Woodylyf767

Howdy!

First off thank you everyone who has followed, read, commented, or helped me out in my previous build titled "GAPPLESAUCE LM7" for the "NoLove Nova" and for the "SLOVA"

I did some aggressive antilag testing on the haltech ECU which can be seen here:


A few days later the tuner called and said he had a spot open so I drove over there and on the way heard slight ticking which I assumed was lifter tick and promptly ignored and did a slight partial throttle pull for a guy on the interstate and it threw a rod

Taking apart the GAPPLESAUCE LM7 it seems to be a rod bolt failure which I always thought was really rare for LS engines

Anyhoo carnage can be seen here in a youtube short


I'll see if the links work after the thread is started


Anyways, I have a group of 8 to 10 friends and 2 cars (my daily busted C5 dubbed "La Negra" and the Slova) registered for LS Fest in September. There's supposed to be 2 RV's and many good times and smiles so I have to source and build another engine before then. I'm also getting married in a month so that will take time where I can't wrench

The clock is ticking...

Woodylyf767

So here are some carnage pics. Blew the engine up Saturday 7/6/2024

Had the passenger head off same day, and found the piston (#6) to be oriented wrong and immediately knew for sure that a rod was thrown so began tearing it down.







Here are some bits and pieces. Looks like the big end of the rod was pryed open. I see little to no discoloration. At least none that is different from everything else in the engine. This is leading me to believe it was rod bolt failure.

Something interesting to note, many people talk about RPM of an engine without talking about RPM per second, or the acceleration rate of the RPM. How fast is the RPM going up or down? On the rev limiter this number can be quite large. Listening to HP Academy Tuned in Podcast with Steve Morris, Steve Morris was saying that the service interval for his high end engines get cut down by tens of passes if the Rev limiter is ever hit. Says it reduces the life of the engine significantly. Just repeating what I hear

Anyways, here are bits and pieces

Woodylyf767

So after I figured I blew the engine I had to source another one fast and local

So I found what is listed as a 4.8 on market place gen 3. I plan to pick it up on Friday. Guy was asking 300$ and I counted my 20's wrong and gave him 320$. Call it a tip or something

Here is Michelle Obama in all her glory

Woodylyf767

I have 800$ in my account and I get paid tomorrow

So not as tight of a budget as last time. Today my plan is to order tools and gasket sets etc.

Tomorrow I would like to order cam, springs, lifters, preferably from Summit and HAS to be in stock ready to ship

I was extremely happy with the idle quality and power my 8715 MAVN Ghost Cam made, and since I threw a rod bolt it is only sensible that I get a bigger cam and spin more RPM's this time on a budget. For scientific purposes of course

So I would love it if the SUMMIT Racing person was summoned to suggest some in stock cams to blow my paycheck on tomorrow

Woodylyf767

Shoot just realized I already posted the carnage pics here. Oh well, posted to other thread too

Got rod bolts this time, and decided since I enjoyed the summit 8715 cam so much I went with the 8716. It's basically the same except with 10 degrees more intake duration

Got some low buck summit lifters, summit trays, and some btr springs

Got the spring checker and associate equipments for my old springs and for future engines

Checked bearing clearance on crank and was .0035 vertical and .0025 on the side with the caps tightened but not torqued to angle spec


Didn't wind up buying plastigauge so used a micrometer and a dial bore gauge

Got the cam in, reusing the old cam bearings and cleaned the block best I could. Threw the pistons in a harbor freight ultrasonic cleaner

Woodylyf767

Got the short block about together

The rod journal roundness was arguably more round with the ARP fasteners at ARP torque spec than the standard hardware at standard hardware torque spec

Maybe I'll post the measurements

I get married in a week


^ Some comedic relief


And man, Idk if i'll make this LS Fest this year. It's going to be close. I really don't want to skip alignment but I may have to

We'll see. If I can get the engine in the car I'm confident I can get it all together in a few days after work

EllenKnowlton

Is everything good now?