Rolla1990

*UPDATE*

I spent last friday taking the head and pan off, and pulled the pistons, and number three had a chunk of the ring lands missing! All the other pistons and all the cylinder walls were completely fine, so I honed them and now I'm waiting for my piston rings which should be here on Friday morning, so by Friday afternoon I should be on the road again.

I did check the plugs, and they were all fine, even number three. The reason the engine was blowing oil all over hell was because the pressure from the blowby in cylinder 3 was pressurizing the entire crankcase! I'm surprised I didn't blow the head gasket or hurt anything else, everything is absolutely fine.

Another thing that I will do with this motor, since I basically have an extra engine including the complete head is that I will be removing about 6cc's of material from each combustion chamber with a grinder in order to lower my compression from 9.5:1 to about 8.5:1. If that works, then I will definately be able to run 12 psi safely, and if it doesn't, then all I have to do is spend 6 hours swapping heads, either way, it's worth the risk.

I love all the support you guys are giving me, especially since I am a non-honda guy, and have a very uncommon engine to modify! Thanks to all of you!

Hopefully I will be dynoing and tuning my car in the next two weeks, so I'll have some numbers for all of you that are curious.

texlurch

When you go back together, double check the ring gap. You need to open it up some for the boost. Did the ring lands look melted, or broken? Also, was the ring in pieces? Normally, if you melt the ring land, the ring will stay intact. If there is any part of the land left, measure the width, and compare it to a good piston. That will tell you if detonation beat it down and pinched the rings, or if the rings butted and broke the land. Two different problems.

Rolla1990

Well, I think detonation caused the piston failure, but I'm not sure. The spark plugs didn't show any signs of detonation, and the ring lands didn't have any signs of melting. I didn't lose any power or hear any pinging during my one day of turbocharged fun. When this motor goes together today, I'll be sure to make the ring gap a little on the high side, I'm reading up more about piston ring butting right now, and the more I learn, the more I think that might be what caused my problems.

Turbo_EL

Rolla, what engine are you running 4/7A-FE. I had a turbo corolla two years ago and ran 12psi and 14 psi at the track for over 25,000km without any problems. My management was ghetto FMU and an inline pump. Car ran a 14.3 @ 99mph with the 3 speed auto. Tranny didn't like the boost that much though. Shift kit help, but then 15 psi sent the nuber 3 rod through the block and rad...now I'm boosting a Acura.

http://groups.msn.com/GoodStTurbos/h...nw?albumlist=2

Rolla1990

Yeah, I'm actually thinking about going back to using an FMU because it's cheap and works awesome, but they do suck because they're not tunable. If I use one, I'll use a 10:1 FMU instead of a 12:1 because I think I was running rich all the time, but it was safe for sure!

What ratio FMU did you use on your setup? Just curious. I remember seeing your car online before, its awesome, too bad about blowing it up!

Oh yeah, my car has a 4a-fe in it.