The car didn't blow up because it was driven hard. The car blew up because the AEM tune was bad. The drive train in the EVO is very strong and can take a lot abuse before something breaks.

 

Amen.

 

I concur 100%

This customer liked to race a lot and had been to the track on dozens of events

He never had any problems with his stock ecu reflash - which I tuned and he went a best of 12.2 I believe on a pump gas tune with pump gas

He probably could have continued to drive that way a thousand times down the track as it was a conservative tune with plenty of saftey margin built in

It was the AEM with a much more agressive tune - (making much more power) - which resulted in the detonation condition.

DETONATION = DEATH in AEM tune motors - the stock pistons and rods can not take any prolonged DETONATION. The stock ecu is VERY adept at hearing knock and pulling timing so if your tune is not overly agressive the ecu can react and pull enough timing and add fuel to respond to the detonation.

The AEM has a knock feature but it is very simple and generic compared to the stock system and requires care in setting up properly to have a good chance to save the motor when racing.

My Point - there are plenty of evos which run up and down the track over and over again in the high 11's with no problems save changing the occassional clutch

There are also plenty of evos with blown up engines that never went 11's

As Mr. Ivey points out - the difference in many cases comes down to setting up a package which is selected and tuned by someone with a background of success in doing this - for example the Buschur Racing Stage 4 - of which I have heard nothing but great success stories and happy experiences and lots of great track times

 

I say that the car should have been tuned properly and that definitely got the ball rolling towards the blown motor direction. BUT, if i was having problems with my AEM i'd be the first one to have it checked out by someone else. 2ND, I think anyone running race gas, meth injection, or blends involving either (50/50 meth, water, race gas/pump gas) should have a wideband in their car right on the column. So they can see what the AFR is at all time. I mean, it may not save you if you run out of meth or your pump fails, but it could and if your car is running lean in 1st, 2nd and 3rd down the track, then you know not to stand on it in 4th gear.

Even though the tuner may have put a bad tune in the car, It really is the end users obligation to make sure the car is running right.

I have a friend/customer who was tuned by (unnamed by wellknown/trusted) vendor/tuner and at the time of the tune they were trying to beat another tuners numbers. Well they put a tune in the car that was extremely aggressive and he ended up cracking a piston within 10 days. this was stock turbo with methanol and cams amking 370+ whp. It shouldnt have blown. But they took pretty good care of him in building his motor and i got him pistons/rods for extremely cheap. It all worked out.

BTW, if anyone here wants to know the tuner, its not hard, just go to the Drag racing forum and read PHILLY'S thread. he mentions the tuner of the AEM in his first post

 

HI PHILLY,
I know the feeling. if this is your first blown engine then it hurts a lot.
Next engine and have an EGT gauge installed. Will help measuring the degrees of exhaust temp.
Good luck.

EVO FOREVER

 

Here's a different angle.....how do you know that your previous tune wasn't causing bad things to happen? If your car didn't see any benefits to the additional race gas it could already have been on a downhill slide.

If it was the stand alone tune....You've got to be kicking yourself in the *** for not listening to all those people who told you your tune was bad. Is the shop that tuned your car helping you out at all?

Cash cannot be too tight if you are going with an even bigger and better setup. Sounds like you are gonna have even bigger problems with the wife because its obvious you aren't gonna stop racing. Why would you do that?

In the end this is why I'm happy with a daily driven 12 second car. No broken parts no expensive repairs. Trying to go muscle-car speeds in a straight line in a car made to turn is probably a bad idea right from the get go! Good luck on your quest for each tenth of a second!

 

Yea your right, mid 11's is the same as taking Grandma to church with a apple pie in her lap

Yes, I do agree that the car might not of been tuned right, but when we modify them, beat on them, and then when some break nobody should be surprised! All manufacturing parts fall under a bell curve for strength, tolerances and such, when a weaker part is pushed hard it is more likely to fail. A part that may have been good for millions of cycles under x load may only make it 1000 cycles under 3x load.

All I am saying is if you modify the car you should at least know the grenade fairy might come to visit.

 

Al I don't agree with you trying to tie detonation to any particular ecu. AEM flash motec it's all the same. Cars have been blown up on reflashes also, just to make that clear.
I think it's the guy tuning the car that's the issue, not the computer that only does as it's told.
The aem is very very good at controlling detonation if setup correctly.

Sean

 

There is a ton of turmoil in the EVO tuning world right now. It is surprising to me how much backstabbing, crap talking and trouble making is going on, it is worse than it has ever been right now than in the 16 years of us building DSM's/EVO's.

There are guys trying to convince you all of one thing and then calling other shops and trying to convince actual shops of other things. It's getting pretty funny to watch.

If I **** in someones cereal with what I am going to say, so be it.

I was forwarded the maps from PhillyEVO's car and asked to look at them. Philly did not send them here directly.

I looked at them and was confused. The map itself looked pretty good to me BUT the timing portion looked like a race gas map BUT the knock control was turned on and the knock threshold was set very low. So what I saw was what appeared to be a race gas map (ignition map) but the knock control was turned on and set very low like a pump gas map. My comments to the guy that actually forwarded me the map was what I just typed. I said that if it was a race gas map it wouldn't run very good because of the knock threshold being set so low and if it was a pump gas map it would really run like **** as it would always be on the knock limit and correcting. Anything further I didn't say or judge how it was done.

I then saw this post and contact PhillyEVO and asked him to send me the datalogs if he had them so I could see what it looked like.

Here is where I see the problem. He sent over about 8 logs. No 02 logging and no knock logging. So the logs are basically useless, telling me nothing but boost and rpm. As a side note there were no mis-shifts in the 6 logs he sent me, so this wasn't from an over-rev from what I can tell.

In my opinion there should have been at a minimum a short cut screen set up for him so he could get some proper logs. The other problem is, Philly EVO says he was charged for an AEM EMS with Uego, but does not have a wide band in the car, so there is no way to know what the AFR's were.

Then on the other hand the car did not melt a piston or a spark plug off, so I have to go back to my thought that the tune may not be the culprit as if the timing/AFR's were off then the first thing to usually go is an electrode or piston.

As of now I can't point my finger specifically at the tuner doing anything wrong, nobody can as the datalogs don't exist to back up ANY other tuner up.

This could very well be a case of just crappy luck, without seeing more of the bottom end/pistons it is hard to say.

There were definetely some things that should have been done differently with this particular car, like a properly set up datalogger and teaching the customer to do it and a wideband being installed. As far as the tune..........the world may never know.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

Ok one I never listen to my wife, I do but if I want something I buy it and deal with her later.

Al I ran a 12.09 12.07 12.06 on 93 0ct on your flash never had a problem in 2 years.

The only 2 problems I had with my car was that broke were a new Exedy single clutch but was replaced by exedy and upgarde Thank you exedy. and my stock transfer case went and I never had a problem again Jon from TRE builds great TC. Thanks Jon

Yes the tuner that tuned my car is in touch with me on a daily base and has offered to help I am not here to bash no one.....

 

This is a interesting post..........one thing jumped out for me. Bushur is right about most shops don't spend the time to show customers how to properly take advantage of the AEM / and or it's useful features..........I know a few people who have AEMs in the car,but don't own a laptop.Everyone has different situations with standalones etc. Luckily for myself I was shown the ropes of this stuff from John Meany for those who know who he is.

 

My point in this whole thing is, there is no detonation damage to the plug or piston as David stated.

I spoke to my friend who is a very good engine builder and he agrees that if the piston is not broken from detonation then there is no way detonation can kill a rod bearing. Really the only way to kill a rod bearing is to generate so much heat in the rod that the bearing sticks to the crank.
I will go back to what I said originally. I think the lack of rev limit and the flat shift caused a spike in RPM on a shift that caused the rod bolts to stretch. Ultimately this caused too much clearance in that rod so it started to beat up the bearing.
This excess clearance in the bearing allowed the piston to hit the valve and cause the valve to be bent. If not the over rev floated the valve and the valve touched the piston. It does not take much to destroy the hallow exhuast valves and IIRC there are no reliefs on the exhuast valves.

We are talking about a stock bottom end in a car with 40,000 hard miles. We have seen far less break pistons on this forum. Any real detonation will take out a ring land almost instantly because the stock pistons are not that strong. Mitsubishi's attempt to anodize the ring lands still does not offer enough strength to the piston given the materials used.

Also, I was at E-town and as far as I know the car was running on a Race Gas map with Alky. I don't know how much gas was in the car but 2 gallons of C-16 is only deluting what was in there so you are still short on octane as it is.

 

I looked at the 6 logs before this car broke, there was NO over rev in any of the logs, so that theory is out the window.

I also do not agree that a rod bearing can't be beat out of an engine from detonation without first damaging a piston/ring. It can for sure be done. That is what makes the logs Philly has worthless, there is no AFR or knock readings on them.

David Buschur
www.buschurracing.com

 

David dont u agree that the tuner should have made aware to PHilly on how to use the datalogging feature and also on the cal, setup the internal logger so if such events occur - the evidence will be on the logs.

I personally always have a laptop in my car and am constantly logging the main parameters (engine speed, engine load, airtemp, ign timing, afr, knock volts #1, and other essentials).

I remember you made a post a while back about Knock Control and how important it is. You also explained that nomatter what anybody says.. knock control can save the motor.

The damage is done - Philly the smart thign to do now would be having David build your new motor and having HIM tune it for you. Good luck

 

Well....something like a bearing failing could have been happening for some time....The condition that may have caused hardware damage could have taken place a week or month earlier. Overreving outside of these logs could have caused this.....it happened to me on my GSX. I made a 1-2-3-2 shift when I was intending on a 1-2-3-4 shift. I had a ticking for about two weeks before the cap came off the rod and put the piston into the valves.

Either way....40k hard miles is alot for any stock motor.