[dpevans]

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

Yep that’s exactly what I am doing as well. I’m going to pull the onstar fuse before doing my first track day this weekend.

Not sure if anyone on here is part of the FB group for 1le’s but there have been a lot of newer LT1’s blow up recently. Seems like the post covid cars have much less quality control versus the earlier cars. One guy just lost his 3rd engine.

OnStar fuse or not the car is storing data and if you have a warranty they will know what you've done. I think the engine problem is the AFM and that's the first thing getting removed after the warranty ends.

[Number 3]

Originally Posted by dpevans

OnStar fuse or not the car is storing data and if you have a warranty they will know what you've done. I think the engine problem is the AFM and that's the first thing getting removed after the warranty ends.

The car only stores a running 6 seconds of basic data. Government mandated for all cars for accident reconstruction. Other than that, your car does not carry anywhere enough memory to record what you’ve done.

Can you imagine trying to sell a used car where you could simply down load everything a car has done? Good if you are buying. Selling maybe not so much.

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by dpevans

OnStar fuse or not the car is storing data and if you have a warranty they will know what you've done. I think the engine problem is the AFM and that's the first thing getting removed after the warranty ends.

Good point but fortunately everyone seems to be getting taken care of recently when they blow up on track. Also it’s not just the afm failing. Some have spun rod bearings and dropped valves. QC is garbage on the newer cars it truly seems.

Originally Posted by Number 3

The car only stores a running 6 seconds of basic data. Government mandated for all cars for accident reconstruction. Other than that, your car does not carry anywhere enough memory to record what you’ve done.

Can you imagine trying to sell a used car where you could simply down load everything a car has done? Good if you are buying. Selling maybe not so much.

I thought I read it was the last few drive cycles but if it’s only 6 seconds that’s awesome!

[Kamero6]

Originally Posted by m6-lt1

Good point but fortunately everyone seems to be getting taken care of recently when they blow up on track. Also it’s not just the afm failing. Some have spun rod bearings and dropped valves. QC is garbage on the newer cars it truly seems.



I thought I read it was the last few drive cycles but if it’s only 6 seconds that’s awesome!

If you keep temperatures in a safe range and take care of the car, you can still go fast and have fun.

Aireated oil, starvation and high temps is one of the main causes of failure.

One of this is cheap insurance.

[ember1205]

Originally Posted by Number 3

The car only stores a running 6 seconds of basic data. Government mandated for all cars for accident reconstruction. Other than that, your car does not carry anywhere enough memory to record what you’ve done.

Can you imagine trying to sell a used car where you could simply down load everything a car has done? Good if you are buying. Selling maybe not so much.

When something fails, the car is pretty "dead" immediately afterward and will almost certainly log codes. Codes do not have a six second "timer", and an immediate failure of the car after something significant is also almost certainly going to occur within the six seconds you speak of.

They will easily pull details like speed, engine RPM, lateral forces, etc. and anything else that they have been storing to report back to the "Smart Driver" program, and you have to believe they are storing data points long enough to ensure that they can upload that information when service is available (because it isn't available everywhere, all of the time).

[N Camarolina]

Originally Posted by Kamero6

If you keep temperatures in a safe range and take care of the car, you can still go fast and have fun.

Aireated oil, starvation and high temps is one of the main causes of failure.

One of this is cheap insurance.

Excellent suggestion to help protect the engine. It's ironic of course that you can't install one without voiding the warranty, so you'll have to wait until the warranty is up.

And to the poster that previously mentioned that they aren't making engines as robust as they used to be: I'm not sure that's true, as many of the engine failures are happening on the track where we run high lateral G loads and high rpm for extended periods of time, lap after lap. Race teams rebuild/replace their engines after every few hours of run-time, and here we are accumulating many hours more than that, season after season. It's a wonder our engines aren't breaking more frequently than they are.

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by N Camarolina

Excellent suggestion to help protect the engine. It's ironic of course that you can't install one without voiding the warranty, so you'll have to wait until the warranty is up.

And to the poster that previously mentioned that they aren't making engines as robust as they used to be: I'm not sure that's true, as many of the engine failures are happening on the track where we run high lateral G loads and high rpm for extended periods of time, lap after lap. Race teams rebuild/replace their engines after every few hours of run-time, and here we are accumulating many hours more than that, season after season. It's a wonder our engines aren't breaking more frequently than they are.

I wanted to say the same thing about the warranty but decided not too haha.

I completely agree that running a car at high rpm for 20 mins straight is going to lead to some failures but it seems like the failures have been more prevalent now. Not sure if you’re in the 1le FB group but I’ve seen more motors blow up the last few months than I have in the past all on newish cars. One guy just lost his 3rd motor and was super religious about oil changes.

I was at the track last weekend and there were a lot of 1le’s and to my knowledge none of us blew up (including two heads cam builds I saw) so I could just be seeing the people who’ve had failures speak up. Only engine failure I saw was from a coyote mustang last weekend.

[bootss]

Gm states high RPM is anything over 3k. You can expect to burn oil and whatever over that RPM. But then because of the gearing, the ZLE will cruise at 2600RPM @ around 80-85MPH so like, i dunno, they know what they built and how it will be used. I just enojy the car and if it breaks i'll raise hell with GM because I'm on top of maintenance more than most.

[Christian1LE]

I don't think our cars suffer from oil starvation. I have been beating up my car since day 1 and have tracked for over 1 year using 315 Hoosier A7's (high sustained lateral loads). No issues with oil pickup.

No way people using street tires would see any issues with starvation unless their oil level is low. My opinion of course, if anyone has data to show otherwise I would love to see it.

[m6-lt1]

Originally Posted by Christian1LE

I don't think our cars suffer from oil starvation. I have been beating up my car since day 1 and have tracked for over 1 year using 315 Hoosier A7's (high sustained lateral loads). No issues with oil pickup.

No way people using street tires would see any issues with starvation unless their oil level is low. My opinion of course, if anyone has data to show otherwise I would love to see it.

Your opinion is correct based on what I’ve seen people post on here. I have read here from folks who were data logging their cars that they saw no major drops or spikes in oil pressure at any point on the road courses they were on.

[N Camarolina]

I guess it depends on what you call low oil pressure. I've noticed on my PDR data that going through and coming out of turn 1 at VIR (long right turn with high G load), the oil pressure drops to 30 (normal given the long brake zone and trail into T1; in 3rd gear, the RPM is fairly low) but is a bit slow to recover as RPM rises going from T1 toward T2.

That being said, when I lost my engine at VIR, the only data symptom I could detect on the PDR outside of the "usual" was rising oil temp above the normal track temp. Oil started going above the usual 272F about 1 to 1.5 minutes before the rod bearing let go. By the time the engine started faltering, oil was up to 303F.

[N Camarolina]

Originally Posted by Christian1LE

I don't think our cars suffer from oil starvation. I have been beating up my car since day 1 and have tracked for over 1 year using 315 Hoosier A7's (high sustained lateral loads). No issues with oil pickup.

No way people using street tires would see any issues with starvation unless their oil level is low. My opinion of course, if anyone has data to show otherwise I would love to see it.

Christian, glad to hear LT1 is soldiering on despite the considerable abuse you put it through. What oil have you been using on the track over the years?

[Kamero6]

Originally Posted by N Camarolina

I guess it depends on what you call low oil pressure. I've noticed on my PDR data that going through and coming out of turn 1 at VIR (long right turn with high G load), the oil pressure drops to 30 (normal given the long brake zone and trail into T1; in 3rd gear, the RPM is fairly low) but is a bit slow to recover as RPM rises going from T1 toward T2.

That being said, when I lost my engine at VIR, the only data symptom I could detect on the PDR outside of the "usual" was rising oil temp above the normal track temp. Oil started going above the usual 272F about 1 to 1.5 minutes before the rod bearing let go. By the time the engine started faltering, oil was up to 303F.

I watched the videos of the toyota 86 and subaru BRZ issues with oil pressure and starvation. The guys were loosing 5-10psi at the most and that was enough to cause failure.

Was it only 1 bearing damaged or all of them?

[speedyink1]

Originally Posted by Kamero6

I watched the videos of the toyota 86 and subaru BRZ issues with oil pressure and starvation. The guys were loosing 5-10psi at the most and that was enough to cause failure.

Was it only 1 bearing damaged or all of them?

I was seeing way higher drops then that in the video I saw... Compared to left hand turns (~55psi at high RPM) hard right hand turns saw spikes all the way down to 28 psi at high RPM.