Why does this motor keep spinning bearings?

[Clinical]

Okay to start off this is actually over my friend's civic..

I know im out of line here talking about a civic but either way the general way a motor works doesn't differ a whole lot.. Just trying to get some idea on whats going on with my buddy's car.

It's a d16z6 sohc turbo build. Vitara pistons/tuner toy rods/built head.. Made 303whp over a year ago on initial build, and that build lasted 12,000 miles getting beat on nonstop. It ran 11.6 best pass to date. running e85

Anyways, it spun a rod back in August. So it was down for a bit, he went ahead and built his head and got some other new things like an intake mani. Got it all back together in October. Initial startup all went good. We found out his wideband sensor has always been bad, and his car was most likely running lean the entire time on the old build. So we spent the day tuning (using hondata s300) and by the end of the day we were doing some full pulls. It wasn't feelin too bad. two days later, some more tuning it starts knocking again, the same bearing/rod as before.

Air/fuel was great at around 12.2-12.5 all the way through. We were running very low timing.

So he took it to the machine shop and they said it'd work with just polishing/machining the rod and using an oversized bearing.

So now about a week and a half ago he got the car back together. First start up was great again. We went out and did some retuning since he had lowered his base fuel pressure. He was running mostly off his wastegate spring at only 10psi down from 22psi. So we tuned that for awhile. Car never saw 20+ pounds until yesterday. It did good this last week or so, seemed like it was holding up solid.

Last night he finally raises the boost back to 22. We went and we were about to go out to do a tuning pull and I just checked his temp on the laptop and as soon as I checked it, it started rocketing up.. So we turned it off and it instantly dropped. Weird. Well we did two pulls, the car felt great. Made a few changes tuning-wise. We headed back into town and met up with a friend, then on our way back out I heard something and he did too.. it sounded like his tranny at first.

We pulled off, and sure enough,knocking again. We started driving to his house and all of a sudden there was a bang, the car died. The motor completely seized up and would just click when trying to start. Sitting on the highway for about 20 minutes and finally it started, knocking like a beast.

So this is a long post but I'm trying to give all the info I can.. Something has to be going wrong here, the tuning is good. Timing is at only 10 degrees down from 20, a/f is staying great.

I'm leaning towards the machine shop just doing shoddy work.. I've always said I'd never take my motor there, they're the only place in town though.. but they are all v8's.

 

[my dreamt dsm]

Is your friend that guy on youtube whom keep on blowing his single cam turbo motor. Suspect that its the shop not knowing what they are doing! Just curious. And I have a buddy with a d16z t25. Pretty fun to drive! I once had a single cam n/a doing high 14's, pretty fun also.
I say get a different motor and go from there. There must be something the shop isn't finding.

 

[motomattxxx]

The "motoman" method as they call it is complete bs, first of all YOUR not breaking in a "new" car or motorcycle engine as they are broken in on a dyno right in the factory before they pass the final ok to get shipped, how do these people think the factory can send out a new motor vehicle without running the engine on a dyno first to confirm proper power output and no engine sounds, lack of oil pressure, pushing coolant, etc? As a tech, I think that I am in a better position than just about anyone to make a statement on proper break in, unless it comes from an overwhelming number of fellow techs that have been in the industry for over a decade then I tend to not give it any credance.

 

[master jared]

well 2 hondas 5 motors and they still all ran the same slow and bad