Behind the Scenes - This event is NOT to be missed.. over TWO BIG DAYS!

Nizpro is running a behind the scenes look at engine development and failure causes. This is what the dyno graphs and glossy magazines don’t show you!

As performance engine builders and tuners we are typically at the very edge of engine reliability, for some this line is crossed often, for others only very occasionally. However, no matter what one thing is guaranteed, we will all cross that line at some stage if we are pushing the envelope and the reasons why can be very hard to work out.

We are often left with a pile of melted or broken engine parts and diagnosing the failure becomes very difficult in many cases. The chicken or the egg theory is very hard to distinguish what came first. The trigger point, the very start of the failure, its often hidden amongst a pile of smashed pistons, connecting rods and bent valves. We are all born with zero experience and knowledge. All knowledge is learnt, it can be taught, or in the world of performance engine building/tuning it’s normally by experience.

Understanding an engine failure accurately is actually as important as understanding how to tune or build the engine in the first place.

Why? To understand a failure is a big step to insuring it wont happen again. Of course this is where experience comes in. Smash enough stuff and lets hope you work out what is causing it. The downside to this approach is cost. Secondly, how many times would you have liked to have known what caused a catastrophic failure? Was it a tuning fault, an assembly fault, a component fault or a machining error?

For more information on this course, email info@nizpro.com.au

For anyone that had been involved in this industry long enough the most common cause used by anyone trying to cover their wallets is “It was detonating” the global reason for every engine failure known to man, why was it detonating? “IT RAN LEAN”. The amount of times I have heard this is astonishing. It is most commonly heard from the parts supplier, engine machinist or engine builder, while they are all pointing their fingers at the tuner.

So here’s the six million dollar question. How do we prove what the failure was, how can we look at broken parts and identify what started the devastating chain reaction that lead us to all these broken parts?

We are all used to testing and measuring, we measure power and torque outputs, exhaust, intake and water temps along with air fuel ratio just to list a few. The problem with a destroyed engine is you end up with a jig saw puzzle of information. Many times meaningless and you can never be 100% sure what was the cause.

So how beneficial would it be to actually deliberately cause failures, one at a time, testing and measuring the failure at each interval. Using this procedure there is zero speculation regarding the initial cause. We instigated it, we know what the start point was. Accurate details of the type of damage can be gathered and documented and placed with the known cause.

Are you mad? You're going to take a number of perfectly good working late model turbocharged engines and destroy them? YEP.

Causing a known failure at a known time and recording the results is far more cost effective than doing it at a race track or spending time in court defending a failure that simply wasn't your doing. Like any form of diagnosis the better you are at it the more time you save and the more you can charge. This may not save you from a failure, it will however tell you what the failure was and allow you to make improvements to help prevent it happening a second time.


Course details

Course one will investigate the damage caused by:

• Valve seat failure
• Valve failure

This will include dyno running an engine at high speed and introducing a valve seat failure and a valve failure.

Engines will be dismantled to look at the differences between the similar failures and look at what distinguishes the difference in damage between these two similar catastrophic failures.

These will include the following:

• Ring butt
• Bore scuffing
• Chamber eaten away
• Damaged spark plug
• Cylinder located next to damaged cylinder showing similar signs
• Heat effected areas
• Debris damage to little end of connecting rod
• Melted alloy on back plate of turbo
• Melted alloy in turbine housing
 

When: Where: Time: Cost:		November 20th - 21st Nizpro Turbocharging - 6/46 Barry Street Bayswater Sat 9am to 4pm, Sun 9am to 3pm. $995* INC GST
*BBQ and Drinks supplied