Looking forward to 2025 and a season that might not be.

This post is going to be a sad one. We’re scrapping the 2025 season. At least as far as we can tell.

The reasons are many, but the biggest is we lost another engine. The Buick did really well this year, no major problems until the Time Trials Nationals in October, where the only problems we really had at the event were an intercooler that had some mounting fail we had to rig up to try and mitigate charge hose clamps falling off.

As is normal, I had an oil analysis done on the oil I drained after the last even of the year, and the results were concerning. Elevated lead, way elevated. It went from 1 part per million in the last sample to 31. Copper quadrupled. These numbers are an indication of some bearing wear.

The diagnosis

So, I got the car on the lift, dropped the pan, and started checking rod bearings. Lo and behold, #2 showed a pretty bad score.

#2 lower rod bearing

That usually means a piece of debris went through the engine. I then took the oil pump apart and found more carnage.

Inside the oil pump

The pump gears were chewed up, too. Then I pulled the mains, and oof.

#2 main bearing

The good news is the crankshaft was not damaged. But where did the trash come from? Turns out the oil pan itself.

Broken windage baffle straps.

The windage baffle broke loose. It appears the crank may have been hitting it and just beat it until those tabs failed. The wear marks indicate the tray was moving a quarter inch once the welds broke. The chips from fracture would have been sucked up during a cold start when the pressures are high enough the filter gets bypassed. The chips ground more chunks off the pump gears and the pump housing and sent all that grit through the motor where it chewed up the mains, then the #1 and #2 rod bearing before falling back into the the pan. The rod bearings for #4 back looked great, and the #4 main only had one small score mark on it.

I’m going to pull the motor all the way out and fully disassemble it to clean it and check the camshaft. I’m hopeful but not optimistic the trash all went to the bottom end and didn’t wipe out the cam bearings. But it’s It’s possible it’ll need a new set of cam bearings and maybe even a new camshaft along with the mains and rod bearings. And if the camshaft got hurt then the lifters might be garbage, too.

The fallout

What this means for 2025 is we’re not making the Optima event at Sebring in February. It’s likely we won’t make any major events in 2025 at all. The sad fact is I dodged a bullet here. I’m going to get away with basically an engine out refresh. New bearings, a good cleaning of the oil galleys. New gaskets. There’s a possibility of needing a new camshaft and I won’t know the full condition of the lifters until I get the engine out of the car and pull the intake.

So while this service isn’t going to cost me the $12K a new build would, it could range anywhere from a few hundred to a couple thousand dollars if the valvetrain took a beating. I’m already slated to drop a half a G at the water crate store this week. I need an engine crane and associated accessories. The crane I’ve been using for the last fifteen years actually belonged to a friend, and he needed it back finally. So I’ll get my own.

But I’m lucky. The forged crank didn’t take any guff from the debris. From the bottoms, the cylinders look great and the engine still has fantastic compression on all six. Like 150+psi cold. There’s no metal under the valve covers, so nothing made it through the pushrods to the top of the motor. That’s encouraging but I won’t know for sure until it’s out.

Once out, I’ll need to pull the oil galley plugs and scrube/flush the oil galleys as best I can, hopefully without needing to pull the heads off and disturbing the rings. then it can all go right back together and back in the car.

As of right now, the parts list:

  • Front cover
  • Main Bearings (in stock)
  • Rod Bearings (in stock)
  • Oil pump gear set
  • Repair windage baffle and move it down a quarter inch in the pan
  • Gasket set

Still to determine:

  • Camshaft bearings
  • Camshaft
  • Lifters
  • Check pushrods for debris

And then there’s the bullet dodging. I’m not interested in dodging any more bullets with this car. I’m retiring it from road race duty. It may not even autocross ever again.

The future

So right now, the focus is going to be getting the Buick running again so I can use it as a fun street car, and then turn to finishing the Corvette. The Corvette has a long way to go, hence the uncertainty about 2025. As of this writing, the Corvette still needs the engine finished, the suspension completely replaced, and the differential rebuilt. The transmission is at the rebuilder, but I can’t order a torque converter until I’ve picked a camshaft, and last I checked the convertor people are backed up 3-6 months. The entire fuel system also needs to be ripped out and re-done due to corrosion. New tank, new lines, new pump.

Once that’s all done, I’ll have a lengthy period of development getting the engine management to work with the factory electronics. That endeavor has the potential to result in a total reset of the engine control plan, which would snowball into rewiring most of the car to remove the factory body control module, replace the gauges, while still allowing things like the door locks and power windows to work. That’s no small feat and I anticipate it being a frustrating and long task.

So, realistically, it could be a year before I have a car for racing again. We’ll see what happens.

But the reassuring news: This engine has fourteen THOUSAND miles on it since the build, and probably half of that mileage is on track. That’s not terrible for a race motor. I also identified the root cause and will fix it permanently.

If you’re not learning something new, you’re not existing. Thanks for reading!

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