Hi Guys,
There's been lots of discussion lately about the strength and suitability of the stock Niassan con rods to handle forced induction safely.
It's been on my mind for some time and after viewing many pictures of damaged con rods from FI engines this started to get the better of my curiosity as we at APS have not seen or experienced a con rod failure to date.
After carefully viewing pics of damaged rods I have come to the conlusion that many of these rod failures have been caused by bearing failure (big end bearing spun/spinning in the con rod big end).
You see if the big end bearing spins then this causes the con rod to seize momentarily and then the con rod either bends or breaks as you would expect.
The best quality after market con rods are not designed to cope with a big end bearing failure, at this point you will either destroy the crankshaft journal or break the con rod, so now we are at the point of my post, what causes the big end bearing failure ?????
I firmly now suspect either oil starvation or very high oil temperature is the real cause of the bearing failure and I intend investigating this issue at much greater length now.
APS designed a larger HI volume air cooled oil pan with much improved baffling around the oil pick up, I suspect that this had reduced if not eliminated the oil starvation problem and hence why we have not experienced con rod failure at sensible power and boost levels. :doh:
In any event as this was on my mind (I could not sleep last night thinking about this issue) I thought I would share my thoughts with you guys, I welcome any input or feedback from you guys and I hope that we are onto the real cause/diagnosis of con rod failure with FI engines. :wavey:
Thanks
Peter
There's been lots of discussion lately about the strength and suitability of the stock Niassan con rods to handle forced induction safely.
It's been on my mind for some time and after viewing many pictures of damaged con rods from FI engines this started to get the better of my curiosity as we at APS have not seen or experienced a con rod failure to date.
After carefully viewing pics of damaged rods I have come to the conlusion that many of these rod failures have been caused by bearing failure (big end bearing spun/spinning in the con rod big end).
You see if the big end bearing spins then this causes the con rod to seize momentarily and then the con rod either bends or breaks as you would expect.
The best quality after market con rods are not designed to cope with a big end bearing failure, at this point you will either destroy the crankshaft journal or break the con rod, so now we are at the point of my post, what causes the big end bearing failure ?????
I firmly now suspect either oil starvation or very high oil temperature is the real cause of the bearing failure and I intend investigating this issue at much greater length now.
APS designed a larger HI volume air cooled oil pan with much improved baffling around the oil pick up, I suspect that this had reduced if not eliminated the oil starvation problem and hence why we have not experienced con rod failure at sensible power and boost levels. :doh:
In any event as this was on my mind (I could not sleep last night thinking about this issue) I thought I would share my thoughts with you guys, I welcome any input or feedback from you guys and I hope that we are onto the real cause/diagnosis of con rod failure with FI engines. :wavey:
Thanks
Peter