I was cruising the Elgin O'hare expressway Monday night and my motor let go! I was running the engine at 3600 RPM, 2lbs of Boost, AFR was 13:1, timing was firing at 30.8 degrees DTDC, throttle was at 50%, and I was going about 100 MPH ( I had my computer with me recording the drive). I heard what sounded like top engine noise and the engine hydrolocked. I got a tow home, pulled the motor and found the blocked cracked in the #8 cylnder and the piston shattered. My AFR heads are damaged, the block is junk, forged pistons are garbage. Basically the entire motor is cashed!! I am devastated! Thanks for listening guys. I can post pics if anyone wants, but now I am drinking.

Damn. That is all bad bro. It took out the heads too? Hella lame. Sorry for your lose.

wow sorry to hear that. I'd be hitting the Jager bottle too.. Post up the pictures.
What are your plans? build another setup? how bad did it mess up the #8 chamber and valves? Ive seen some bad heads be salvagable with a little welding and resurfacing.

until you're on motor #9 like me i don't want to hear it

Wow. Thats disturbing and sad.

Nine motors would put me in the grave. I will need to think about this, I either have a roller for sale or I need to rebuild. Either way it "angers" me.

any determination "WHY" ya had the problem? how many miles on the engine? etc..

How did you like the megaquirt?

The Megasqiurt was awesome, I plan on having Megasquirt in the future. I am not sure yet why the block failed, but I had recently been out to the strip and ran it hard. I had been tuning it on the street, giving it some hard runs. So I don't know when the fault began, but it sure failed hard.

rings butted up and poped the top ring land. What kinda ring gab did you have?

Time to just build it bigger and better.

not enough ring gap or possibly running extremely rich and beating the top ring land up? Any detonation issues?

I don't remember what the ring gap is at. I could see too tight ring gap cracking a landing, but I don't see it cracking the block.
I don't think I had any detonation problems, but I was not using the knock sensor. The total timing was 36 degrees and as boost came in the timing was pulled back to 30 degrees. I thought this was pretty safe for forced induction, but I am starting to think it may have been too much.
I guess the other possibility is that I pushed a factory block too hard. I never had the car on a dyno so I don't know the HP. I thought the factory block would be good for 500 HP?

i have a .030 350 block in the garage if ya really plan on building another. i don't plan on using it any time soon.

Thanks for the offer, but I bought a new block and am having it machined. I hope to be back on the road in a few weeks.

Good luck so you are gonna start all over that really sucks i would just stay stock if that happened to me all that time, money, and sweat on work to go bye bye.

A Long Island will be consumed in memory of that motor.
1 will be consumed for your anger & frustration.
1 will be consumed in honor of the new motor.
Hope you're driving b4 the cold gets a grip on us! Good luck!

The block probably cracked when the chunk of piston tried to find a home between the piston and the cyl. wall.

I agree with the tight ring gap theory. How hard were you pushing the car before that? The top ring could've been too hot for too long. If you were doing a couple of WOT blasts, you might want to look into a ring gap for circle track/road racing instead of drag racing if that's how the motor was built.

im thinking of blowing my sbc.was curious the compression ratio you were running. id like to get a ball park figure for whats too high on these rides..i know boost depends and other factors come into play

I'm running about 9.2:1

I checked the ring gap and found it to be .011. KB pistions calls for .033 on the top ring for forced induction. So it looks like that may have been the cause of the failure. I am going to have to talk to the shop that did the short block.

ya, Thats one hell of a tight gap for a F/I engine.

that's a tight top ring gap for even a stout sbc, let alone a power adder car