My Father's Oldsmobile

[fleming442]

I don't know what I'm going to do with it, been pretty depressed all day.
The rods are BMEs, and yes it is an offset ground 425 crank.

 

[81cutlass]

Hey, the bright side is that it's almost November, fun car season is done for a few months so you aren't out much enjoyment. MUCH better than nuking something on May 1st and having the fun car sit disassembled all summer. Knowing it's gotta come apart sucks along with the hit to the bank account, but it's winter and who knows how crappy this winter is going to be with lockdown stuff so it's a good project to work on 🙂

The other plus is that now you have less excuse as to not do that LS swap you have been thinking of 😛

Seeing all these olds builds eat themselves kinda makes me second think my turbo DX build I want to do. 425 cranks aren't that common anymore and it seems the people who know how to make stuff hold up are few and far between, and getting more scarce.

Could be worse, it could be bent sheet metal!

 

[64nailhead]

I don't know what I'm going to do with it, been pretty depressed all day.
The rods are BMEs, and yes it is an offset ground 425 crank.

Been depressed more than once over sh*t not working out. Been there - I'm confident you'll come up with something.

My advice - tear it apart and make sure you know exactly what went wrong so that it doesn't happen again. Ask me sometime about crank and cam gear forward alignment on an aftermarket block such as a Motown LS. Cost my kid a cam, custom timing set and set of heads - something that I've never checked before, but I should have.

Live and learn, and maybe teach us along the way - my two cents.

Jim

 

[melloelky]

sorry brother..

 

[fleming442]

Oil pump drive is good. 3 broken rods and/or pistons and/or broken block. #8 plug is REALLY tight, 3 &6 will need Helicoils. The oil and water were still separate, so that's good....?

 

[81cutlass]

Over-rev and let it go? Yikes.

 

[fleming442]

Never been over 6000 (MSD 6AL)- neutral balanced, steel crank, short and light pistons, and aluminum rods. I'm disappointed.

 

[500/600]

Not good at all. I've seen a lot of people run aluminum rods in a street car over the years. I've even seen an aluminum rod 454 tow truck. I've heard all of the horror stories, but I've never seen one let go in a street car until now. Brutal.

 

[superbon54]

How many miles did it have? Aluminum doesn’t have a fatigue limit like steel and will always fail, which now makes me wonder if that’s the reason you don’t see factory aluminum rods.

Sucks, man.

 

[fleming442]

How many miles did it have? Aluminum doesn’t have a fatigue limit like steel and will always fail, which now makes me wonder if that’s the reason you don’t see factory aluminum rods.

Sucks, man.

The builder talked to Bill Miller, and felt confident they would be fine. Now, that being said, this is at least the 3rd engine they've been in. Top Fuel and Top Alcohol almost exclusively use BME rods, so I figured if they can handle 5-10,000hp, my little 500 should be no problem . There i go thinking again. I should stop that. This engine has about 12k miles on it over 4 years (built in'15, sat last year).