Major Engine/gearbox Failure

[russstuff]

Hi all

welcome to my nightmare.. in october 2009 i arrived in the country after working overseas for 18 months and figured i'd go out and reward myself with something special.

i bought a R33 gtst Rb30/25 with a dyno sheet that was showing 349.6rwkw

it had a slight big end knock and crappy syncros into 3rd & 4th. i sent the car in to have the big end noise fixed, the crank was crack tested and machined, the noise was due to oil starvation, so i had a high volume sump installed. they overhauled the box at the same time.

i had been complaining about lumpy gear changes from the day i got the car back, and i pretty much couldn't shift at all at high rpm.

they gave me all the excuses that made them not have to do anything and i fixed them. i changed the G/box oil to synthetic (Found chunks of metal in the old oil that was a week old) i complianed again so they said it was a faulty clutch slave and master cylinder so i changed them one at a time and before a month was up from getting the car back the big end noise came back.

took the car back and they pulled the engine out, and this is were it all goes tits up, something has been pushing the crank forward with so much force that the crank thrust face is destroyed (crank is now just a large paper weight)metal from the bearing has gone through the entire engine (we even found a bit of bearing stuck in the piston skirt)

i was hoping that someone out there has heard of a similar story or has an answer or probable cause? the mechanics are blaming me and i them, but i cant for the life of me figure out what caused it to do that so quickly (probably did less than 1000K's)

any feedback will be greatly appreciated

Thanx in advance.

Oh and does anyone know of any RB30/25 combos for sale or any suppliers of crate engines?

[lachlanw]

were you ever starting it in gear with your foot on the clutch. supras come with a switch so you cant crank it if your foot is on the clutch pedal

[R TUNE]

The RB30DET (rb25/30 turbo) is a custom eng set up useing the RB25DE ot DET head and a RB30E block (found in R31 skylines and VL's imo R31 as they might have had a better life.)

you can find spear eng from www.r31skylineclub.com in the forsale parts section, just look for some one who is wrecking a car.

depending on the condition of yours. just swap over the conrods and pistions from the old block to new if they have being up graded.

maby should look at a up graded oil pump to. im pretty shore all the RB oil pumps bolt on.

and i have heard of people makeing a custom line from the back of the head to the sump for oil return to help in this area.

also maby speek to some other workshops they might have an idea, casue if you had a gearbox or eng rebuilt it should be under sum sort of warnanty for workmanship.

hope this helps

[Swiper the Fox]

incorrect clutch bearing clearance is the main cause of premature thrust wear in a manual car...this also lines up with the symptoms of crunching the gearbox. The clutch bearing id say had preload on the pressure plate.

pm me if you need assistance with an engine.

[russstuff]

thanks for the input.

i never started it in gear and would always warm the car up till the oil pressure dropped down to 4.

i dont think there was preload on the thrust bearing, i had gone in to the mechanics the afternoon before getting a tune after the repairs with my concerns and they just adjusted the clutch pedal height which made no difference. i think if the thrust bearing was pushing on the pressure plate i would have had clutch slip which i assume would have been seen on my dyno sheet and would have smelt it..

also with the clutch sometimes at the lights when you didnt have your foot on the brake and you put your foot on the clutch wait a second or 2 then put it into first you would hear a bump and the car would slightly roll forward for a second.

i know 100% the system was bled perfectly.

as for the engine now... it had a collared crank and a june oil pump.

the pistons are all damaged scratching, rub marks and cant be reused.

plus the bores are rooted and it needs to be bored out so the pistons are a lost cause.

the oil pump now has no polished surfaces its all a mat gray from running with all the metal filings that were going through the motor.

the thrust face on the crank has a 1.5mm groove in its face.

the head wasn't pulled down when i was in the shop but i assume its suffered the same fate as the oil pump (TOMI+HKS cams) such a shame!

the place that did the work are not helping me 1 bit.

i was saying all the right things asking about warranty but the conversation ended with "build your case and tow your piece of s*#t car out of my workshop.

which is kinda why i'm here on the forum now.. trying to make sense of it all...

Edited February 9, 2010 by russstuff

[Sarumatix]

ouch.

[Swiper the Fox]

thanks for the input.

i never started it in gear and would always warm the car up till the oil pressure dropped down to 4.

i dont think there was preload on the thrust bearing, i had gone in to the mechanics the afternoon before getting a tune after the repairs with my concerns and they just adjusted the clutch pedal height which made no difference. i think if the thrust bearing was pushing on the pressure plate i would have had clutch slip which i assume would have been seen on my dyno sheet and would have smelt it..

also with the clutch sometimes at the lights when you didnt have your foot on the brake and you put your foot on the clutch wait a second or 2 then put it into first you would hear a bump and the car would slightly roll forward for a second.

i know 100% the system was bled perfectly.

as for the engine now... it had a collared crank and a june oil pump.

the pistons are all damaged scratching, rub marks and cant be reused.

plus the bores are rooted and it needs to be bored out so the pistons are a lost cause.

the oil pump now has no polished surfaces its all a mat gray from running with all the metal filings that were going through the motor.

the thrust face on the crank has a 1.5mm groove in its face.

the head wasn't pulled down when i was in the shop but i assume its suffered the same fate as the oil pump (TOMI+HKS cams) such a shame!

the place that did the work are not helping me 1 bit.

i was saying all the right things asking about warranty but the conversation ended with "build your case and tow your piece of s*#t car out of my workshop.

which is kinda why i'm here on the forum now.. trying to make sense of it all...

Russ...where are you located?

[russstuff]

i'm in the Sutherland shire Sydney

[russstuff]

Ok so the ball is now rolling.

an engineer has come and is doing a report for me. looking at the state of the engine internals i dont know how he could make heads or tales of it all... he's taken the box with him so hopefully when he pulls that down he finds whats had been pushing the crank forward.. it'd be fantastic if he could find that the mechanics had caused the problem! it'd be nice to recover some of the costs....

[lachlanw]

as for a crate engine you really cast go past RIPS