hood, like the scoot hood, or C west hood.

 

Get a GReddy water temperature gauge...best investment I ever made...better than the boost gauge. Once it starts getting hot turn on your fans or get on a highway. You have complete monitoring of your cooling system.

I have a question, when all you people blew apex seals...did you a) not change your fuel filter, b) have some other kind of fuel problem, or c) just over clock the boost with not enough fuel?

 

Usually a cooling problem of such nature (one that damages the engine) isn't going to be remedied by air cooling. It's usually caused by some failure of the cooling system.

However, vented hoods and downpipes do help to reduce the underhood temperatures.