Have you sprayed your motor yet?

 

Have you sprayed this motor yet?

 

I have a SDPC 402 short block. It has AFR 205 heads upon which I put new stem seals when it went together. No problems.

 

i wonder if initial fireup or breakin was too fat, washing the rings out of the motor. Does it smoke on startup after sitting, or when you floor it?

 

motor has never been sprayed, and it doesnt smoke on start up or when floored

 

thats the problem, it needs spray

 

This post is long overdue. I don’t mind telling everyone that we built the 402 in your C5. If you’re going to post up, I want everyone to fully understand what has taken place.

Your C5 was brought to us last fall for a 402 cid LS2 to replace your stock engine that was blown up on nitrous. Your dad told us that you wanted max N/A power with the ability to use nitrous down the road. We built the engine and installed, as requested. A few months after you and your dad took delivery of the car, he contacted us about oil consumption issues. We were told that it was using one quart every 500 miles. It’s not uncommon to see problems with the factory PCV system, particularly on stroker engines, because it cannot keep up with the larger cubes. We discussed this with your dad, and we talked to him about checking the PCV system. At the same time, we sent you a Jaz oil catch can to install at no cost to your dad. We also sent you another set of pushrods with slightly smaller oil restrictor holes to keep the engine from pumping so much oil to the cylinder heads. Again, this was at no cost to your dad. You guys had the car on the dyno a few different times, and the tune needed to be adjusted some since you changed to a larger fuel injector. Jason e-mailed you a few different tunes to get that ironed out. Later on, your dad contacted us regarding the PCV valve. We told him that it would be a good idea to change it out, but he actually accused us of installing the PCV valve on the car backwards. Apparently whomever the mechanic was that was working on the car pulled it off and reinstalled it backwards. I told him that there was NO WAY we installed the PCV valve backwards. When I spoke with him approximately two weeks later, he told me that his mechanic had indeed installed the valve backwards. At the same time, he asked if he should be running LESS oil in the engine because it is a stroker. I said absolutely not, and he should stick to the factory capacity.

Let’s fast-forward to early June of this year. Your dad contacted us and told us about the car consuming oil, and he was going to drive the car back to us. We always tell customers that any warranty work performed must be done at our shop, and any transportation costs are up to the customer. After numerous conversations, we decided to split the fuel costs of driving the car to us with your dad. We offer a 30-day warranty against workmanship defects on all engines, but we were willing to cover the labor under warranty, even though it had been eight months since the engine was built. The car left in perfect working condition with nitrous on it, and all warranties are null and void if nitrous or a boost application is used. We were told that it had not been used at all on the engine, but you did contact one of our sales guys regarding jet sizing after picking the car up from the initial build. This certainly left us skeptical. The car arrived, and the pushrods that we sent to you were sitting in the back seat, along with the PCV system. The PCV system had been completely removed, and the pushrods were never installed. It was apparent that someone had TRIED to install the pushrods but decided against it after things did not go as planned. Three of the rocker arm bolts were stripped, and we replaced them while the car was here. Your dad specifically requested that the valve guides be replaced while the car was here, and we explained to him that the guides in your stage 3 6.0L heads were GM guides. We’ve never had clearance problems with factory guides, but we pulled the heads off and replaced them at no cost to your dad while the car was here. We checked the guide clearances before we replaced them, and they were on the tight side of factory specs. Again, we replaced them anyways since the car was here. The compression and leakdown tests checked out perfect.

When we were first contacted about building an engine for your car, your dad said that you wanted the most power possible. We recommended our Texas Giant 248/254 camshaft, and that is what was installed. With this large of a camshaft, it is normal to have some bucking under low RPM part-throttle. This is just the nature of the big cams. A smaller cam will certainly be more drivable, but it will sacrifice power. It’s all a trade-off. We have gone out of our way to help in every way possible, and we’re still being portrayed as if we did a poor job on your car. We stayed at the shop until 9:00 p.m. last Wednesday working out small tuning issues for you. We covered the labor and applicable parts on an engine that was out of the warranty period, left our shop with a power-adder on it, and was worked on by someone that did not have any idea as to what they were doing. We have built literally hundreds of these engines with no problems whatsoever. We will not cover the labor on the vehicle again. It ran very well for us, and we tried to get to the 1,000 miles on the car as requested by your dad prior to pickup. We accommodated every request, no matter how much we disagreed with the theory behind it. If the vehicle comes back to us you will be charged for the time that it is here.

Trevor & Jason
Texas Speed & Performance

 

We have a TSP 402 running around in a black vette. This motor has ran great and made awesome power. I had a issue with oiling due to the o ring on the valley not being in it. TSP backed it up and sent us a oil pump and etc. They went above and beyond the call of duty. The engine does burn a little oil. About 1/2 a quart around 1000 miles on it. Maybe a little less. We also noticed it had high crank case pressure. To fix this we added a AMW catch can and replaced the PCV valve. Problem solved. This car does see the nitrous and has made 700 rwhp and ran 140 MPH in the 1/4. Just sharing an instance where I thought we installed a bad motor and it ended up being just fine and making 530+ rwhp all day long to this day.

 

we never tried to install your pushrods because we wanted to avoid going into the motor then risk something else going wrong and being blamed for it since someone else did the work. So i have no idea how 3 of the rocker arm bolts where stripped(maybe you guys can?).

We did infact call and ask about some jet sizes but i never used the nitrous do to the fact that the engine had the issues, and i didnt feel safe about spraying, nor did i want to add another factor to the equation.

From the first time picking up the car and to the time i shipped it back no one went into the motor we only installed the catch can and the injectors. On the drive back from the shop after the recent work that was done,the low oil light came on and the car was down on oil, I had to fill it back up twice on the drive back to Raleigh. the total miles driven back was around 2000.

regarding the whole running lower oil level do to it being a stroker motor, someone told us to try that to keep it from blowing oil by (which was a theory that you guys came up with and was the reason that you sent us a catch can, which didnt solve the oil issue) and before i ever even thought of doing it we called you guys and asked if we should try running it lower then the top dot on the dipstick and when you said no,we never ever filled the oil level lower on changes, or ran it at a lower level at any time,we only called and asked about it. the only reason the oil level was ever lower in the car was because it was burning it!!

also the reason we installed new injectors is because when the car got to raleigh and i dynoed it(NA runs only, NO NITROUS) it was running out of fuel up top and the A/F was starting the "march of death" climb.

With that all said !! I posted this thread to try to get some more opinions on what might be wrong and never brought up who built the motor. So i dont see how i am trying to make it seem like you guys did a bad job.

 

In my opinion it will smoke and use oil until the end of time. The 402 is not a good setup especially with the iron block. Every time I'm on here there is another one on here using oil. It is not the parts or the quality of the workmanship of the builder. If yours is not using oil just wait it will before you know it. The most decepitive is that the oil is in the intake, sucking it from the pcv. We tried everything and when we tore our 402 down it was pretty clear what the problem was. We used x brand piston and compared it to the same as a y brand piston and both had the same piston skirt length. On BDC 60% of the skirt pulls out of the bottom of the block causing it to rock back and forth. There something you never read about a stroker in the magazines.
Sleeved 427 overcome this because most replacement sleeves are longer somewhat fixing this.

 

Mac - are you basically saying that the problem with the 402 LS2's is that the sleeves are too small, and that is why oil consumption is so common?

 

I know that I suck down oil in mine also. Probably a quart for every 1000-1200 miles. I do know that you have to be more than a full quart down for that low oil light to come on.

 

Too short, as in length. I posted in 98Z28CobraKillers threads as well. He had pictures of spark plugs and they looked liked mine you could see the oil on the plugs. Read his post above he is burning oil. I hate to say this but the FORD guys were right. They use to build long rod 306 motors and I was told this over 10 years ago and did not believe them. Bascally the same piston a 402 uses that long rod 306 uses. They told me it will never work on the street because the rings are into the wrist pin and you use the rail for support. Oil goes around the back side of the oil rings. You only get the benefit of the top oil rail if even that. This is a major problem but when combined with pulling out of the sleeve at bdc it compounds the problem. You guys are a little luckier that I was mine used a quart every 150 miles.