JDM's 01 Blown Engine, Why???
 

I saw the pic's of JDM's blown engine on SVT and it was bad. Good news is, he should have it ready for E-town by this weekend...When the tuners push their engines as much as they do, I guess something is bound to break sooner or later....Did anyone find out why it happened?? Reason that the rod(s) failed???
I know there are a lot of people wondering whether their rods are going to have a failure or not.

Please don't turn this thread into a tuner war. I am just asking questions..

thanks,
DL

DL,

I know this much....He was running 17 PSI on that engine. The most I have ever heard of.

He thinks that due to racing and A LOT of boost the rods weakened and KA BOOM!!! Pretty simple.

The new engine will have the same exact mods the old one did and he wants to see if the accident can be repeated for R&D purposes. Because the the factory rods could have been defected from the beginning.

"Wait and See"

I see you are going from forum to forum, EXCEPT JDMs, posting this thread so I will post the same answer over here I posted on the NLOC board.

Magnafluxing and xraying the rods and rod bolts might tell something and then again might not. Jim stated on his board that he was putting exactly the same mods on the new engine that were on the old one so he could also tell better what was going on. If the new one throws a rod, maybe we know something, maybe not.


Why don't you just call him on the phone and ask him what he thinks? You go to every board but his and then say I don't want this to be a tuner war. Bull *****. I think thats exactly what you want. Why don't you go from board to board asking why all the other engines that have blown have blown.

Jim was pushing the engine to the edge. The tuning on it is far more advanced than what he puts on the customer engines he tunes, so what is your problem?

noelvm

17psi, I would say thats over the edge for the blower and the engine.

I would say if you are running a 4# lower and 2# upper like a few on this board are talking about doing then that should put you in the same territory as JDM. It is not unusual to make 10 to 11 lbs. of boost without pulleys. If you do the math you can see what that adds up to with pulleys.

If you're smart you will let Jim and the other tuners finish pushing theirs to the limit to see if something fails. I garrantee if you show up at the dealer with an engine looking like Jim's and want warranty work they will laugh you out of the shop.

It could have been a fluke but maybe not. It's a good idea to try it a second time to see if you get the same failure. How else are you going to know for sure.

DL,
It's called SVTPerformance.com. You have been there before so don't play dumb. You probably already read Jim post before you made this one. If not you should have because nobody else had a problem finding it.:confused:

LTNBOLT......when you say laugh you out of the shop, don't you mean THROW you out of the shop:p

DL,

Whats up??

Instead of covering the internet with questions and 2nd hand info, why not call Jim??? I know for a fact he will discuss the issue openly. I spoke to him late thursday night and here is a summary:

1) All stock internals(No porting, cams whatever else) on the blown engine.

2) As 2Fast mentioned, upper and lower pullies totaling ~16-17psi boost.

3) He stated that definitely a rod broke. You have seen the pics on svtperformance.com. As to why, he is unsure. Was it a bad Ford part?? Did it fail under extreme boost?? He doesn't know. So I believe its unfair to assume anything at this point other than those few facts.

4) He has installed a crate 01 motor with ALL the same mods as before. He obviously will be at E-Town this weekend running the EXACT SAME mods and maybe times. Its hard to say, with not many miles on the new motor, if he will clock off some 11.xx's or not.

5) His goal, as stated by 2Fast, is to either prove it was boost related by breaking another engine. OR get a long lasting life out of it and write it off as a bad ford part.

6) If the 2nd engine does break....Then he will build up a 3rd engine with better lower parts and see what happens with even more boost........

Personally, its racing...Things are going to break. I'm sure JDM had hundreds of passes on his L. As to the cause, we may never know the real reason. In Ennis, a local Ford Service manager was talking with us after the blow out and stated that he has had a few regular F-150's come in with broken rods. This Ford Tech thought the rods were the iffy part.

As more and more people add those 4# lowers with 1-2# uppers, we may see more problems. (<<Note: That is just a personal statement, no flaming<<). We have got to be getting to the ragged edge of the stock internals. Who would have thought low 12's & 11's out of these.. Just 1 year ago, if you were high 12's, it was incredible. Now, high 12's is just a growing point.

Now pick up the phone and dial--------

Well stated guys.
I must commend Jim for putting another stock motor in to test, so that we all know the limit of these engines!!

Rob

Sorry Guys, To all you guys that are late... I didn't finish the SVTperformance.com/SVT performance/JDM engineering/Ford specialist because I figured everyone would know what I was talking about. Seems like others didn't have a problem..

Thanks 2_FAST4U, Maybe it was too much boost that contributed to the rods, that's the kind of info I was looking for here..I guess will see if he can make the same type of thing happen again, then we'll have a better idea.

noelvm, I did post on two boards, NLOC and here, True, So what...If I was starting ****, I would have posted this on Jim's site.... I see you go from forum to forum to, Wah! So what..

Thanks Brian K for the info, This explains things in more detail.
I saw the engine on SVT performance/JDM engineering/Ford specialist, Is this a better Noel...
I wasn't trying to imply he wouldn't discuss what happened to the motor, I was asking if anyone knew why it happened?
Since JDM posted all the pictures about what happened, maybe he would post why he thinks it happened? From what you've said that Jim told you, we'll see what happens with the new (Crate) motor installed...This wasn't a personal attack on Jim, We all have our own personal favorite tuners...He just had the first major thing happen..

Hey LTNBOLT, you say If I'm smart I should wait and let the tuners push the limit. Maybe you shouldn't buy any performance parts for a few years and Leave it to the rest of us to buy them, seee you in my rear view mirror...Also about the performance parts, it depends on the relationship you have developed with your dealer, I can see why your dealer doesn't work on your L.

We May never know exactly what caused this engine failure. but 1 thing i'm confident that didn't cause it was Too much boost! i know these engines can handle up to 20# of boost with out any ROD problems. we might get into a head gasket problem and if we don't have the proper tune then we get into ALL kinds of problems! I believe these engines have a much too long of a stroke to be turning them over 5,700 i feel thats what causes many rod failures in these 5.4.. i could be wrong. but ive always kept my rpm's to a MAXIMUM of 5,700 and ive been pushing 16# of boost and been running 12.0's for over a year now and have around 30,000 miles on the engine which ive never touched since new.. so i feel boost didn't do it i feel rpm's could have done it along with many other varibles.. But we all must remember if we want to play sometimes we have to pay! :( JL

Thanks Brian and noelvm. I will keep my mouth shut.

I am pretty impressed.

You guys police each other pretty well....

We have had pretty much full disclosure with a promise of a relatively scientific approach to determining the cause for failure.

I used to do NDT - ( XRay, Xyglo, Ultrasonic, Magnetic Particle Inspections ) for the FAA. Inspecting the rod after the "destructive" testing that Jim put it through would not show much since it is in many small pieces. If WE as a group decide that the rods are infact an issue I can likely borrow some equipment and inspect some samples if you want to provide them....

Having said that the rods in this engine are especially long. A lever that is that long and is moving 5500-5900 tiimes per minute with admittedly a great deal of pressure is under a great deal of stress. How much does the stress change from 5500 to 5600 rpm ? A few percentage points maybe..... Since the parts are mass produced and likely only spot inspected it is not unlikely that a part that is a few percentage points of spec ( or more ) makes it into our trucks. Not unlike the intercoolers or the wiper motors or mufflers.

Lets agree to leave these discussions amongst the Members rather than having the tuners jump in. Johnny has suggested that perhaps the TUNE was the culprit. Since none of the tuners give out many details of their various tunes I think suggesting that the tune is at fault is difficult to prove or disprove. ( Edited) . Jim has said repeatedly that He is running more Boost and a more agressive tune than ANY of his customers.

Like has been said so many times. If you are gonna play you are gonna pay. The more seriously you play the more you have to open your wallet. Making ANY change to the stock truck is betting that the stock pieces can handle a little more... Here's hoping they can.....

Thanks
Doug

When you combine High RPM's with a lower A/F ratio, and TONS of boost.......YOU WILL HAVE PROBLEMS. As stated many times by many different people, and yes...even the TUNERS. These 5.4 trucks have a long rod, and DO NOT like High RPM's.

I have noticed blower pulleys with tons of material grinded off their snouts, are these still considered 2lb pulleys as pictured below with the ASP piece?? What pulley combination was used to achieve this 17 lbs. of boost??
noelvm, do you know??


http://a5.cpimg.com/image/2B/01/6126...-028001E0-.jpg

DL,
You asked nothing wrong, But some people like to twist words around....

Where are the pix at? I must have over looked them.:confused:

At the risk of getting flammed for bashing, I'm going to attempt to put forth my knowledge on this subject, without making any accusitory comments. I have been contacted privately by many people asking my thoughts about this, and there now seems to be a frenzy about everyone not wanting to do stuff because they are afraid to break rods. I will simply post what I know on this topic to help educate people so they can make thier own decisions.

First of all, I do agree that the connecting rods are the weak part of the motor. While they are stronger than the average OEM connecting rod, they are not up to the task of handling serious power, and let's face it, some of these trucks are making serious power. On top of that, the rods themselves are over 6 inches long, making them even weaker because there is more stress on them using the physics of a lever as Doug stated. Add in the long stroke of the 5.4, which swings the rods far to the side, and you've got a weak link.

Now, with that said, there are a few things that can cause rods to fail. 1- Lack of oil. 2- Too much power. 3- Excessive lower end harmonics. 4- Detonation 5- Other parts failing . Let's see if I can explain each one..

1- Lack of oil. Pretty self explanitory. Rod bearings run dry causing galling of the rod to the bearing which will pretty much weld itself to the crank. Not too likley on the 5.4s, they have a pretty good oil systsem, but it's always a possibility.

2- Too much power. Obviously a part is only made to handle a certian amount of power. So let's think out loud for a second and see if we can estimate power. I have run 11.90 and my truck makes 505 rwhp and 653 rwtq and that was at 4900 lbs. Since Jims truck runs at about 4550 for him to run 11.90, he is probably not making as much power as that. My typical 01 customer with just a chip, filter, and lower pulley makes about 390rwhp and 465rwtq. On the dyno, we see about 8 hp and 20 ftlbs increase for every 2 psi of boost. So going from 10 psi to 17 psi, that should be about 56rwhp and 140ftlbs more. So that's up to about 446rwhp and 605rwtq. Now take into consideration all the other goodies on Jims truck like electric fan, long tube headers, TB, etc, etc, and I'd add another 30rwhp and 30rwtq, giving about 476rwhp and 635rwtq. Of course this is guess a guess, but probably not far off. There are plenty of other people making that kind of power out there, and some have had good luck and some have had bad luck.

3. Excessive lower end harmonics. Vibration causes the molecules in metal to "loosen up" and become less dense. This weakens parts and causes them to ultilatley fail under stress. The stock 5.4 is in serious need of balancing and with the long stroke revving these motors high will wreak havoc.

4. Detonation. This follows the same principals as number 3. Detonation causes severe lower end haromics, and can wreck a motor pretty quick under the right conditions. Jim had stated to people at Ennis that he was running a safe 12.0 A/F ratio on that pass. However you can still have detonation with a rich mixture. Too much timing will still cause detonation, even with a super rich mixture, just don't hear it as much.

5. Other parts failing. Obviously if something else failed in the motor, it could cause a chain reaction of broken parts. These motors have extremely tight ring end gaps, and the excessive heat caused by high boost can cause the top ring to expand to the point where the ring ends touch. When that happens, it puts a huge load on that cylinder and usually the ring breaks. From something that simple, the piston would then fail, parts would fall into the bottem end, and there goes the neighborhood.

Basically any of these reasons could have been the cause of Jims motor failure. One of my customers e-mailed me the pics that were posted of Jims broken parts. In my opinion, from those photos I don't think there is any possible way to determine what the cause was.

Hopefully this post helps answer some questions, and is not taken as an attempt to "bash".