S197 BackInBlack Build Thread Profile - S197 Mustangs

[BackInBlack]

What does this mean? You are going to track it like it is?

Well my goal with this car was to have a fun, reliable daily and to teach myself how to work on cars, really. The good part is I've become better at working on cars than I ever expected I would -- although I'm nowhere near as knowledgable as you guys who swap engines around every few years. Tracking it would be the cherry on top when I feel the car can do it safely, but it'd just be HPDE and not competative -- to test and verify the build. Not sure if I'm ready for that yet but... I might do some straight line racing with my buddies. Funny thing is my friends here locally -- seeing what I've been doing have gotten the itch and have been buying their own muscle cars. They've been goading me to race for a while now. I've gained the reputation of someone who baby's his car and is too afraid to race it. But they don't understand the details of what I'm dealing with (GM/Dodge guys). To be fair, I am very cautious with the car. I put a lot of work into it. But the only reason I'm afraid to race it is because I don't want to blow up the engine. I think my car would be a fair match for the main guy I'd be up against but I'm pretty sure he'll win too. He's on a fully built LS2 with headers. 450-500rwhp I'd guess. Also automatic. Might just bite the bullet and race the fellas. Will have to go easy on the torsen and stock axles but I think the car can take it. But the track? Probably not yet...

 

[BackInBlack]

After several conversations this week, I'm (currently) convinced my issue is simply the cylinder scoring that I know I have. That means the problem is oil getting into the cylinders and lowering my octane, which is why my knock was mitigated with octane booster.

Not gonna replace the engine over this right now -- so now I'm thinking about ways to mitigate the issue and ways to continue my build process without throwing parts at an engine that will eventually need to be replaced. At first, I thought long tube headers might be a safe investment but after some conversations, if I remain on 93 octane, my fuel trim issues may be exacerbated by the O2 sensor delay inherent with long tube headers. So that's out. On the other hand, running E85 will increase my octane and mitigate my knock. Because of the octane difference and how E85 burns cleaner, I think my fuel trims will level out to a degree as well.

I thought cost might be a concern -- but with the current prices of gas, I did the math and in my area it's actually cheaper (cost per mile) to run E85! So I'm gonna give it a try! This will likely be the last mod I do while this engine is in the car... If any of you guys think this is a terrible idea let me know! My plan is to run FRPP 47lb injectors, retune with Lund and I'll run 93 octane in the winter to avoid starting issues and clean out E85 gunk...

I'm also switching to Liqui-Moly in hopes it'll help mitigate the scoring. I think I will probably reduce my spark plug gap to .045 as well. If everything runs better then I think I can be fairly certain that I've got a good handle on what's going on...

 

[Firefighter46]

I think you're looking at it from the right perspective. Weigh the costs vs. the outcomes and any potential damage to both the engine and your wallet. Keep realistic expectations and just drive it until you're ready to do the work you know it needs.

 

[BackInBlack]

Lund said yes Time for prep!

 

[steveespo]

Keep in mind the greater alcohol content can wash down cylinder walls especially if the cylinders already have oil consumption issues due to scoring/ring seal. Upside is they always run best just before they let go. Crossed fingers for a decent result.

 

[BackInBlack]

Keep in mind the greater alcohol content can wash down cylinder walls especially if the cylinders already have oil consumption issues due to scoring/ring seal. Upside is they always run best just before they let go. Crossed fingers for a decent result.

I was thinking that -- what do you think my oil change interval should be? I'm doing 3k miles right now...

I was also thinking... if it's gasoline, I think it could live in the oil for a bit longer... and maybe I'm wrong but I wonder if some of the alcohol wouldn't find a way to evaporate... My guess would be that the end result would be I'd be getting a little bit of water in there...

I'm thinking that the main downside to this would be that gas is a better lubricant than alcohol. But gas isn't good either... I'm also thinking that Engine braking is an enemy in this car. I've noticed that if I avoid engine braking that I have less oil consumption.. Think I should ask Lund to tune down or tune out engine braking? Or is that even possible?

 

[steveespo]

I was thinking that -- what do you think my oil change interval should be? I'm doing 3k miles right now...

I was also thinking... if it's gasoline, I think it could live in the oil for a bit longer... and maybe I'm wrong but I wonder if some of the alcohol wouldn't find a way to evaporate... My guess would be that the end result would be I'd be getting a little bit of water in there...

I'm thinking that the main downside to this would be that gas is a better lubricant than alcohol. But gas isn't good either... I'm also thinking that Engine braking is an enemy in this car. I've noticed that if I avoid engine braking that I have less oil consumption.. Think I should ask Lund to tune down or tune out engine braking? Or is that even possible?

I wouldn't overthink it too much. E85 does require more frequent changes. Oil change interval is based on duty cycle, more fuel flow/rpm=shorter interval. We go 4 hours track time on the race cars. Basically 2 weekends. For track use we may extend to 3 days or 6 hours. Street use is a different animal. Less fuel/rpm yes, but usually shorter use times with more cold starts/warm ups. With gas a mix use car can go 4 hours+say 2000 street miles, street only 5000 miles, with E830 and above I would reduce intervals by 33%. These are just rule of thumb things. Excess oil temps (above 265 actual) I would again change right after that event. There are some cylinder wall lubricants that won't hurt and may help prolong the useable life, The Liqui Moly stuff gets good reviews. Just don't think more is better, only put in recommended dose, the cam phaser filters are very fine and if clogged you will get more problems that you don't want to deal with. Lastly save the money on big mods for a short block, you will want to change that out before a catastrophic failure does in the cylinder heads.

 

[blacksheep-1]

Speaking of alcohol, there are 2 ways of determining octane, neither of the names I remember right now but one method is the actual octane rating that has been around forever, the other is the resistance to knock. This came around in the 70s because gas was getting lousier, you couldn't get 100 octane at the pump, and to make emissions work, they needed more additives.. For this reason, the second octane was created, now keep in mind, both have a knock resistance, but the simple explanation is this. You have an engine with 11 to 1 compression, it knocks, you increase the octane (original method) and the knock goes away. Now, example 2, you have an 11 to 1 engine and it knocks, you add a higher octane gas, it goes away BUT it does it differently, In method #2, they put things in it like alcohol that retards the knock, but doesn't really increase the octane under method #1. It sort of fakes the engine out, one of those methods is to add alcohol which slows the flame travel, therefore appearing but not really, raising the octane level. Now you can get cars to run on stuff like alcohol, and it does let the engine run much cooler...again.. sort of faking the engine out, and in some cases some applications like sprint cars run a tiny or no radiator at all, but those engines are tuned to do that. It is highly corrosive, you see what 10% does to a lawnmower engine that sits around, pure alcohol is that time 1K. Most guys run the tanks out on gasoline in between races to help that out, but they run it out at idle, you can also throw some 2 cycle mix in the run out fuel to help that as well, so it's a process. the point is, 100 octane, may not be 100 actual octane. Someone smarter than me can explain it better but this works for most. Sp.. if you get non alcohol fuel that is 100 octane from Sunoco or somebody it is legit 100 octane if it's labeled as such, but if it has alky in it, then it's done another way. Before you run out to the airport and buy that fuel, remember they use the old method BUT they don't have a lot of chemicals in it because engine failure at 15K feet is handled a bit different than engine failure on I-75. This is why is it generally referred to as "dry gas" by us redneck types that use it for airboats (which usually run on aircraft engines), so you will need to add some type of lubricant to the gas to make it work in a motor vehicle, it is a VERY hot fuel, not nitro hot, but you can melt down an automotive engine pretty easily.

 

[BackInBlack]

Speaking of alcohol, there are 2 ways of determining octane, neither of the names I remember right now but one method is the actual octane rating that has been around forever, the other is the resistance to knock. This came around in the 70s because gas was getting lousier, you couldn't get 100 octane at the pump, and to make emissions work, they needed more additives.. For this reason, the second octane was created, now keep in mind, both have a knock resistance, but the simple explanation is this. You have an engine with 11 to 1 compression, it knocks, you increase the octane (original method) and the knock goes away. Now, example 2, you have an 11 to 1 engine and it knocks, you add a higher octane gas, it goes away BUT it does it differently, In method #2, they put things in it like alcohol that retards the knock, but doesn't really increase the octane under method #1. It sort of fakes the engine out, one of those methods is to add alcohol which slows the flame travel, therefore appearing but not really, raising the octane level. Now you can get cars to run on stuff like alcohol, and it does let the engine run much cooler...again.. sort of faking the engine out, and in some cases some applications like sprint cars run a tiny or no radiator at all, but those engines are tuned to do that. It is highly corrosive, you see what 10% does to a lawnmower engine that sits around, pure alcohol is that time 1K. Most guys run the tanks out on gasoline in between races to help that out, but they run it out at idle, you can also throw some 2 cycle mix in the run out fuel to help that as well, so it's a process. the point is, 100 octane, may not be 100 actual octane. Someone smarter than me can explain it better but this works for most. Sp.. if you get non alcohol fuel that is 100 octane from Sunoco or somebody it is legit 100 octane if it's labeled as such, but if it has alky in it, then it's done another way. Before you run out to the airport and buy that fuel, remember they use the old method BUT they don't have a lot of chemicals in it because engine failure at 15K feet is handled a bit different than engine failure on I-75. This is why is it generally referred to as "dry gas" by us redneck types that use it for airboats (which usually run on aircraft engines), so you will need to add some type of lubricant to the gas to make it work in a motor vehicle, it is a VERY hot fuel, not nitro hot, but you can melt down an automotive engine pretty easily.

View attachment 112038

Yeah, I figure in my car any octane advantage is going to reduced by a couple of points anyway.

I've heard of people adding Marvel Mystery oil to the gas tank. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about? I'll mention it to Lund.

 

[blacksheep-1]

Yeah, I figure in my car any octane advantage is going to reduced by a couple of points anyway.

I've heard of people adding Marvel Mystery oil to the gas tank. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about? I'll mention it to Lund.

I drop some 2 cycle oil in it, that is actually designed to burn in a combustion chamber

 

[Stangra]

When I was tuned for E85, Shaun at AED recommended that I use 1 or 2 oz/5 gal. of Marvel Mystery Oil in the tank too.

 

[BackInBlack]

When I was tuned for E85, Shaun at AED recommended that I use 1 or 2 oz/5 gal. of Marvel Mystery Oil in the tank too.

I'll ask Lund what they think... although -- since I have oil leaking into the cylinders maybe it's less necessary for me lol

 

[BackInBlack]

Today I swapped the plugs for a fresh set of NGK 6509's. I also bought a borescope. I scoped all of the cylinders and the scoring doesn't look too bad to my untrained eye... but the cylinders are no longer clean. There's a nice bunch of crud on the tops of all of the pistons. I expect a good dose of E-85 will fix that. Decided to stick with stock plug gap (.051) and then took a drive to make sure I didn't f*** anything up before the injectors go in. I think everything's fine.

I'll post pictures from the borescope along with numbered pictures of the 1 yr 10k mile plugs I just pulled out later this week. Still gotta put the new injectors in and do a datalog. Fuel is getting low already so I think I'll be on E-85 sometime next week...

 

[BackInBlack]

Fresh borescope pics! I'm not seeing anything particularly interesting in these... all I can say is, yeah there's scoring but to me it doesn't look horrible. I think the crud on the tops of the pistons is somewhat normal. And you can see there's plenty of pitting around the valves. That doesn't look good but I have no idea how bad that is.

If any of you guys see anything notable let me know!
CYL1

CYL2

CYL3

CYL4

CYL5

CYL6

CYL7

CYL8

 

[BackInBlack]

LU47 injectors installed. Datalog performed (93 octane). Got 2nd revision this morning. So far so good. (Thanks Lund) My fuel trims seem to have levelled out for the time being but I'm guessing it's just a result of the new injectors/tune and not because whatever the problem was is fixed. Still getting the same knock at WOT. Now I gotta test my local E85. This seems to be the biggest downside to me... testing before I fill up. I'll try it for a while... Lund did give me the first revision of the E85 tune so as soon as I run outta gas I'll be doing another log so long as the E85 around here is decent.

A friend of mine who builds engines looked at the cylinder photos and he thinks the, "valve pitting" I saw is just crud on the valves. Probably right.

 

[Stangra]

LU47 injectors installed. Datalog performed (93 octane). Got 2nd revision this morning. So far so good. (Thanks Lund) My fuel trims seem to have levelled out for the time being but I'm guessing it's just a result of the new injectors/tune and not because whatever the problem was is fixed. Still getting the same knock at WOT. Now I gotta test my local E85. This seems to be the biggest downside to me... testing before I fill up. I'll try it for a while... Lund did give me the first revision of the E85 tune so as soon as I run outta gas I'll be doing another log so long as the E85 around here is decent.

A friend of mine who builds engines looked at the cylinder photos and he thinks the, "valve pitting" I saw is just crud on the valves. Probably right.

FYI, the simple e85 test is actually measuring gasoline content not ethanol. The water in the test mixes with ethanol and the gas separates. With good e85 it's a fair test, but if your e85 has any water content it will measure as part of the ethanol

 

[steveespo]

Fresh borescope pics! I'm not seeing anything particularly interesting in these... all I can say is, yeah there's scoring but to me it doesn't look horrible. I think the crud on the tops of the pistons is somewhat normal. And you can see there's plenty of pitting around the valves. That doesn't look good but I have no idea how bad that is.

If any of you guys see anything notable let me know!
CYL1
View attachment 112072View attachment 112073View attachment 112074View attachment 112075
CYL2
View attachment 112076View attachment 112077View attachment 112078View attachment 112079
CYL3
View attachment 112081View attachment 112082View attachment 112083View attachment 112080
CYL4
View attachment 112084
CYL5
View attachment 112085
CYL6
View attachment 112086View attachment 112087View attachment 112088View attachment 112089
CYL7
View attachment 112090
CYL8
View attachment 112091View attachment 112092View attachment 112093View attachment 112094View attachment 112095

You have bore scoring in cylinder 2 and cylinder 6. Those vertical lines are not normal.

 

[blacksheep-1]

You have bore scoring in cylinder 2 and cylinder 6. Those vertical lines are not normal.

Yeah, but I've seen worse.

 

[BackInBlack]

Well -- I should probably update on my results -- but I'm not sure what to think right now because my results are a little mixed. On one hand, the fuel trim issue is gone, but I'm pretty sure it's not really gone and that it's just the result of getting retuned for these injectors. Which is fine. The car is running better than ever. Smooth running, smooth idling, and no starting issues. My local e85 station tested at e80 -- so not bad at all.

On the other hand -- I still have knock! The same 3 degrees of knock popped up at the same place at around 5k RPM. Lund is incredulous about this and says there's no way I'm getting real knock on ethanol. They're certain it's false knock. I was certain it was real knock because the only time I got it to go away was when I was running octane booster (to be clear, I only datalogged this once -- so it is possible it was a fluke). Now -- I'm thinking that it could still be real knock because Lund certainly retuned me to take advantage of the ethanol. If oil is still getting into the cylinders then it would affect everything the same way I suppose. But I'd have to think that Lund would know about this much better than I would...

Anyway, I'm on e85 and I do have some improvement overall so I'm happy! One step forward. Getting about 12MPG for anyone interested, which is smack on -1/3 of the 16MPG I was getting before.

So the mystery continues. WTF is causing my knock! Here's Lund's take on it: They say, these cars are getting pretty old now and we've tuned plenty of cars that have a little knock like yours and were unable to find any reason for it. As far as we're concerned you're good to go and continue modding, etc. They even said they wouldn't think twice if I put a blower on it... Now, I don't want to put a blower on this car, but if I did, I'd be too concerned about it's condition to do it, personally. But glad to have a vote of confidence! And thanks to Lund for helping me get this stuff done. I've had a helluva time with tuners.

One question for you guys: It probably doesn't matter but Lund gave me 2 final e85 tunes. They're both the same, but one has, "adaptive learning" on and the other one has it off. I get the feeling Lund intended me to use the adaptive learning off one -- but is there any advantage to one or the other (on e85)? Right now I'm running the adaptive learning off one, and my short term fuel trims are pretty balanced out -- so I'm not concerned about that at the moment.

BTW, forgot to ask Lund about the Marvel Mystery oil/2-cycle oil thing. I'll ask them and post what they say.

 

[steveespo]

Well -- I should probably update on my results -- but I'm not sure what to think right now because my results are a little mixed. On one hand, the fuel trim issue is gone, but I'm pretty sure it's not really gone and that it's just the result of getting retuned for these injectors. Which is fine. The car is running better than ever. Smooth running, smooth idling, and no starting issues. My local e85 station tested at e80 -- so not bad at all.

On the other hand -- I still have knock! The same 3 degrees of knock popped up at the same place at around 5k RPM. Lund is incredulous about this and says there's no way I'm getting real knock on ethanol. They're certain it's false knock. I was certain it was real knock because the only time I got it to go away was when I was running octane booster (to be clear, I only datalogged this once -- so it is possible it was a fluke). Now -- I'm thinking that it could still be real knock because Lund certainly retuned me to take advantage of the ethanol. If oil is still getting into the cylinders then it would affect everything the same way I suppose. But I'd have to think that Lund would know about this much better than I would...

Anyway, I'm on e85 and I do have some improvement overall so I'm happy! One step forward. Getting about 12MPG for anyone interested, which is smack on -1/3 of the 16MPG I was getting before.

So the mystery continues. WTF is causing my knock! Here's Lund's take on it: They say, these cars are getting pretty old now and we've tuned plenty of cars that have a little knock like yours and were unable to find any reason for it. As far as we're concerned you're good to go and continue modding, etc. They even said they wouldn't think twice if I put a blower on it... Now, I don't want to put a blower on this car, but if I did, I'd be too concerned about it's condition to do it, personally. But glad to have a vote of confidence! And thanks to Lund for helping me get this stuff done. I've had a helluva time with tuners.

One question for you guys: It probably doesn't matter but Lund gave me 2 final e85 tunes. They're both the same, but one has, "adaptive learning" on and the other one has it off. I get the feeling Lund intended me to use the adaptive learning off one -- but is there any advantage to one or the other (on e85)? Right now I'm running the adaptive learning off one, and my short term fuel trims are pretty balanced out -- so I'm not concerned about that at the moment.

BTW, forgot to ask Lund about the Marvel Mystery oil/2-cycle oil thing. I'll ask them and post what they say.

Glad to hear it is running well.