Blowing oil all over my engine bay...help please.

[wakotow]

Here's my story, about a month ago at the drags I did a run and noticed smoke pouring out of my hood. Opening the hood revealed what looked like oil that had gone everywhere in the engine bay, the exhaust side of the block was mostly covered in front of the turbo, the piping, where the coilpacks sit, the underside of the hood, and some even made it to the passenger side wheel well...After some inspection of the damage, we determined that my power steering hose had sprung a massive leak (a quarter inch split in the hose) and the power steering resivoir was mostly dry, so I figured in the process of going lock to lock around the water box (too poor for slicks) I blew it. So I got a new one from Rawbrokerage (thanks!) and installed it, much to my happiness, everything was fine, no more leaks, no more turning like a granny...

Flash forward to this morning...hopped in my car and messed around with my nistune a little bit, it was running rich when it was cold(10:1) so I dialed that back a little bit and called it good. The car was warmed up (150F-165F) and I hammered it on the onramp to the freeway. I noticed after I was off the throttle that there was quite a bit of smoke trailing me, so I got off at the next exit to check on everything...once again...oil everywhere...power steering hose is brand new, resivoir level is fine, oil level is low, and that's what it looks like...so here's some pictures of the second time...the oil is comming from the top of the motor I'm pretty sure, the piping is coated on the top, but pretty much dry on the bottom...maybe pcv and my breather...I've just never heard of this kind of spray from a breather.

My motor is an RB25 with an HX35 boosting about 14psi, so not super high boost or anything...thanks if you can figure it out.

[Joe]

its because you have open breather on your valve cover

[wakotow]

so catch can is the solution? Is it normal to blow that much oil? seems pretty excessive to me.

[Lonismos14]

Uh O when that happened to me on my ka i had positive crankcase. In other words i blew my ringland do a compression check.

[Joe]

with hard driving yes its normal to spray that much oil.

thats why a catch can/recirc'd system is necessary.

[wakotow]

thanks guys, since I have to pull my coilpacks out anyway seeing as they are swimming in oil now, I might at well do a compression check...also, I just have to find a check valve to do this catch can.

[wakotow]

Alright so I just hooked up a catch can, and got everything plumbed...crankcase to can, can through one way valve to intake manifold, so there is good suction on the crankcase, when I pull the dipstick or crack the oil cap, I hear sucking. However I'm smoking massive amounts of blue smoke...a little at idle, at super low throttle, haven't even bothered to do high throttle...it's enough that even with 10-15mph wind people just stare as I drive by (not in a good way)...so I'm guessing rings?

[Lonismos14]

Yes that is the reason you was getting so much oil. Might be rings or head but its one of them. I never cared enough to rip my ka apart to see which one it was.

[240cp]

I would be willing to bet atleast a dollar. It is the ringlands. Shortly after i supercharged my ka i ran into this problem. Pulled it apart and sure nuff. Facked. Good luck.

[eh?]

its because you have open breather on your valve cover

Which is allowing the oil that is being pushed out by the cracked ring lands to be sprayed onto the exhaust manifold.

You have broken ring lands.

[Joe]

its because you have open breather on your valve cover

Which is allowing the oil that is being pushed out by the cracked ring lands to be sprayed onto the exhaust manifold.

You have broken ring lands.

it is possible to have that kind of blowby with an open circulated system *UNDER HARD DRIVING*

now since this has happened under normal loads, yes you most likely have an internal failure to the engine.

[Carl H]

what kind of management/support were you running for that hx35?

[eh?]

I run the same style breather for years and the only time my engine bay ever looked like that is when the ringlands cracked. It will only push oil out the breather when boosted and it smoked only after being boosted.
Very little oil comes out the breather under any other condition there's baffling to prevent that.

[matafied]

plumbed...crankcase to can, can through one way valve to intake manifold, so there is good suction on the crankcase

I may be wrong but this only helps you when you intake is under vac, so as soon as your under boost, your in the same boat. I think you would have to add a vac from the intake side of you turbo, to accommodate your crankcase with vac under boost conditions. But it sounds like the damage is done idk

[Joe]

I run the same style breather for years and the only time my engine bay ever looked like that is when the ringlands cracked. It will only push oil out the breather when boosted and it smoked only after being boosted.
Very little oil comes out the breather under any other condition there's baffling to prevent that.

well i also ran that style for 1 day, at the track (road course) and never did it again after that because it sprayed oil

my ringlands, nor rings were damaged. motor was perfect.

[wakotow]

Well...compression came up:
1- 55
2 - 120
3 - 120
4 - 120
5 - 65
6 - 120

I was hoping that maybe it was valve seats, so I drove it to school today and prety much as soon as I give it a little bit of load it starts smoking, since I don't have my catch can routed to the exhaust it's just building up pressure in the crankcase when blowby happens and I don't have any intake vaccum, so I gave my catch can the ability to let gas out only when the pressure in the can exceeds the vacuum by the intake manifold and pretty much when I put it under load the cabin fills with smoke (lol had heater vent open) even in the driveway just revving it, I have a ton of blow by, and I also stomped on it a little bit, and it just felt dead...so ya...more than likely the rings/lands are gone...I still need to put a little oil in the cylinders and do a compression check that way and see what happens.

I'd like to plumb the vacuum side of the catch can to the exhaust, but that's another day's project.

I'm running nistune as engine management...ran way way way better than my safc ever did for me, I ran 10mph(up to 113) faster in the quarter just by eliminating the safc and tinkering for an afternoon or two with just the fuel maps. I pretty much am out of injector, I'm running 13~14psi on my hx35 w/ 370cc injectors at 4 bar

[Carl H]

sounds like too much timing for the stock ringlands then...14psi out of that turbo isnt much at all.
i am willing to bet the mixtures were pretty lean too.

[wakotow]

So you think the stock timing map was too much for it?

I was running 11.5 afr
here's my maps.
Fuel in Target Air/Fuel

Fuel in injector duty cycle, don't worry my cams kept me from hitting the super high (95+) cells, I usually was around 80-85(pushing it I know) I almost wonder if becuase I shifted my timing, I pulled more air and needed more fuel and they hit 100%...I don't know what happens if that happens but I'm sure it's not pretty...

Here's the timing map I was running when I blew oil the second time, the only diffrence is I shifted the load scales to account for more power becuase I was running slightly off the map.

Here's the map I ran when I blew oil the first time.

The highest load I remember seeing when I was tuning and logging was about 105ish usually more like 100 my air fuel was always pretty close within about .2-.3 max away from the average of the 4 cells (usually the bigger deviations happened when the 4 cells were significantly diffrent like in the boost transition areas).

[Carl H]

soooo you were running like 5* of timing on 14psi?
I'd say you were detonating from too little timing, i bet egts were stellar!
it still looks like alot of timing for the CR of the stock engine on the other parts of the map.

[wakotow]

I don't have an egt gauge...

I never thought about detonation from too little timing, I don't think I've even ever heard of that happening.

So since I obviously need to put new pistons and rings in it, should I bother with stock pistons and fresh rings? If I smooth out the timing map, and decrease the upper parts of the map to like mid teens(is that about right) then am I ok with the stock compression ratio? Or should I just suck it up and go with the 8.5:1 pistons?

Are the stock rods ok? I don't think I'll be making anywhere near 500 hp so do you think I'll have problems with breaking/bending rods?

[wakotow]

any insight, I know someone is running stock rods with forged pistons.

Is there anything else I need to do to the block/head while I have it all apart, I know some people do some oil drain things to the head, what exactly do you do? I tried to search but I don't know what tags to search for. I do also know about the crank collar, and I'll be doing that too.

[SullivanRacing06]

if you retain the factory rods have a machine shop install arp rod bolts, factoy rod bolts will stretch

[wakotow]

thanks!

[RB26needaparachute]

I have some new ARP 2000 3/8 1.5 for $45 shipped..they are leftover from me replacing rod bolts on 2 rods after slag messed my rb26 up and I could find a place that would only sell me 4 so I bought way more than I needed.. PM me if interested (not sure if the stock 25 takes this size I have Eagle rods)

[wakotow]

I can't figure out from searching...can I use these in my stock rods or not?

[eh?]

What kind of driving will you be doing?
If it's a DD with occasional track use the stock rods with ARP bolts
If it's full track you might as well get GTR rods or Eagles.

I have ARP rod bolts that work with RB25 rods for sale. RB26/eagle rod bolts won't work with rb25's.

[wakotow]

Ya my dreams are just to have a mean DD and go to the track once a month or so during the summer. So I guess arp bolts for me, should I try to get arp 2000 hardware or should I not bother?

[wakotow]

Well here's my progress so far.



Look, hatches can hold their own crap.


Then I started stripping the block








In the end I had 3 broken ringlands (1,2,5) the cylinder walls have no damage that I can feel with my hand...we'll see though

here's cylinder 1, and the piece that broke off (I had to pry it).


Cylinder 5 I cracked in 4 places.


I'll measure bore and taper on tuesday and then get to ordering stuff...

[Lonismos14]

Yay build that heffer so she wont blow again.

[Carl H]

i have a set of eagle rods nib i'll let go for less than sleazebay...pm if interested.