01 Camaro SS H/C Oil Problems Need your help.
12-14-2010, 12:31 AM
#1
01 Camaro SS H/C Oil Problems Need your help. My friend has an '01 Camaro SS M6 LS1 that has patriot stage 2 heads, small cam not sure of the specs, its tuned by EFI live.
The car was running a little rich and wasnt running to its full potential this summer so my friend had it tuned by a guy that knows what he is doing with EFI Live. The SS has always smoked since he got it so everyone would tell him that they thought his piston rings were fried. Well when it got tuned they made sure the Air/Fuel ratio was perfect and they did a few other things like remove top limiter, adjust gearing since he put a 12 bolt Moser rear end in it with 3.73's and when they were tuning it, they realized that the clip on the throttle body cable was not on right. They realized that at WOT, the car was only opening up 60% throttle. After adjusting the clip on the TB, they got it back to 100%. The car was running fine before, and after the tune and fixing the throttle problem, they car was a beast again. My friend took the car to a oil lube place and had them do the Z-maxx fuel treatment on the car before it got tuned.
Well about 3 weeks after the car got tuned, We all went down to the drag strip. The temp. was 102 degrees so it was hot as hell. We drove about 3 hours to get there, and the SS was fine. We get there and me and my friend wait for about an hour and finally we decide to go make a pass. Me in my Z28 and him in his SS. Well we take off and hes beating me instantly by about 3 to 4 cars and he was pulling hard on me. I noticed his car was smoking a **** load but dont think much of it. We go around and do a second pass. This time i leave his car nasty off the line and beat him by alot. When we come down the return road, i notice his car is smoking like crazy and smoke is coming out of the hood. He parks his car and opens the hood only to find oil spelt all over the place. The car had gotten blow by. The guys that tuned the car happened to be there. They looked at it and checked over the motor. There was no cracks visible and the motor was not knocking or making any unusual noises. We let it cool for a little bit and decided to go into town to buy some oil in his car. When we were on the road the car was driving normal, not smoking. My friend decided to get on it and instanly smoke started coming in from the shifter and from the hood. That was it. His car was done. We put oil in it and went back to the track and parked it.
Well on the way home he had to keep adding a quart of oil every 25 mins or so. We had to pull over ever 25 mins and check the oil level. It was going through oil bad and on the highway going 65 and he was a ways ahead of me and all i saw was smoke coming from in front of me and i could smell burnt oil bad. We finally made it home. His car has been parked since august. Every once in a while he starts up the car and drives it around the block because he misses it. He said it drives perfectly fine until you get on it which BTW he doesnt get on it at all anymore.
We do not know what would of caused this. My thoughts are that either
A. The tuning wasnt done properly
B. The Z-Maxx might of ruined the car.
C. The pistons were on their last stand and gave out finally at the racetrack.
What do you guys think? The car doesnt knock, or make any wierd noises. The only thing is its not letting him go into 6th gear and if he tries to the SES light starts flashing.
The car was running a little rich and wasnt running to its full potential this summer so my friend had it tuned by a guy that knows what he is doing with EFI Live. The SS has always smoked since he got it so everyone would tell him that they thought his piston rings were fried. Well when it got tuned they made sure the Air/Fuel ratio was perfect and they did a few other things like remove top limiter, adjust gearing since he put a 12 bolt Moser rear end in it with 3.73's and when they were tuning it, they realized that the clip on the throttle body cable was not on right. They realized that at WOT, the car was only opening up 60% throttle. After adjusting the clip on the TB, they got it back to 100%. The car was running fine before, and after the tune and fixing the throttle problem, they car was a beast again. My friend took the car to a oil lube place and had them do the Z-maxx fuel treatment on the car before it got tuned.
Well about 3 weeks after the car got tuned, We all went down to the drag strip. The temp. was 102 degrees so it was hot as hell. We drove about 3 hours to get there, and the SS was fine. We get there and me and my friend wait for about an hour and finally we decide to go make a pass. Me in my Z28 and him in his SS. Well we take off and hes beating me instantly by about 3 to 4 cars and he was pulling hard on me. I noticed his car was smoking a **** load but dont think much of it. We go around and do a second pass. This time i leave his car nasty off the line and beat him by alot. When we come down the return road, i notice his car is smoking like crazy and smoke is coming out of the hood. He parks his car and opens the hood only to find oil spelt all over the place. The car had gotten blow by. The guys that tuned the car happened to be there. They looked at it and checked over the motor. There was no cracks visible and the motor was not knocking or making any unusual noises. We let it cool for a little bit and decided to go into town to buy some oil in his car. When we were on the road the car was driving normal, not smoking. My friend decided to get on it and instanly smoke started coming in from the shifter and from the hood. That was it. His car was done. We put oil in it and went back to the track and parked it.
Well on the way home he had to keep adding a quart of oil every 25 mins or so. We had to pull over ever 25 mins and check the oil level. It was going through oil bad and on the highway going 65 and he was a ways ahead of me and all i saw was smoke coming from in front of me and i could smell burnt oil bad. We finally made it home. His car has been parked since august. Every once in a while he starts up the car and drives it around the block because he misses it. He said it drives perfectly fine until you get on it which BTW he doesnt get on it at all anymore.
We do not know what would of caused this. My thoughts are that either
A. The tuning wasnt done properly
B. The Z-Maxx might of ruined the car.
C. The pistons were on their last stand and gave out finally at the racetrack.
What do you guys think? The car doesnt knock, or make any wierd noises. The only thing is its not letting him go into 6th gear and if he tries to the SES light starts flashing.
12-14-2010, 12:42 AM
#2
BTW the car had been tuned before when it got the heads/cam swap by John M. known as Wicked1 on here. He has the twin turbo 900HP Firehawk or what ever. The guys that tuned it with EFI live said that the first tune had been done horrible.
12-14-2010, 07:21 PM
#4
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the car has about 108,000 now car doesn't smoke but when it's taken over 3500 grand it smoke comes up from underneath the car, at the track I was told I had alot of Blow-by. car drives fine and drives fine during daily driving when I do actually drive it. I was thinking about rebuilding and forging it, any ideas on what I should get for forging
12-15-2010, 09:21 AM
#5
Really depends on what you have planned for future use with it.. boost nitrous daily driver drag queen etc. Budget also plays huge role. Stay with aluminum or go iron. Lots of questions to ask yourself. If it were me I would do an ls2 402ci stroker 9.5:1 - 10.1:1 comp ready for f1a blower.
12-17-2010, 02:08 PM
#6
for rings you can do a cranking compression check, if you have low compression on any cylinder that may be because of shot rings and you're getting blowby past the rings although that's not really a cause of burning lots of oil. If you get consistent and acceptable numbers considering whatever cam you have then you can be somewhat certain the rings are ok.
you can rig up a pressure gauge on the pcv system and measure crankcase pressure. If your pcv system is not working, or you have no crankcase ventilation system, then you could be building up too much pressure and that's forcing oil past somwehere like the intake valve seals which is then being burnt. This would happen most under power. You would also know you're burning oil by checking the spark plugs for signs. Other than that check for oil leaks.
I doubt the tune caused a problem, if it did you would have had signs first. The zmax i doubt did anything positive or negative. If it's still running fine then I don't think the pistons or rings gave out- a crankcase pressure test at idle would tell you.
you can rig up a pressure gauge on the pcv system and measure crankcase pressure. If your pcv system is not working, or you have no crankcase ventilation system, then you could be building up too much pressure and that's forcing oil past somwehere like the intake valve seals which is then being burnt. This would happen most under power. You would also know you're burning oil by checking the spark plugs for signs. Other than that check for oil leaks.
I doubt the tune caused a problem, if it did you would have had signs first. The zmax i doubt did anything positive or negative. If it's still running fine then I don't think the pistons or rings gave out- a crankcase pressure test at idle would tell you.
