September 2023 I had a substantial engine failure on my way to Final Bout 6 with factory rods 4, 5 and 6 being bent and rod #4 breaking completely.
You can see the damage that the rod breaking caused the engine block and oil pan. It also created a golf ball sized hole on the exhaust side of the block.
Below you can visually see the bending of the 3 rods at the rear of the engine. Quite impressive.
I have been asked; What caused the failure?
Here is my theory.
Looking at the dyno graph of the car, one thing is very apperant; TORQUE!!! This made the car an absolute blast to drive, but it was putting a ton of stress on the engine. I told my boss/tuner that I want as much torque down low as I can get, so he let the turbo spool as fast as it can down low until it hit the target boost and started to control it then. I figured; 1jz rods are shorter than 2jz rods, so they should withstand more abuse. That might be true, but I think I went past their limit.
At 3400RPM the engine was producing 400lbs of torque, at 3600RPM almost 450lbs of torque and at 3850RPM 500lbs of torque. That almost sounds like LS numbers. Driving the car like this for 2 years, especially at USAIR (home turf) where you have a lot of low speed hair pins where the car is living in that 3-5k RPM range really put it through it's paces.
So now we rebuild!
Luckily the head was undamaged, so it just needs a refresh. I packed up my spare 2.5L 1JZ block and crank, the crank from the broken engine along with the new internal parts and took them over to the machine shop.
The new engine block will consist of
BC Sportsman rods capable of 200hp per cylinder (1200hp total)
CP 9.0:1 pistons
ARP Main Studs
As more progress to the engine happens I will be updating the post with more photos and info!