Blown up 5.3, need brainstorming
Blown up 5.3, need brainstorming A buddy of mine has a 2011 Silverado that we turbo'd using Trick's kit, 73mm Magnum turbo, tuned for 7 pounds of boost. It had an awesome AFR and was tuned spot on for the boost. Two months later he used a manual boost controller to up the boost a couple pounds to race a 5.0 Mustang, mid shift we're thinking it hit a boost spike and broke something (it broke for sure during a shift) and now it has a loud tick to it at idle. It also has a dead miss at idle, so there's obviously something wrong internally. What are some common issues these motors have? I'll be tearing into it this weekend most likely and can keep this thread up to date on the fix. Just wanting some ideas of what to expect getting into this project, again.
Last edited by Meth Sled; Feb 4, 2015 at 10:08 PM.
On the initial break, it smoked, and when he parked it it had a giant puddle of oil under it. Sadly I was in Houston for the winter break and he was a couple hours away, so I didn't get to see the distruction. He brought it down to the speed shop I was working at over the winter for us to work on and when he unloaded it off the trailer it didn't smoke. Due to funding, or the lack there of, we're bringing the truck back to College Station to do the work ourselves.
It definitely hit a lean spike, that's no doubt. He wants to put it back together the right way, so forged rods and piston heads, and beef the valvetrain up. Either with just boost friendly parts to get rid of the DOD crap or put another cam in it while we've got it apart. Seems like the best route will to be to just pull the whole motor out and then disassemble.
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Verdad Gallardo I'll definitely go over it all and make sure everything's in tact. I can get the motor assembled at SAM(School of Automotive Machinest) for free, have a buddy going to school there now, so they can go over the block as well if worst comes to worst.
Even forged engines can let go if the tune isn't right. People squeeze triple the boost you were running through stock 5.3's. I'm not suggesting you haven't already thought of this, but figure out what went wrong before throwing a forged engine into the same situation. Good luck on your build.
Even forged engines can let go if the tune isn't right. People squeeze triple the boost you were running through stock 5.3's. I'm not suggesting you haven't already thought of this, but figure out what went wrong before throwing a forged engine into the same situation. Good luck on your build.
Update! Finally got the truck up to College Station last night around 8. Couldn't resist tearing into it, so by three this morning I had the whole front end torn down and the heads off! Damage found was a cracked piston (Cylinder One), valves appeared good, and no valve-train damage. I'll be pulling the motor sometime this week and will figure out where all the oil was coming from..
Passenger side pistons had some roughness to them, can't tell if it was from detonation or from missing (same spark plugs used on initial start-up, missed at idle, never replaced that side due to it being a PITA to do so). Cylinder six looks like it was barely firing, with no roughness at all on it..
