Advice required: Spun out rod bearings.

[ermax]

Originally Posted by pgranberg11

kudos to you to building your own short block. I was in the same bought recently. I blew my motor and it was either A go built short block or B buy used motor. I went the used motor route after I tore down the engine and going through all the seals and rubber o rings that scared me away as I didn't want to put the time and money building a short block and then screwing it up since it would have been my first one. Used motor I took the risk dropped it in and so far so good. Good luck!

It is intimidating. Sooo much more crap involved than a normal inline engine. I was going to nitpick which orings I bought but decided to go with the full kit. It was looking like I wasn't going to save much by nitpicking anyways. To be clear though, I am not rebuilding the shortblock. I am replacing it with an OEM pre built shortblock. This isn't my first rebuild but it isn't the sort of job I do that often so I'd rather just buy one already built. If the car had 200K then I'd rebuild the bottom end and not expect another 100k out of it. But this car being only 87k I wanted something that I can be confident will go another 100k.

I really don't look forward to rebuilding all these seals though. They are everywhere. Both pans, the timing cover and the valve covers. Not even sure how many tubes of 3bond I'm going to need. It also wants 3mm width here and 4mm width there but only 2.5 here. I'm going to need a bunch of tips cut to various sizes to build these seal to spec.

I am curious, when you tore yours down, what rod was snapped? How did the other bearings look? Did you find any blockage anywhere? I saw in another thread that you changed your oil before and after a track day so I know your oil level was good. Any idea what your oil temps were when you threw the rod? Do you have a pressure gauge, if so, what was your pressure looking like around the time it threw?

[pgranberg11]

Originally Posted by ermax

It is intimidating. Sooo much more crap involved than a normal inline engine. I was going to nitpick which orings I bought but decided to go with the full kit. It was looking like I wasn't going to save much by nitpicking anyways. To be clear though, I am not rebuilding the shortblock. I am replacing it with an OEM pre built shortblock. This isn't my first rebuild but it isn't the sort of job I do that often so I'd rather just buy one already built. If the car had 200K then I'd rebuild the bottom end and not expect another 100k out of it. But this car being only 87k I wanted something that I can be confident will go another 100k.

I really don't look forward to rebuilding all these seals though. They are everywhere. Both pans, the timing cover and the valve covers. Not even sure how many tubes of 3bond I'm going to need. It also wants 3mm width here and 4mm width there but only 2.5 here. I'm going to need a bunch of tips cut to various sizes to build these seal to spec.

I am curious, when you tore yours down, what rod was snapped? How did the other bearings look? Did you find any blockage anywhere? I saw in another thread that you changed your oil before and after a track day so I know your oil level was good. Any idea what your oil temps were when you threw the rod? Do you have a pressure gauge, if so, what was your pressure looking like around the time it threw?

Good questions, oil temps were in check. The rod that snapped judging by the pictures I took was rod 4. (furthest back driver side). The bearings actually looked great, and there wasn't any blockage that I noticed. Yea, oil level is definitely good I just get this weird feeling not having fresh oil at the track and then running track oil on the street. I like to make sure everything is fresh, especially for the track. I think the highest I saw them that day was 250/60 with an oil cooler. during the moment the rod snapped I wasn't paying attention at any of my gauges and more focused on not slamming my car into another car or the wall. Unfortunately, I did not, and still don't have an oil pressure gauge installed. (I guess I should probably get one). I will admit, the day before I did start to see my coolant gauge start to slowly creep way passed halfway like the needle was getting into "I'm very uncomfortable with this" zone. I've never seen that happen before during the 2 or 3 years of tracking that I have. This was something new and started to concern me. Little did I know, the next morning my engine was going to blow up on me. I think the rod honestly just snapped, was probably on its way out due to the abuse it took from being supercharged and tracked at 12-14psi, and dailyed for 2 or 3 years. I see all these videos of people saying, oh I can hear that there's piston slap or some other mechanical noise that dictates engine failure, but when you have a loud ass exhaust that's not as easy lol. Let me know if you have any questions, I can try my best to answer.

[ermax]

Originally Posted by pgranberg11

Good questions, oil temps were in check. The rod that snapped judging by the pictures I took was rod 4. (furthest back driver side). The bearings actually looked great, and there wasn't any blockage that I noticed. Yea, oil level is definitely good I just get this weird feeling not having fresh oil at the track and then running track oil on the street. I like to make sure everything is fresh, especially for the track. I think the highest I saw them that day was 250/60 with an oil cooler. during the moment the rod snapped I wasn't paying attention at any of my gauges and more focused on not slamming my car into another car or the wall. Unfortunately, I did not, and still don't have an oil pressure gauge installed. (I guess I should probably get one). I will admit, the day before I did start to see my coolant gauge start to slowly creep way passed halfway like the needle was getting into "I'm very uncomfortable with this" zone. I've never seen that happen before during the 2 or 3 years of tracking that I have. This was something new and started to concern me. Little did I know, the next morning my engine was going to blow up on me. I think the rod honestly just snapped, was probably on its way out due to the abuse it took from being supercharged and tracked at 12-14psi, and dailyed for 2 or 3 years. I see all these videos of people saying, oh I can hear that there's piston slap or some other mechanical noise that dictates engine failure, but when you have a loud ass exhaust that's not as easy lol. Let me know if you have any questions, I can try my best to answer.

So even the bearing on #4 looked good? As for pressure gauges. I have a Raspberry Pi in my car connected to the CANbus. I found a $19 electronic sending unit which I plan to connect to the Raspberry Pi. Then I plan to write some code to have an intelligent warning light based on oil temp and RPM rather than a simple cut off point like most warnings. I would love to know how my pressure was right around the point where I spun the bearing.

At some point I plan to connect the RPi to the reverse camera input on the head unit. Then I can rewire the reverse wire to my RPi so I can trigger the input to switch to the RPi whenever there is something urgent to display. Until then I will just strobe the oil dummy light when the oil pressure isn't right.

[pgranberg11]

Originally Posted by ermax

So even the bearing on #4 looked good? As for pressure gauges. I have a Raspberry Pi in my car connected to the CANbus. I found a $19 electronic sending unit which I plan to connect to the Raspberry Pi. Then I plan to write some code to have an intelligent warning light based on oil temp and RPM rather than a simple cut off point like most warnings. I would love to know how my pressure was right around the point where I spun the bearing.

At some point I plan to connect the RPi to the reverse camera input on the head unit. Then I can rewire the reverse wire to my RPi so I can trigger the input to switch to the RPi whenever there is something urgent to display. Until then I will just strobe the oil dummy light when the oil pressure isn't right.

Yea, I was quite surprised to be honest. I had multiple people look at it too. For what it's worth I run 0w-40 castrol edge synthetic, euro formula. and the raspberry pi idea is pretty clever. I played with a few of those before and they are pretty slick. I was never good enough to write my own code though haha. The farthest I ever got was to return print, "Hello World" in the terminal. more of a networking guy lol. So the RPi that you have connected now, what does that do since you don't have it programmed the way you want it? Does it just record data, but not display it?

[ermax]

Originally Posted by pgranberg11

Yea, I was quite surprised to be honest. I had multiple people look at it too. For what it's worth I run 0w-40 castrol edge synthetic, euro formula. and the raspberry pi idea is pretty clever. I played with a few of those before and they are pretty slick. I was never good enough to write my own code though haha. The farthest I ever got was to return print, "Hello World" in the terminal. more of a networking guy lol. So the RPi that you have connected now, what does that do since you don't have it programmed the way you want it? Does it just record data, but not display it?

I originally got it with the intention of turning off the nannies automatically but ended up with lots of other ideas but haven't had the time to do much. Other than turning off the nannies I set it up so that when I pull the high beam stalk to flash someone it follows up with a strobe of the low beams (LEDs). Looks like a WEC car running through backmarkers. Hahaha.

In the future I want to use it for data logging and then automatically sync the data when I get to the office or my house so I don't have to move an SD card back and forth (Tactrix).

[JimmyMac]

Interesting reading here. I’m in the process of rebuilding a motor I blew a few years ago. I have a new short block that I’m gonna toss some Manley rods in. Found a used head to replace my damaged one. Got some Kelford valve springs to toss in them. It was turbo’d when it blew. I was thinking I floated the valves on my 06/2012 motor. After reading this though I’m gonna check out the bearings in the damaged block. See if any of them spun and what kind of wear they had. Something I’ve been curious about. Just haven’t taken the time to inspect. I’ll post up my findings.

[venturaII]

Originally Posted by ermax

I have a 2013 which I got with 81K miles. I spun the #3 rod bearing at 87K.

That picture right there is what gives me the heebies about my own 50K mile 2013...

[Totality]

I spun a bearing in a 2013 only 120k km. Car had been tracked but modern engines should not be spinning bearings. It is an automatic NA and I have broken two factory flywheels. Once with the old engine and now with the repalcement?

[EddieZ2]

You have a good point in people listing oil related problems. If the FRS/86 is killing bearings in numerous cases on stock and modded this is something that seriously needs to be addressed and not with Toyota just fixing it when it happens. From what I’m reading in various posts and forums, it appears as though the FA20 engine has a major flaw. Either port clogging, oil too thin because it runs too hot or whatever. An engine especially stock shouldn’t be crapping out after a few spirited jaunts. I’m thinking a major recall or buyback for the obvious issue. Granted it is a sports car but it should be built to at least be reliable beyond 100k especially if stock. Just my thoughts on it.

[FRS Justin]

Get online find a complete motor to drop in it. Build the blown motor as money permits.


Pm me I have a few motors laying around stock to built

[supermike_84]

Originally Posted by wbradley

An oil cooler is recommended for FI or track use. Daily spirited driving is fine stock.

Sorry what is FI mean?

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by supermike_84

Sorry what is FI mean?

Forced Induction. Like a supercharger or turbo.

[supermike_84]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Forced Induction. Like a supercharger or turbo.

HellO! lol thanks!

[pallen]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Forced Induction. Like a supercharger or turbo.

Took me a while to get used to that abbreviation. I'm old enough to remember when FI meant Fuel Injected as opposed to carburetors.