A friend if mine had his LS1 totally explode on track.

It was a 2004 GTO motor with supposedly 40k miles on it.

We thought it might have been oil starvation, but could this really be from oil starvation?







This pic looks like there was some oil problems...



The car only made it 20 minutes on track!!

 

Damn! Makes me want to just tear my motor apart just to make sure everything is good.

 

You weren't lying about the faint of heart

 

We think there might have been a problem with the engine. he bought it from a member here on Ls1tech, when we got the motor the engine mount holes were cracked and one was almost broken clean off. So I have a feeling it had hair line fractures that just let go.

I guess that's why you need to be careful when buying used parts off the internet!

 

that blows

 

A few more just for good measure...

 

This was not a completely stock motor by the looks of the Moroso pan and heater core bypass hose.
Did he have Nitrous??
What type of tranny...he didn't miss a gear, I take it??
One of the combustion chambers looks leaner than the others but that may be the one that got beat up. Did it run lean and detonate extremely bad???
Just some ideas to toss around.

 

BONE STOCK, only things not stock were the carb setup, oil pan and the car it was in.... Similar to the car in my sig...

Stock cam, stock internals, no power adders at all except for the ATI pulley(stock size even)

 

So...you think external cracks caused the internal damage??? Or, you think there is more to it than that???

 

yeah I think the external cracks were a sign of other damage...

 

when I see a motor with that much carnage I immediately think it was over revved. But with this one, it appears a piston might have come apart and that set off the chain reaction. Was the motor noisy before the damage?

 

The second crank journal definitly got Hot and turned black.Looks like it had too little of bearing clearance,or possibly an oiling problem.Check those bearings over to see if they are all the same.

 

the rod journal got pretty damn hot, by the discoloration, before the piston lost its fight with the pin

 

ouch
lol

 

I don't know if the motor was noisey before it died. I wasn't driving. He did say he heard a slight ticking when in hard right handers, which led me to think it was oiling, but the damage, (yes other than the burned journals) doesn't look to me like just an oiling problem.

 

Thanks for all the input thus far, really just trying to figure out root cause so we don't repeat on the next motor!

I have the same setup in my car, except my car has an accusump installed and cam/valvetrain upgrades...

 

sorry about the bad luck bro, thats one of the worst I have ever seen,,,, That is what we refer to as a
Screamin Scrapiron Fit....

 

Zomfg.

 

WOW!! That's some luck.

 

Wow sorry to hear man. Its looks like those rod journals suffered from oil starvation. Possibly from being run low on oil, a blocked oil hole or bearing clearance that was too tight.I work at a chevy dealer and we have a ls2 corvette that blew up worse than that, i can post up a few pics monday. The crank journals are blackened just like that.