Oil Pump Locked up.. Eagle rod cap is now PURPLE!! after only 300 miles of use :-(

[dacowgod]

So ya... I just rebuilt my engine...for the 2nd time was with Ross pistons, eagle rods and the 6 bolt crank ..walked... yay.. so round 2 I went all out got some 9.0:1 wisecos eagle rods and bc 280 cams and meth injection...got everything tuned awesome.. 28 lbs of boost on a 60-1 w/ 21 degrees timing advance and 12:0:1 a/f.. it was rockin... and 300 miles later timing belt snaps... after investgation i found a locked up brand new top line oil pump to be the problem.... Oh well i expect the worst, valves through pistons and spun rod bearings...so i tear down... To my surprise.. NO BENT VALVES... woohoo i couldnt get so lucky ... i get to the bottom end and the first thing i notice is #1 rod cap is PURPLE from heat..... not good... so i pop off the caps and sure enough bearing is starting to show signs of failure (flaking the top silver layer) ... and the bearings do not fit in the rod quite right...

SOOOO anyways I suppose I am to a question.... Is there a way to test the rod to find out if it is safe for re-use or should i do the obvious safe thing and replace the rod all together... REALLY want to be back together by next wednesday (Race day) so obviously if i have to wait on 1 stupid eagle rod I'm gonna be pretty upset ...

I buy all my jazz from slowboy so maybe they can help me out of this one quick, we will see oh well thanks for reading hope theres a safe way to test that rod, but my hopes dont lead to far...

 

[ShawnsGarage]

If the bearing doesn't fit into the rod right i wouldn't use it. Risk of ruining your crank if you haven't already. Well if it was me i wouldn't reuse it just because its purple.

 

[interex]

My brother got reimbursed almost $2000 from Topline Auto for a brand new oil pump that seized up and destroyed an engine he built. I think I'd contact Topline about that and tell them they need to do something about it.

 

[JusMX141]

Any good machine shop can undercut the crank and bore the rod out to make sure it is perfect again and can accept over/undersized bearings. I've seen cranks on V8 cars cut as far as .040" under and rods .040" over, meaning the rod bearing would have to be much thicker than stock.

I would squeeze everything you can out of Topline. There might be a quality control issue, or possibly they decided to cheapen up one of the pump's components by buying that part from China. Either way, they should pay.

At my workplace, this past summer we saw an unusual amount of brand new Dayco Industrial V-Belts breaking. We'd sell the belt, the customer would go home and install it on their tractor, saw, blower, whatever....and within a WEEK the belt would just break. It didn't pull apart with strands- just a clean, smooth break.

I researched the country of origin and found that sometime last summer (just before this started happening) Dayco switched their Industrial belt manufacturing from USA to China. The price didn't change....a $10 belt still costs $10....but the quality has dropped SIGNIFICANTLY over the USA-made belts.

It's B.S.- each one of those belts that break I send back defective so the company can see they made a wrong choice by moving production to China. I hope they give away 3 million free belts a year for pulling such a dumb move....it'll make all the money they saved by selling out to China seem like a drop in the bucket.