Here are some pics I took while diagnosing the loud rattling sound coming from my engine. My first suspicions were that my timing skipped a tooth, but as you will see from the pics, the timing was still good. After ruling out the timing, it was time to drop the oil pan to look for any evidence of what might have gone wrong. Well, the pics will illustrate the cause of my engine's failure.
Here's the cam gears, right on time. excuse the blurriness.

Here's the crank gear. If you look close enough, you will notice it's matching its timing mark as well.

So on to the sump of the oil pan. This is where I find my problem.



Final diagnosis: spun bearing. I haven't had time to open up the block and see which bearing failed. When I do, I'll be sure to post up pics.
So for my budget fix, I came up with the idea of taking one of the pistons from the block with a spun bearing, and replace the melted piston from the original block that came with the car. I will be doing this over the next week or so, whenever I'm not too busy with schoolwork.

Damm joker you been having bad luck why don't u save for a Six bolt and call it a day

cross your fingers, maybe its just a balance shaft bearing and you can just buy an BSE kit and install it

Maybe this Christmas when I go to Texas I'll bring my spare n/a 6 bolt longblock and just save up to build that, but that's only if I have room to bring it. But right now I need my GSX to get me around.

I'm about to go tear apart the bottom end to see which bearing(s) failed. If I can find the charger for my camera I'll take some more pics of my findings and post them up.

i found the culprit. #3 rod bearing spun. Here's the pics.



My plan to change the melted piston from the engine that came with the car with one of the pistons from the block that spun a bearing have changed. So now I'm going to just overhaul the block with the spun bearing.
On wednesday, i'm taking the block and crank to class so i can mic the crank and hot tank the block and measure the main/rod bores so i can see what size bearings i will end up needing.

Here's pics of the engine that was originally in the car. Who the fvck installs a rod without bearings??? When i removed the piston/rod, i found no rod bearing whatsoever. Due to this, it stretched the rod and cut into the crank. Now i cant reuse this crank because of some idiot. i feel like taking this stretched rod and beating whoever it was that neglected to install the bearing over the head with it so they can feel what the crank felt.

stretched rod


rod journal on the crank


Due to this mishap, I will be overhauling the engine i dropped into the gsx now, but it's going to be more expensive than what i planned on spending to begin with. At least i will have a freshly overhauled bottom end, but still, i could have used the original engine and rebuilt it as well if the crank were still good.

WOW! im sure there was a bearing there, but the person must have drove it for a long time after it spun a bearing

The thing is that before I bought the car, I test drove it and the engine seemed to be just fine. No rod knock or any weird sounds coming from the engine. But it overheated on the drive home right after purchasing it.

wow now thats a first no rod bering

I finally got around to measuring my crank on Monday. Here are the journal measurements that I got.
Mains._______ Rods
#1 2.042".___ 1.771"
#2 2.042".___ 1.771"
#3 2.042".___ 1.758"
#4 2.0415".__ 1.771"
#5 2.042"

I'm planning on cutting the rod journals on the crank and running oversize bearings and will just polish the main journals and go with standard size bearings. I'm still debating whether I should go with clevite 77 or with acl aluglides. Im leaning more towards the clevite bearings for the mains and rods.
Tonight in class I'm going to measure the bore diameters in the mains and rods and see if they need any machining done. Im also going to check the cylinder walls for out-of-round and bead hone them. After doing that I'll be gapping the rings and checking to see if they can be reused. I'm hoping they can be reused so I dont have to buy rings.

Edit: after comparing my measurements to the specs on my chiltons, I will be double checking the main journals again since they don't match up. I think I may have wrote them down wrong, but either way, I'll be double checking my work. The rod journals matched up though, and the crank is still within the service limit, so I'm happy about that. Can't wait for class tonight to finish blueprinting my engine.