With EXTREME REGRET I post this warning.......
I HATE making this post.
As some of you have been following I built a new stroker for the Bad Bish. It was the best engine I have ever had in the car. I couldn't have been happier with it. As you can tell I am speaking in past tense........
I loaded the car on the dyno after parking it from it's 725 whp pull at only 31 psi. I wanted to finish up the tune and then test the new header I built.
The first pull I attempted in 3rd gear, blew the tires off. Second pull I tried in 4th and the car ran like crap, very odd I thought. I had just switched the Haltech from V1.06 to V1.08 and built a completely new map for the car but was sure it was right. I checked my work and then noticed the idle was at about 2200 rpm. Very-very odd. I tried another map, idle stayed high. Not happy. I tried a few more pulls, the car just kept getting worse. I shut it off to put in a fresh set of plugs, the plugs I took out looked, literally, like new. Not even carbon on them yet. Odd. When I got back in and cranked the engine over I could hear there was a serious problem, I could hear it was hurt and down at least one cylinder while cranking it over........WTF?!! I figured the hell with it and attempted another pull, wouldn't even make it past 5,000 rpm it was running so bad.
I took the car off the dyno and parked it in it's normal spot. I felt the runners of the headers and could tell #1 was the cylinder without compression. The next day I went in and pulled the plugs, #1 was fine, #2 was smashed all to hell, 3 and 4 were fine. This made no sense. I pulled the head off and found complete destruction...........sick to my stomach and pissed off now. I assumed maybe a part failed, like a valve broke off or the piston broke. Nope, valves all look correct, pistons too. It's so clean inside it's hard to tell it's been run. #1 and #2 cylinders are literally beat to hell and back. SOMETHING got in the engine and apparently went into #1 first, bounced around and was pounded and then made it into #2 and did the same thing. A check of the turbo revealed the turbine wheel was completely trashed..........
Yesterday I decided to take a closer look to figure out what could have possibly just destroyed the best engine I've ever had. I noticed that I could see thread marks embedded in the combustion chamber of the head. Small threads, WTF could that have come from? I then remembered the idle going high and flipped the head on it's end to look in the throttle body...........yep that's it. A .15 cent screw just took out $6,000+ in parts. The screw that holds the throttle plate in somehow worked out and went through the engine. You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Now, this throttle body was the first we ever built. We Loctite every single screw in the throttle body when we build them. Why it happened, I don't know.
The warning is. Take 5 minutes to take your I/C pipes loose from the throttle body if you have an aftermarket throttle body on your car and just check those screws quickly. This is the first I've ever seen this happen in 22+ years of doing this but because it did, take 5 minutes to check yours.
The damage to the block is horrible, it looks like part of the screw, after being broken and smashed, got stuck between the piston and cylinder wall leaving a DEEP set of scratches. Cylinder head is beat to hell in the combustion chambers and the turbo is junk. This is a good $6,000+ repair by the time it's done.
I guess it's part of the game.
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... Any chance you're switching back to the ported stocker?
Originally Posted by Lonnie gandee
