Hello All, today was an extremely sad day for me I was told my motor blew while being tuned. Now I have done hours of reading in this forum but I still am somewhat incompetent when it comes to tuning and logging. My tuner says that my counterbalance shaft bearing somehow failed and came out causing catastrophic failure. He had just finished dialing in the idle and was going to attempt to do a wot pull under no load and no timing change, pretty much what he says is the safest pull he could do. Anyways he had a few other tuners check to show that this was a mechanical failure and had nothing to do with his tune and he gave me a copy of the logs so I could Check myself so I am asking if there is someone reputable on here that can take a look and give me there opinion. I would rather not post them for everyone to see because then there will be tons of back and forth and opinions and trolls like every other thread. Please if you can take the time and take a look I can send them to you privately. Thank you

 

First off, I am sorry to hear that your engine blew. There are several reasons that this could have happened and we will do our best to assess the situation for you.

Despite the thread potentially becoming a troll thread, I do suggest that you make it easier on those who can help you and post your data logs here for all to see as well as the full build specs, boost pressure, and fuel at the time. You don't have to post the tuners name, just the data logs. For all we know the engine was about to blow before you even got to the dyno.

Now, lets think about the tuners explanation for a second. If I understand you correctly, He said that the counterbalance shaft bearing failed and came out of place causing engine failure?

There has to be a better explanation than that. There have been instances in the past where the balance shaft BELT fails and runs into the timing belt causing the crankshaft and cam timing to skip causing engine failure.

Do you have an oil pressure gauge installed by any chance?

 

Yes I do have an oil gauge I do not know the pressure when failure occurred and that is exactly what I am hoping to get some insight on if the logs look fairly normal then it can determine what I do next. Stock motor with all bolt ons cams, springs, FP red, e85, I can get more specific if needed but lots of parts to list. I will post the logs in a bit thank you for the response at failure he was off the gas RPM about 4500 with a boost spike of 30 psi he felt the spike and had just let off the gas when he heard it happen. The waste gate which he flow tested after was stuck closed and didn't open till 33psi and it had 14psi springs inside.

 

Here are the logs

 

Thanks for posting the log, I've cleaned it up so that we can look at the relevant areas.

I didn't see a reliable MAP column in the log (unless it's pre conversion and I didn't pick it up)
I don't have a lot of experience in this area so I will wait for more people to comment, but here's what I can tell you from the log:

1. Your TPS sensor needs calibration, needs to be around 13.33 at idle, not 11.375 (Not relevant to the engine failure)

2. There were more than 20 counts of knock as the tuner was cruising to get to the pull even before the pull started. This would have raised a red flag for me (see picture below)

3. Your AFR MAP values, which is the AFR that your ECU is shooting for as it moves through the fuel map is a bit off from the real life wideband AFR reading. Some of this is to be expected from larger injectors..

4. During the actual dyno pull, your car seemed to run towards the lean side at the middle and top of the pull.

Despite all this, it looks like the car had issues before it hit the dyno. I say this because you don't just get 30 counts of knock during cruise unless there are other issues.


Cruise knock




End of pull knock

 

Thank you I appreciate the response and information. I was wondering a few weeks before I brought the car to this tuner I had my friend run logs and check them and I had very little knock and this tuner said he had to start from scratch for this tune because the previous tuner locked his map. does that mean the knock at cruise was due to his base map that he created? Sorry if this doesn't make sense or isn't relevant i am trying to determine if i am going to continue to allow this tuner to work on my car.

 

I've never seen knock at cruise, due to tuning. That would have to be a really bad tune. Really bad.
mechanical problem? Balance shaft flopping around?

 

Yes he showed me the balance shaft which actually came out of place and showed me what looked like wear that occurred over time on the outside of a bearing for the shaft and the shaft was actually bent. So it sounds like it was probably my car and not this tuner which is good because I feel like he has been honest about what happened I just wanted to verify if possible because there are a lot of mechanics/tuners that you hear about in my area messing people's cars up and lying to them

 

Bent balance shaft? Impressive.

 

Yeah. I'd agree that it could have been the bent/broken off balance shaft pinging around in the engine that may have caused such a high knock count and not actual detonation. It's unlikely that it was the base map from the tuner.

There is some good news to this though. If it's really just a balance shaft that came loose and the timing didn't skip, you still have a good block, good crank, good rods, and good pistons. You'd just need new rod bearings, main bearings, rings, hone and a throughout cleaning.

 

Assuming the metal from the BS bearings didn't contaminate the rod and/or main bearings and score the journals.

 

Unfortunately not he said that when the balance shaft flew out of place so badly it actually severely damaged the block i think a hole in two spot and one of the rods broke somewhere and the piston actually came up into the head? This is what he is seeing before actually completley tearing into the engine I'll se if I can get some pictures

 

True!

I hate it when that happens . Yeah, post pictures when you can.

 

That cruise knock was likely just noise. The knock on the WOT was also likely noise. You can see the load go up around 4500rpm (turbo spooling) and the timing goes to 0*, which is good, and then it knocks, bad/a lot. Which also seems like noise, and the tuner comes out of the throttle. Something was wrong with the engine.


You stated it 30psi at 4500rpm with an FP red. My car makes almost 33psi at 4500 with 0* of timing. So you didn't get a torque spike. Even if you were on pump gas, this single event wouldn't have caused a failure. And certainly not the balance shaft to come out.

 

Sorry to hear man, this really sucks