N1 oil pump or Tomei

[tyndago]

Originally Posted by Chris Wilson

The burr came out of the die grinder and has marked the exhaust manifold face of the head, so I will have to mill it back flat about 15 thou. Could be worse, but I was NOT happy when I did that...

Always fun doing stuff like that. Sucks.

[GarethK]

Originally Posted by Chris Wilson

Ah, right, I see it now in a pic earlier in the thread, thanks.

Had a disastrous day, I thought I'd just fettle the exhaust ports on my brand new head casting (professionally ported, but I hadn't decided single turbo or twins, so he left the exits near stock for me to finish...) Having decided to go twins on ported stock manifolds I needed to just belnd the ports to the gasket shape, together with the stock manifolds. The burr came out of the die grinder and has marked the exhaust manifold face of the head, so I will have to mill it back flat about 15 thou. Could be worse, but I was NOT happy when I did that...

Look on the bright side, I've seen pics on here of someone who cut down the 'bump' and went straight into the water gallery!

[tokes]

Originally Posted by tyndago

Sounds like a good idea, but theories and realities fail.

I think there is an actual problem with the casting, or manufacturing of the N1 pumps. I ran them in the past on 600 hp cars with no issue. I ran them on lots of things. Then more recently we had a ton of them fail in a row. Every single one failed. Stock dampers, stockish engines. ATI damper's. 500 hp cars, 400 hp cars.

I am all for the Tomei pump. The gear on the Tomei pump is double the size of the stock, Nismo, HKS, Greddy, etc. We ran the Nismo pump on the World Challenge car and it was fine, even at a couple of 11k rpm mis-shifts a race.

I know that if a Tomei pump fails, another pump would have failed long before.

I believe I should have taken your advice you gave me months ago via email and gone to a pump other than the N1. My new motor spun another bearing with 625 KM's on it. Live and learn I guess.

[GarethK]

I'm sure Rob at RIPS posted about a belt drive pump he was working on which worked with the conventional sump, and you could keep a/c etc. Never saw much more on it or any prices but it sounded pretty interesting.

[tyndago]

Originally Posted by tokes

I believe I should have taken your advice you gave me months ago via email and gone to a pump other than the N1. My new motor spun another bearing with 625 KM's on it. Live and learn I guess.

Which bearing ? Did the pump fail ?

[tokes]

Originally Posted by tyndago

Which bearing ? Did the pump fail ?

Not sure on either of those questions yet. It had perfectly fine oil pressure and then it started to knock, so I shut it down immediately and got it towed home. Cranked it over with the CAS unplugged and it had oil pressure but it was low, even for cranking. Drained the oil and checked the filter and there was copper and other metal shards in it. I changed the oil three times already since the motor was built (10 minutes of idle to seat the cams, changed oil, drove it home 50KM and changed the oil, and changed it again at 500 KM's) and there was never any metal in it before.

The wierd thing is I hadn't been beating on it. I had a high-RPM missfire from dead coils so I was pretty well only driving it off boost. The night it died I finally got my new coils in it and had gone WOT a few times, but only after it was warmed up. When it died I was giving it about 1/2 throttle, shifted from second into third at about 4000, let off the throttle and was cruising along at 3000 RPM's in third gear on flat straight ground and it started to knock.

It died last Friday, but my Father had big surgery on Saturday morning, my girlfriend was in town, and it was thanksgiving so I didn't get a chance to pull the motor. I should have the motor out Friday night and get to check stuff out on Saturday though.

[tokes]

So in the latest news, the #5 and #6 main bearings spun. Oil pump isn't broken, and the crank collar shows no signs of wear. Leads me to believe it wasn't assembled correctly :@

I'm thinking that over the winter I'll have everything torn down, checked for tolerances by a different shop and resassembled with all new bearings. With only 625 KM's I think I'll just leave the rings as they lay. See if I can't scrounge up some cash and put a tomei oil pump in it.

Looking on the bright side, this gives me a chance to finally yank all the hicas lines out of there and cleanup/spotweld the engine bay.

[tyndago]

Hows the pistons look ?

[Sub Boy]

Chuck a bigger baffled sump in while the engine is out, Also a oil restrictor,and perhaps the oil return pipe mod at the back of the engine that seems to be the new talking point on here.

[tokes]

Originally Posted by tyndago

Hows the pistons look ?

The rest of the motor all looked fine. No scarring on the cylinder walls, no signs of detonation on the plugs or the pistons, no carbon build up, etc.

I did a compression test the day before the bearing spun and it was 165 straight across the board, which seems right as I'm at 8.3:1 compression instead of factory 8.5:1 compression. Leakdown was under 3% on all cylinder.