So I'm really trying to figure out what happened here I wasn't data-logging at the time was on the interstate doing about 70 down shifted into third to keep up with some guys that were speeding up at about 2627 PSI it kind of felt like my water injection kicked in and bought the engine for a second.

At that point I let out when to get back into it and noticed temperatures rising and steam from the hood so I flashed the people I was with to pull over went to the side of the road and had an exploded coolant line.

End up Towing the car home pulling it apart and here's what I found the pledge strap was missing also it's porcelain on the inside was missing one thing I've noticed between this failure and my last head gasket failure is both cylinders 2 & 3 had their combustion or fire Rings whatever they're called stretched is this from the head softening as I've heard people say they do or maybe just being warped I don't have a quality straight edge at the moment.

Timing comes in low about 12 degrees and Peak torque 30 PSI rising to about 17 at 8000 RPM the motor is 921 Wiseco 1400 series Pistons Eagle h-beam rods Crower valve train 264 272 cams running on E85 RC engineering 1600 CC injectors and right now only one walbro 255 pump rewired.

Any advice on who thinks what went wrong first is what I'm really looking for and also information on why my cylinders 2 & 3 are stretching the fire Rings the way they are I have a J&S stand-alone knock sensing system and it's been picking up no traces of knock whatsoever even though it is functioning correctly when tested.

The one thing I can say right now is that I do not have an intercooler because the one from my 2G setup will not fit on the 1G car so I'm spraying pure methanol pre turbo to cool the iat's opinions facts speculation it's all welcome let's discuss

That looks like the cylinder got really hot to me. My friend's car melted a ground strap like that when his timing was too far advanced for the amount of boost he was trying to run. It also went a little lean. The no intercooler thing is concerning unless you can vouch for the fact that your methanol injection was working 100% properly at all times. I'm not an expert on this type of setup so take what i've said with a grain of salt, of course.

Why your cylinders were stretching is beyond me as well. Has this only happened with the intercoolerless system or was it happening when you had an intercooler still?

You raise the same questions as I keep asking myself. I can onky ASSUME the meth injection was functioning 100 percent, but the cliff have been air in the lines or anything, some if the variables that led me to remove the system in favor of running e85 as a primary fuel years ago.

The last HG I pulled had ovaledthe fire rings on cylinders 2 and 3 as well, although ut wasnt "blown" it had begun to oressurize the cooling system which led me to pull the head and discover the stretching.

timimg was no more agressive than usual, but, with no FMIC I am getting terrible spiking of the boost when I go WOT, nothing I do seams to eliminate it, I think it'd just a combo of Incredibly short intake piping and a turbo that spools very fast for its size (is a 58mm 8 blade hx40 comp, with an hx35 turbine in a t3 .68 ar housing I machined to acccept the holset CHRA.

I JUST DONT GET WHY THE PLUG DROPPED ITS CERAMIC AROUND THE ELECTRODE! !! That's Tyr most puzzling part IMO.

I'm guessing it's a freak occurance based on a combination of boost spike, no FMIC, and high IATs with the methanolcoming in too little and too late, with a timing curve that was aggressive but had previousely proven daily reliable when the setup was in its previouse state and didnt spike.

I'm akways up for further speculation, thoughts and discussion though, so feeel free anyone who cares to comment.

The porcelin will fail that way from the shock wave of detonation that must have happened to cause the rest of the damage, you might be smart to pull the rod bearings and check them out at this point, the number two cylinder always seems to be the most prone to knock issues on the 4g63 which is why the knock sensor is behind that hole in particular, if your running E85 maybe your injectors in that cylinder are clogging up with black goo.

I suspected a leaning cylinder, so I built a rig to check injector flow and to my surprise they we all flowing evenly within the accuracy range of my test rig, even when varying the pressure I was pleasantly surprised at how well they were flowing, as I had almost cinvinced mysekf #2 had gone lean because of the famous e85 "goo" but I dying even have any signs of that after almost 10 years of dedicated ethanol use.


one big thing is I just filled the tank at a station id never been to before, so their blend may have been far from what my tune was built around (probably never know)

I havent had HG issues in years of daiky 30psi poundings until I moved to WV from NE, I'm thinking I overlooked an issue I should have been leary of from day one, and thats the actual ethanol content of the "e85" I'm being sold here at speedway gas station, compared to what I ran at every fill previousely from BP in nebraska.

I am definitely getting a FMIC back in the car ASAP, am going to lowermy timing 5° get back to a stable tune and increase the sensitivity of my J&S stand alone knock sensor system. And see whatit shows me .... it can show each cylinders timing pull individually

While typing this im smacking myself in the head about the relation of a new fuel source and two HG failures, and why I blindly assumed I was getting as good a fuel as I was use to.

I really need to find a FMIC core I can fit behind the 1g front end, ive tried tilting to and angle and everything else but to fit the core I previousely ran I found today I woukd even habe to reemove my front turn signals, hood latch and it would still be almost 2 inches lower than the front radiator support.

We shall see I guess, I just hope a carefull repair and cautious aproach at retuning with the e local e85 will yield a reliable engine andthat theres no other underlying issue haunting me in there

Not necessarily related but if you want short intercooler piping and good charge cooling you could go through the "trouble" of installing a water to air intercooler like I did on my car. It really works great.

That's way to much timing at peak torque for no intercooler.

I never had issues with any of my hotpipe setups. The big difference is my injection system was actually part of the fuel system. I ran two in the pipe and one in each manifold runner. 10 injectors total.

That sure looks like detonation to me. Maybe a little aggressive on the timing but, I am willing to bet your injection system was not working correctly and that is where the damage happened.

In your instance I would replace the methanol with straight water and even add two more nozzles (3 total). Rely on the fuel system for fueling the motor. Rely on the injection system for cooking the motor. Not both fueling and cooling. I have seen a lot of failures with folks relying on the methonal. Those who make the switch or stick with water only don't have the issues.

Our land speed car had major issues running fuel only at the salt flats. Air/air intercooler never worked well and i could never lean on the car for more than about 600hp down the salt. He swapped to one China water/air and same result even with 15 gallons ofnice water. Put in a second China water/air and no changes. We added two water nozzles pre-turbo and two pre-throttle body. I could finally lean on the car and it made 830hp on the dyno at low boost just by simply leaning it out(we had to use rich conditions to cool the motor and keep knock away) and add a few degrees I timing. Needless to say it hauled ass the next trip to the salt and he was finally able to stand on it and get a personal best.

I will always be a huge supporter of the hotpipe. You just have to set it up correctly and be realistic with your expectations. I have a road race galant I built with a turbo about the same size as your that he tracks frequently without issue. The car uses 6 950cc injectors. It makes in the low 400hp range. When this car had the 16g and the hotpipe it was making peak torque at 3200rpm. Fastest spoiling car I have ever seen.

Hotpipes for lyfe yo.

On that note, there is more to tuning than a knock system. I tuned a turbocharged 600cc Yamaha land speed bike. We were using a universal AEM series 2 box to tune it. There was no knock sensor. We had a single collective wideband and individual egt sensors for the basis of our tuning. There was plenty of other sensors a used in both AEM and the racepak but, that is how we based things. The motorcycle made 260hp on the dyno. Nasty for a 600cc bike and a t25 based turbo.

My point is people need to do more research on how to keep forced induction engines together and what are smart and sensible ways to make power. Relying on a knock sensor and a single collective wideband leaves so much on the table and there is so much more data available as well as knowledge. That little 5v sensor is not the end all be all to tuning.

^^ My friend has one of your old hot pipe setups. His name's Eric and he lives here in Austin, TX where I live.

+1 on knock sensor. The guy i call when i have questions about stuff despises tuning on a knock sensor. It's because knock is a sign that stuff has already gone south. If you tune your car to the point of where it gets slower and then back it off to where it was faster then you tuned it properly and it will never see that point of knock unless something else has failed.

One of the pitfalls of E-85 is that it skips knocking and jumps right to full on detonation! There are more than a few things that can cause detonation like this, it is more of a combination of things gone wrong, coolant temps, spark plug heat range, igniton advance, fuel quality, fuel quantity are just a few on the short list of things to consider.

motomattx said:

One of the pitfalls of E-85 is that it skips knocking and jumps right to full on detonation! There are more than a few things that can cause detonation like this, it is more of a combination of things gone wrong, coolant temps, spark plug heat range, igniton advance, fuel quality, fuel quantity are just a few on the short list of things to consider.

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Agree right here. 12 degrees at peak torque?!? Yikes. I dont even think an FMIC would have saved the head from melting.

12* at peak torque doesn't necessarily point to a problem. It depends very heavily on the setup and how much power the car is running. 12* on a small 16g is like yawn..... but on something running 60psi it might be a huge problem. I remember reading somewhere that kiggly's car was using 8* or something on the top end.... which is what the timing had to be to be safe on the power level his motor was making.

bling5tatus said:

12* at peak torque doesn't necessarily point to a problem. It depends very heavily on the setup and how much power the car is running. 12* on a small 16g is like yawn..... but on something running 60psi it might be a huge problem. I remember reading somewhere that kiggly's car was using 8* or something on the top end.... which is what the timing had to be to be safe on the power level his motor was making.

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I said peak torque, not peak RPM. Peak torque is where highest cylinder pressure is generated. It might be my opinion, but 12 degrees at peak torque is much for even a 16g.

motomattx said:

One of the pitfalls of E-85 is that it skips knocking and jumps right to full on detonation! There are more than a few things that can cause detonation like this, it is more of a combination of things gone wrong, coolant temps, spark plug heat range, igniton advance, fuel quality, fuel quantity are just a few on the short list of things to consider.

Click to expand...

Going to have to disagree with this. Knock was showing up on my logger. I'm on full e85. I swapped in a fresh plug, did a pull, sure enough, speckles. So yes, it was registering before the motor blew itself into oblivion, and I was able to address it via adding more fuel. So yes, you can see knock with e85.

Kapok6 said:

Going to have to disagree with this. Knock was showing up on my logger. I'm on full e85. I swapped in a fresh plug, did a pull, sure enough, speckles. So yes, it was registering before the motor blew itself into oblivion, and I was able to address it via adding more fuel. So yes, you can see knock with e85.

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I guess I will say that E-85 doesnt have the knock propensity that other fuel does, is what I was getting at and I assume that anyone running it or has researched it knows that, maybe I should have not assumed that we all know that, that engine was not knocking though, it went instantly do full on detonation and for the sake of this thread thats what I was getting at.

How do we know the engine was not knocking? He said he wasn't datalogging at the time of the failure.

Correct, i was not logging at the time of the failure, but i had been running this same combo for many years with the exception of having a very large FMIC. Which was to bog to mount on the 1g car. I dialed timing back a few degrees to compensate, but I'm still leaning towards the theory that i got a bad batch of e85 (maybe e50) as the engine had been fine with the same tune for many many pulls, but grenaded tight after filling up at a new station.
I'm no newb to tuning and for years i never even ran a knock sensor, but i am a fan of the j&s system so when i had a chance to get one, i did, and ran it proudly.

The car is going backtogether this week, but with a FMIC installed this time. We shall see how things hold up from rod point on i guess