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

lol, see below


Actually G35's of that vintage, sedan esp have a serious oil consumption problem in a high enough percentage of street cars that Nissan had to ante up replacement motors. Go to g35driver.com and search on oil consumption if you doubt me, or my350z.com.



Hmm...ever been to a Spec Miata race? 10% of 40 cars would be exceptional low rate of DNF's.



No way. First, your own experience with bent valves indicates the valves ran into "something" - IDK, maybe timing jumped, weak tensioner, or some timing issue, but your own problem starts and ends with bent valves. Engines with bent valves suck oil past the valve like a whole in the ground does water.

Second, the reason you don't see a few more VE's added to that list is at least 3 of their owners who I know push the car hard monitor both coolant temp and oil temp. After 5 or 6 hot laps they came in and let the car cool down, or they just backed off for awhile. VE's are less tolerant of oil heating issues than a comparable DE (gross generalization, I know, but see:

VE Oil Temperature Concern on the Track - SR20 Forum

Cooling issues - SR20 Forum and

Let's say you sample coolant temp at the upper radiator instead of the back of the motor. You can easily be on the high end of oil failure (total viscosity breakdown, which is why it pours like water), but not be overly hot on coolant. Coolant temp is 180, no issue. Oil temp could be 250 after which the oil usually starts to break down, which you will see as a drop in oil pressure, but the range of deg F is only about 50 from 250 up before the oil is worthless.

That makes a lot of sense, and with 411 whp no one can say the "SR20" is weak or to blame, things fail under those kind of loads. At least you found a potential weak link, sorry to hear you lost the motor late in the trip, car is very impressive, as you know from my front row seat view watching it turn into a dot!

I drove 960 miles down from NW CT, I couldn't help but think "man, this highway is much better than I expected, car's loving it" - 18 hours with only one break longer than 15 minutes (solo, I slept an hour). I kept it down to 80 or less most of the time, unlike the 3000 mile XC trip where I saw some serious sustained near-triple and triple digits.

My car was out on the track in at least 2 of 3 groups all day. I was co-driving with my bud, I drove in, he drove out. I personally logged well over 200 track miles Friday (and a lot of gas!). The motor rarely saw rpms below 6000 after warm-up. My JWT ECU still has a rev limiter but ~7800-8000 in case I miss a shift. I found it once, but routinely ran 7000 on the 3-4 shift before the straight. We didn't baby the car other than early in the day when I was finding my newish tires (1000 miles on them, all freeway), just the first run.

Drove back Sunday late afternoon, 16 hours, strangely about the same distance, but 2 hours less, dunno how that happened Car doesn't have cooling problem or an oil problem, and it's highport DE with stock internals, has at least 40k miles that I know of. Could not measure any oil consumed after the entire trip, given variance for temperature when I checked the oil, margin of error there is about 1/5 of a quart.

Car has:
- UR UD pulleys, water pump would be useless above 6200-6500 rpm otherwise.
- Koyo rad, 50/50, redline W-W.
- Cutout in the Sunny front right in front of the rad where the license plate would go, channels air straight into the center, and my A/C is intact (and blows very cold air)
- One fan, that almost never turns on.
- NISMO 18 psi cap which just raises the BP of the coolant, and it never got anywhere near that hot.
- $20 worth of 5W-40W Rotella Syn HD oil. Gets changed every 3k, Purolator One or Pure One, whatever, or NAPA Gold (Wix) filter when I can't buy the $6 Purolater.
- New NGK wires/cap/rotor/BRK6E plugs, my only issue was the coil wire was old and popped off the cap, a small space-age nylon retention strap and spreading the metal fixed that right up. Now has a new coil wire, too. I'll be adding an oil cooler in the next 2 months before some longer track days in NJMS and PA. I think most VE owners work around their oil temps on the track and would add one, too, if they did more track time. See:

VE Oil Temperature Concern on the Track - SR20 Forum

I read most of this thread and I see mostly the following:
a) pre-existing mechanical problem,
b) perhaps not best choice of oil, or
c) assuming OK coolant temp means oil isn't being cooked, not true
d) mechanical failure unrelated to the oil or oil distribution (e.g. bent valve, too lean/rich tune, possible ring issues)
e) It's the tracks fault - "RR is different and it killed my car"

Well, those who chose (e) yes, every track is different, maybe/yes your car died there, but cannot agree with that reasoning, while all motors will eventually fail, mine is nothing special, not for the first time we ran the snot out of it for hours on end, and no issues, it's just an SR20DE. No baffles in my pan, stock oil system, no drama. It has a good tune, might be a litte rich A/F up top, nothing big.

I like to think "no problems" because it's an SR20DE and being still a SR noob relative to the scene, I listen to the people who've been around, I've made changes they suggested. Dave Coleman told me, "don't go near a track with this car until you put another radiator in there and get some Ferodo pads for the front, those HPS's have lousy initial bite. Ok, good advice, done. DC wiped his head gasket on the first motor and the head dueling with B15's in his next to last SCC installment. I also noticed his only other real problem was plug wires, replaced. Mike K says for FI, a good oil cooler is an absolute must as is a rad upgrade, and for NA, the oil cooler is a really good idea. On my short list to do soon. Chris pointed out that older cooling thread, it's freakin' long but man, should anyone who has issues or worries about cooling go read the whole damn thing.

I'm sorry and feel for the people who had damage, that sucks. What I don't like is the suggestion that there's something inherently wrong with the motor and/or for that track in particular, pure bull****.

Regular maintenance, frequent oil changes with a little heavier grade for track, less than about $600 in "upgrades" and no problems, unless there's already a problem. We shouldn't scare people away from track days thinking the SR can't handle it or they have a 1 in 10 chance of blowing their motor.

I'm thinking the 10W30 did mine in. Not heavy enough. Add in the track factor and BOOM.

That was not my car, sir Mine was the Silver B14 with the CF hood that sat in the parking area all day, next to the "red dot", and the other silver B14 (the VE'd one).

I played it smart and as much as I wanted to go on the track, refused to put that car on the roadcourse. If I had, I wouldn't have had any way to get it back up north.

I'm not sure what your trying to get at here..

I've been in 15 spec miata races so far with my spec miata and finished every one of my races... My spec miata has been a spec miata since 2000 and I didn't own it until 2007. It has been in 2 logbooks full of races before it got to me and is still on the original engine and trans (89k miles and it was turned into a spec miata at 55k miles on the original engine and trans btw)

I do see other miata's not finish sometimes due to stupid mistakes like an off, flat spotting tires, or other stupid dumb things that can happen to anyone in any car...

A weak tensioner or tensioner issue due to thin oil could be the problem. Not sure why it only bent the intake valves on cylinder 1 though. Also, the valves were not bent when I got off the track and idled the car (it got a bit hot, but not hot enough to release from the stock radiator cap). Then when I came back to the car the valves were bent.
What did they hit while the engine was off?

I'm still not sure what to think...

No rod knock.

However, I thought I would add to the general mechanical carnage reports.

My tranny apparently took a beating on that Roebling Road Course. I had a slight rattling sound from the tranny all the way home to Houston, about a thousand miles. Once in Houston, I had the rattle on start-up, then it would go away.

A week later my B13 tranny completely fell apart. Too much damage and internal problems to fix. Mike (mechanic, friend) says that the road course probably did the tranny in.

Therefore, a B15 LSD tranny and Stage 3 clutch is on the way from GregV.

No rod knock, but so far I have spent $1,300.00 just to purchase the (upgraded) parts for the fix.

Thought I'd share, so you rod-knock guys would not feel too alone.

^^^lol my $1100 JIC magic suspension blew as well, luckily i found stock suspension to replace it, once im back to work i will replace it with teins..

Sorry to hear that bro...
Looks like another RR victim has fallen
Well, enjoy the new tranny as I plan to enjoy mny VVL power in the future!