Thread: Got Rod Knock at the convention? Post it here...

Yup. Roebling bit my 66k mile SR20de in the a$$. I caught the dreaded rod knock disease on cylinder #1. I was one out of the four cars that fell victim to it yesterday. Oh, well time to go VVL!!! Good thing is, I caught it early enough so I was able to drive the 30 miles home under my own power. Props to PrinceNismo driving the blue S2000 and Rich – driving the Orange Lotus for following me the whole way back home.

The knock isn’t that bad – yet. You only hear it after revving it past 3K rpm. Guess my baby will sit for a while till I figure things out.

Yes, my car was full of oil and my engine is spotless inside so it wasn’t sludge.
I guess the oil pump just couldn’t keep up with the demands of a high speed, high G’s track like Roebling…

Still a friggen great day though!!!!

Sorry to hear. what oil and weight are you using?

10W40 Castrol Syntech.

Oh man that sucks. If you vvl it you may as well go all out wit 3" exhaust N1s etc.

Sorry man.

It would be interesting to see what kind of oil everyone else that had a problem was using. I can't help but wondering if the cool temp. has something to with the failures

Glad you got home ok.

Yeah, engine first. Then cams, exhaust etc...

I'm not sure if oil brand or temps had anything to do with it. I think it's just a fast track where you are reaching high speeds at high rpms at high g's in the turns. Oil starvation. Seems to have been only the NA SR20DE's that suffered. The VVL and Turbo guys seemed fine due to larger oil pumps - at least that's what I'm thinking. Since my SR20 had low miles I walked away still running/driving. The others were pretty much DOA.

Yeah it seems like extended stretches in 4th gear own SR20 rod bearings. The lateral Gs don't help either.

At least spring for one of the new freak headers. The effort to do a Stock VVL setup will not be pleasing. You'd be better off repairing the bearing and getting some S4s. It will solve the oiling issue.

the turns are what caused your sadness. sr20ve..

Sounds like we need to start fabbing some high capacity baffled oil pans