You might not be able to actually see the movement. If you can actually see the balancer move, then it's REAL bad crankwalk. When my dad's DSM crankwalked we couldn't actually see the balancer move, but it sure did tick like crazy.

To know for sure, you should have somebody who really knows what they're doing take a look. It'd suck to replace an engine for a simple tick noise that could have be solved by doing something very simple. But on the other hand, it'd suck if you didn't do anything about it and you had a catastrophic failure.

 

yeah this is the third time in 6 or 7 months this motor has been rebuilt

 

Well make it 2 you have heard of as my stock engine died from it.... It had 63K on it

 

There are a few good shops if you want to make the drive a bit north of you to the sf bay area. FFTEC, GST are really great shops. they are maybe 2 hours from you, but ya its a bit of a drive.

 

there have been two cases here locally.

hard to say what ticking noise is without being able to hear it. my guess is since the engine has been built three times the crank sensor trigger plate may be bent a little. doesnt hit when crank is centered, might be hitting the sensor when clutch is depressed and crank moves a few thousand.

 

well i am not sure where gst is at but full function is about 5 hours north of me. if anyone knows of any shops in the l.a. area those would probably be the closest.

 

What was the original point of failure, why was it rebuilt the second and third time?

A spun bearing can put enough crap into the system that we have seen the block side of the thrusts was eaten up and since you cant get oversized thrusts it would have crankwalked. Devil is in the details.

 

well i installed a set of kelford 272's and i was in a hurry one day blew the head gasket and warped the head. i took the head and had it machined and they didn't do a very good job i installed a new head gasket and the head and it made it 7 miles before it melted the exhaust cam into one of the cam journals (come to find out the top of the head was still warped). so i figured if i am gonna need to rebuild the head i may as well do the bottom end too.

so i got the basic eagle/wiseco set up, honed the cylinder walls and assumed that the rest of the block was in good condition. anyway i had it put together by a friend of mine and it made it 200 miles or so before a ticking sound started coming from the crank area (1st time). well i asked around and it wasn't loud enough to be a rod knock or something serious. well the crank plate was hitting the crank angle sensor, which caused the motor not to start anymore.

so i pulled the oil pan off found a spun bearing a pile of shavings in the bottom of the oil pan and a whole lot of headache. pulled the motor sent it to a different machine shop this time and found out that the block was warped .12 from the outside crank journals to the center journal. well they were able to line bore it and deck it to make flat and straight. on top of that the crank was balanced too i thought it was a good idea.

now with new everything i was sure this motor would run great this time around..... low and behold it is failing faster this go around with 60 miles on it and the crank plate is already hitting the c.a.s. go figure.

 

Are your thrust washers getting wiped out also?

 

i haven't looked under the oil pan yet this time but last time i only found one thrust washer i will see if i still have the picture of what the other one looked like.

 

and the one thrust washer i did find was pressed against the oil pump

 

wow 12 thousand off on the crank journals is huge. it shouldnt have been fixed cause it wasnt. same problem as head. if crank journals were twisted that much then the cylinder bores would no longer have been 90 degrees to crank. poor mechanics = poor results.

 

i honestly dont know anything about machining, when you say twisted you lose me when everything was installed i didn't have fitment issues or anything along those lines. but appearently something was done wrong. if anyone knows of a bare block for sale let me know.

 

What the hell are you people talking about. The Evo is a pull type clutch. The crank is not going to move toward the crank pulley. This is NOT a DSM!

How do you rush a cam job, and blow a headgasket, warp a head.

Then get the head back and seize the cam to the cap. It sounds like you put the caps on the wrong journals.

I'm sorry but it sounds like you should not be working on the car. Buy an engine and have someone else put it together.

P.S., if you are putting the same oil cooler back on each rebuild, you are contaminating every subsequent build and they will all end up with the same fate.

 

Mine has a push type clutch. True story