Party at my place Saturday. Beer and garage talk starting at 1:30 or so. Beer provided in exchange for opinions as we teardown my engine. Searing of fat and protein will happen about 5:00

Phone (253) 851-6447

Directions:

After crossing the Narrows bridge from Tacoma
Take the exit toward WOLLOCHET / PT. FOSDICK. 0.3 miles
Turn LEFT onto 24TH ST NW. 0.1 miles
Turn LEFT onto JAHN AVE NW. 0.1 miles
Turn RIGHT onto STONE DR NW0. 1.0 miles
STONE DR NW becomes 34TH AVE NW. 0.4 miles
34TH AVE NW becomes 25TH ST NW. 0.1 miles
25TH ST NW becomes EAST BAY DR NW. .2 miles
Turn RIGHT onto 38TH ST NW. 0.1 miles
Turn LEFT at first T on private road
Turn RIGHT at first Y
Turn LEFT at second Y


Maps

at the picnic point turn (you'll be on east bay dr) you guys will see an old store/gas station that's now a coffee shop on your left. take the next immediate right up the long driveway. you should tie a balloon on the mailboxes dave. easy to miss for first timers. allow yourselves time for the traffic mess at the bridge that may or may not be happening.

k

Do we need to RSVP? If so, consider me RSVP'd.

Also, are you gonna have valet parking up there? Not sure I have 100% confidence of the car NOT rolling if I'm parked on that driveway of yours. I guess I can always tie it off to a tree.

WE got logs for chock blocks

Dave

If any of you north-enders have an extra seat and would be willing to put up with me, I'd love to hitch a ride.

See you there.
Chris

So So Sorry I will be out of town. Havent seen ya all in long time.

DAMN!

Got the tri tip steak marinating. Going to take the heads off, torque the cylinders down and measure for roundness

Dave, I have a cylinder bore and taper gauge I can drop off if you need it. Larry

Larry

I have a cylinder bore gauge already thanks. I sure could use your expertise. I hope you can make it.

Dave

Do you think they are outta round? WTF that would be weird..

Monique wants to bring some kind of dish, so what shall we bring??? Jamacian Jerk Chicken? A salad? chips?
They will be enough dips around....

Salad would be great. Thanks We'll go over the engine tomorrow.

Dave

HEADS UP!! from about the union exit on west bound on hwy16, is a *contruction zone* so the fines are double. wsp works it. mind your speed. don't gaze at the new bridge as you drive across. watch the road.

k

Hoping to get there mid afternoon. I don't have much expertise, but I'll bring an opinion, just in case we run short. See ya tomorrow.

Finishing up a Suby turbo remap in the AM be there in the afternoon, any tool requests before I leave the shop? Larry

All opinions welcome. I think I have the tools covered.

Dave

Remove the rings from the piston from that cyl.
Set the the ring into the bore.....equal depth all around the circumfrence.
Shine a light from below...note any gaps.
You saved rings from one of the previous contrempts, right? Try them also

I don't think torque plates will tell you anything unless you can get the whole works up to 250-300 deg, even then there are a lot of variables which could skew your results.

Don't bother to reply, I won't be here.

Looks like I spoke too soon. A family thing has come up that I have to attend to. doesn't look like I can make it.

Enjoy.

Rand I can offer one?

work interferred. On my way now. See you all shortly.

Thank you for the great grub and letting us see your workshop. Good luck on the new build!
Chris

Thanks Dave! great BBQ and beer..I offered my best guess as to what is going on.

Chin up with a little more it will run again

Thanks Rich. Mucho appreciated. I missed out - had a family gig in Monroe.

Good luck Dave. Hoping the next get-together will be to celebrate that beast running in all it's glory!

Ok since I had the camera I was elected to post the findings.

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

prior to tear down plug color was good (not to lean) but leak down #'s were BAD.
Nothing obvious after removal of heads.

Cylnders come off and the cyl walls tell a diff. story
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment Click to view attachment
Time for a tear down ...again!
But aside from the miserable damp weather and unfortunate findings
good company food and a few beers.......

Hard to tell from the picture... Is that a broken ring or did the whole skirt break???

ring land

It was the ring lands that broke - ring flutter is highly causitive to this - -are you running a total seal zero-gap second ring??

that's the lower ring land for the upper comp ring. the ring was intact. it came off after the ring was removed.

k

Top compression will not do that. Top compression flutter with tear off the top of the piston - That is second compression problem - either flutter or the ring land was milled too wide for the ring in the first place.(which caused the flutter)....IMHO of course

Further work today. Cylinders 1,3 and 4 all had broken ring lands. All on the bottom of the pistons. They were still altogether and basically fell apart in my hands.

I split the case and looked at the bearings, crank and cam and I think they are alright. I found 1 small metal flake on the bottom of the sump. I had it set up full flow and was using a Mobil 1 filter. I suppose there'll be plenty of metal in there.

At any rate, I'm still pondering what to do.

Dave

Lean, Lean Lean!!!!!!!!! At some point that was the cause of the broken land! It may not be lean right now, but it has been! The color of the valves also suggest this-

The only KB piston I have ever seen do this was detonating like crazy prior to the event, BUT generally detonation causes this on the spark plug side of the piston, not the under side. My guess would be that the top ring became damaged and was allowing some combustion past it, the ring land can't take that very well at all. Yet again Dave breaks something better than anyone else- even us!

FYI- we have now used over 1,000 sets of these pistons (in complete engines and kits) and have never QC'd one piston that had a faulty ring land, out of those 1K sets. I have the sheet where I personally inspected these parts that Dave used just in case his bad luck came back to haunt us all again.

Dave, you know the routine- box it all up and disperse parts to Charles and myself, we'll take care of you again. I can match you up a piston ASAP and Charles can get the plating repaired.

Some people with a nasty sense of humor are getting a real kick out of Dave having all these problems with these cylinders and my parts and it's starting to really piss me off. We have supported Dave throughout this excursion better than most companies would ever dream of- this latest hiccup will easily put LN Engineering and myself over the 5K$ point in component replacement, shipping and the like. Laugh all you want ass holes, we ARE supporting the products that we have offered to Dave and we are doing so without him demanding such replacements- he shouldn't have to!

Dave has been great to deal with on this and while some of you get a kick out of seeing our stuff fail, don't wish the bad luck on a great guy like Dave any longer- spit in our faces personally, don't catch him in the cross fire.

Dave, I want that engine at my shop. (He didn't have to ASK for that either)

Jake

You are right about the detonation. I told everyone I had a pretty good ping a hill on the last drive. Also, the land between the top ring and the 2nd ring on #4 looks like it got real hot. I tuned it earlier when I had the oil heading back into the intake. When I replumbed it to a puke bottle it didn't have the oil to burn. Truth is I really don't have a clue when it busted except after that pinging it died the next time I put the clutch in and it never fired again.

I'm going to sleep on it and we can arrange a phone call. I hate giving up about as much as I hate anything but, I'm pretty discouraged. I'll probably crate it up and send it to you. I may hold it until you get the engine for TV done cause I don't want you to catch what I got.

Yeah, let us get the TV show out of the way and then I'll have some of MY personal time at the shop freed up to work on the issues. (plus I don't want any contagious virus around here that might infect an engine thats going to try to be blown up on prime time nationwide TV in front of 5+ million people)

Based on the color of the exhaust valves (as best I can see in the pics) I would say the EGT was getting up at some point, if not most of the time. A quick Len inspection on the heads will verify this as EGT elevations are very apparent. Can you post a pic of each spark plug's porcelin area as close up as possible???

What I want to happen would be getting the parts to Charles so he can get the cylinders repaired and to me so they won't slow us down on this end. I'd want to build and dyno the engine with carbs first and then have you arrive with the MS set up and gear to tune the engine in the new lab. In the lab I can monitor EVERY aspect of the engine and log it for future replays.

Remember:
Even a rich running engine can detonate with too much ignition advance!!! The LE 200 heads are VERY efficient, much more so than the 7440 heads you previously had, due to this one can expect lower than typical ignition advance values.

Patch up your back up engine (I'll help with parts to do this) and run it while we put a rope around this current issue and tie it up like the greased pig it has turned out to be. It won't leave my shop without 20+ hours of run time on it and I might use it for the ignition shootout since it'll be here anyway and could use all the run time we can give it.

It won't kick my ass. But I can't touch it till after we get the TV taping behind us.

Jake, you are way more than fair. I got enough stuff around to get Old Smokie up and running but thanks for the offer.

Dave

When I got to the pictures I let out a huge "Oh my God"
Wife came around the corner asking "what what"?

I was really hit in the gut. I feel for you Dave and just don't have words for what you have experienced.

I think I remember you are data logging. Didn't you have any indications that your EFI was going to screw you? AGAIN.

I have just made up my mind for my new "Joe Engine" Long live the CARBURATOR.

I guess because I understand them better

spell carb right if you want it to live long
CARBURETOR

Thats how they spel it in Alabama......just like it sounds

sorry i didn't make it down....
i didn't get done in the store till it was to late....

Here's the plug pics Jake.

cyl #1

cyl #2

cyl #3

cyl #4

Dave, I need closer pics... Get them as close to the porcelin as possible... I'm looking for magnifying glass results...

Dave,
I am so sorry to hear about this. What did you have your compression set at?

Here you go Jake, plug 1

Plug 2

Thats too bad Steve, we all missed you. I think Dave kept two Buds on ice for ya and saved you a piece of the cake he made.

Wow, those are big spark plugs!!! lean burning too.

Plug 3

Plug 4