I must have been the full moon. The truck was only at half throttle when something shuddered and smoke poored out from the engine. We were at 450 rwhp and not even at 5200 yet.
Looks like I'm coughing up a lot more $$ than I had planned.
So, who's got the best short blocks?

 

First find out whats wrong or what broke

Mine did something simillar once, and it turned out a vacuum line, or a pcv line poped off. So maybee since you just installed the supercharger it is something stupid that happened.

If I were to buy a short block, in my opinion it is a no brainer-JDM
But thats just my opinion

 

I wish it were that simple. But unfortunately, pieces of my block were on the floor. So, I am afraid it is more severe than a vacuum line.

 

I'd find a new tuner. That should not have happened on his watch.

 

Who's the Tuner????

 

It depends......if it was because it was over reving or running lean, yeah, tuners fault.

They can't prevent anything from breaking. If it's man made (or machine), it can break.

It's no secret these stock blocks are nothing to write home about, even with no mods.

 

I agree, but if pieces of the block were on the floor, I'd say detonation is a pretty good guess, and unless the fuel was poor or the filter was clogged, detonation is within the control of a tuner.

I'm not saying convict the guy without a trial, I'm just saying that I wouldn't let him touch another of my engines unless he provides som sort of explanation.

Why do you say that? I've been on these boards since 2002, and I can't remember a single stock engine failure.

 

that sucks but at least you can get a better one now

 

It was a rod bolt that came loose and allowed the rod to flale about.
It was going to happen anyway, the fact that the truck was on the dyno was just a matter of coincidence.

 

I stand corrected. :o

 

Had anyone been in the oil pan before or was this a factory installed option? Seems unlikely this was just due to a loose rod bolt as I think troubles would have been evident before a dyno run. You could post up some pictures of the offending rod. Maybe a picture or 2 of the rod journal as the bearing would have spun hard before letting loose.

 

I don't think the oil pan was even touched at all. This was a KB supercharger install, and tune.
As far as evidence of engine trouble goes, I really haven't driven this vehicle very much in the last year. It has been parked for the majority of the time as I have another vehicle that gets much better gas mileage which I use daily as my commuter car. So, I really haven’t had the benefit of noticing any deleterious effects under the hood.

I'll do that when I see the truck this weekend. The jury is still not in on what all went wrong.

 

Come on now bro, I know I shouldn't have to say this, but, not every lightning engine failure is reported on f150.com.

Ironically, the service manager at the SVT dealer i bought my trucks at happened to stop by my shop the other day. He asked if i still had my truck and my old man had his. We started shooting the bull about how my old man popped the motor in his 2k. He told me the same as he had told me when it happened, these motors are like night a day. You get one that will take just about anything you can throw at it within reason, then you get some that were like they were built out of plaster. I've had this argument before and yes, there has been at least a half dozen stock block truck that popped motors over the years. Most of them , if i can remember, were on the highway with high speed kickdowns. Kaboom.

Can't blame the tuner even if it was detonation. These trucks don't have knock sensors (should have but don't). Any decent tuner would know a start point for tuning. KB tuning can be tricky because the boost comes on so much quicker then a stock block, so if there's not much experience there, i blame the owner for not doing research.

Rod bolt could definetely cause the failure. I could show you pictures of my 408 windsor that self destructed last fall. Eagle H beam rods, came with arp8547 rod bolts. Was speced at about 450 hp. Guess it didn't like the 200 shot of juice we were throwing at it. Bolt broke, bearing spun. Broke the cap in half and there was alot of smashing around. Cracked a cylinder, cracked the piston, and bent the rod, wrecked the crank journal. The other 7 were like nothing ever happened, aside from the rod journal on the adjacent rod.

Measured stretch and torque when installed. Just broke. **** happens. Output was beyond the bolts capabilities. These engines are built to withstand STOCK performance. Anything else, all bets are off.

If you are putting a KB all, better off this happened on the dyno and not the highway. You could have gotten hurt or hurt someone else. You would have had to upgrade anyway.

Good luck.

 

But there are thousands of Lightning owners on these boards, and I never recall hearing of a stock engine failure (trannies, yes, engines, no).

Does that mean that they never break? Of course not. But it is pretty solid evidence that the failure rate is low enough to question the assertion that "these stock blocks are nothing to write home about." They have an exceptionally low failure rate. Whether it's zero, or 0.01%, or even 1%, it's low.

 

how many miles were on your engine?