Did I Just Kill My New Engine?!

So do you feel lucky? I would as many others have suggested take a look at the bearings! Nothing worse than cruising down the road and every time you hear a weird or different noise thinking oh $h!t is this the day all he!! breaks out! Do yourself and piece of mind a BIG FAVOR have a look inside better to catch a little problem now than make a MAJOR problem for later! But that's my opinion! Let us know how it turns out what ever way you decide to go!

 

Drop the pan, inspect all the bearings, as said before; The time will be well spent ! ! !

4TTRUK

 

So Man you just proved your Human. No worries, we all do things of this nature. You are lucky nobody went to the Hospital.

Now for the remedy as a simple man sees it. Put some straight 40 weight in there and prime the engine for a good 10 minutes while turning the crankshaft very slowly. Are your bearings worse off than before, Yep you betcha. Good news is you probably broke it in to a 20k mile area if you only ran it for a short amount of time. After you have primed it for 10 good minutes drain the oil, change the filters, and ready for it..............replace the filter and the oil this time with some new fresh 40 weight and some Lucas oil stabilizer. Prime until the oil pressure gauge reads at least 20 lbs and start that Son of a Bitch up! Let it come to temperature before you give it any RPM's. Make sure the oil pressure stays up. If at any point during this excersize you hear a knock/knock or lose oil pressure shut it off and pull the motor to put new bearings in it and have the crank polished at the very least.

You have nothing to lose at this point because if you fried it enough to wreck the bearings its too late to just change them out. You will at the very least need to polish the crank and then install new bearings, camshaft, lifters and cam bearings. If you get this far put a new oil pump in it as well.


I have pulled apart engines running quite well that had small scratches on the bearings and matching ones on the crank, or some copper starting to show. What you are worried about is the gap being too wide for the film to provide lubrication and the change in direction providing a hammering motion on the crank/rod intersection. In a perfect world the bearings and crank would never touch.


I know some of the Sally Safety's and the Professional Retentive types will disagree but I'm guessin' you would like to do this with as little pain as possible. So get after it and let us know.


Good Luck,

Tim

I'm in Santa Cruz so if you need help let me know.

 

I laugh @ my bro when he leaves himself notes on his project, like "no oil" so he can tell where he left off. Now, I'm done laughing.

 

One thing's for sure ...you'll NEVER do that again !

T

 

I tend to think of myself as dandelion league.

 

As I age, there's 2 things I see fading; the first Is my memory, and the second one I can't remember.

 

I'm going to get some help from a friend who is a professional Mechanic with many decades experience on all kinds of cars (and equipment).

He is of the opinion that main & rod bearings would probably not be the first casualties, so what we are going to do is:

Put oil in the engine.

Pull the plugs & squirt oil in the cylinders

Pull the coil wire and turn the engine over to prime it & circulate oil.

Replace the oil & filter (& look carefully at both).

Assuming no big metal in the oil or filter start it and check for pressure, funny noises etc.

If we see anything bad we won't start it- thats when he would want to drop the pan and start checking bearings.

I work this weekend, so this may not happen till Monday, but the suspense is killing me, so if I have any energy after work it'll be sooner.

I'll post whatever happens.

Thanks to all for your input.

 

Ha-
I must've been typing while TERPU was.
-And his suggestion is an awful lot like what we're planning.

 

I did that once years ago with a 350 Olds. But the crank froze up on me after a minute. Thats when I remembered the oil..
Had to rebuild everything.

 

My opinion is if the engine is a complete bone stocker, then fill with synthetic and run it as is.

IF, however you have any sort of money tied up in this engine then completely disassemble and inspect. this is just what happens when you mess with cars----goes with the territory.

I wouldn't freak--the world did not come to an end. I've pulled many boners and will most probably pull many more.

 

I helped someone who went through a similar senario . One exception though- this guy was in a hurry to go a cruze night and drove the car 3 miles before realizing he didnt refill the oil after draining it he night before. When he noticed no oil pressure he shut it down and parked it. Ya he felt beyond stupid when we found the drain plug and the oil drain pan right where he drained it.
So.... We pulled all the plugs. Gave each cylinder a shot of 30 straight weight . Replaced the oil filter. Then we filled up the crankcase with straight 30. We hand spun the crankshaft a few times to verify it had free movement. We also checked the crank end play. If everything moved freely and no excessive end play , we then cranked the engine over via the starter to get the oil moving through the engine. 5-7 minutes was enough time wise. Then we drain the oil. We checked the pan for metallic fines and none were found. Then we took a narrow pick up tool magnet wrapped it once with electrical tape and slide it into to oil drain plug hole. We moved it around in the oil pan to see if there were metallic fines in the pan bottom. Again none found. We cut the oil filter open and also nothing found. We put it back together and made sure oil was in it and fired it up. It has over 10 k miles on it with no problems. The engine is a 327 Chevy.

 

If this were some old tub, "I would say yea roll the dice, dump some oil in and fire it up". But its not, its a fresh motor. Just doesnt make sense to me to risk screwing up a couple g's worth of new parts and fresh machine work out of laziness.

 

Don't be too hard on yourself...like it was said earlier, we've all pulled boners, and likely will again....mind you, this one is a doozy! At the very least, I think it's worth dropping the pan and have a quick look at at least one main bearing...just to see if you've wiped it or not...it would be a shame to ruin a crank if you can get away with just bearings.....or with any luck, maybe nothing. Good luck and let us know how you make out.

 

I'd take it apart and have a looksy...metals that you barely see now, could get pushed through and wipe out the cam and lifters later...just me...if you'd said you just fired it up for a few seconds or a minute, then I'd have no worries, but "running worse and louder", leads me to believe you ran it long enough to eat away at something.

Best of luck!

 

pull the pan look at some bearings, rods and mains. If they look good, put the pan back on. fresh oil and filter, drive it. not the first engine thats been run without oil and lived.

 

Well, as usual there are a whole lot of opinions
Some good, some bad, some funny, some sad.
I will tell of of my real life experience and let you make up your own mind based on all the junk you read here.
Pulled a car down to the frame for a complete rebuild. The motor, a 331" SBC with 10.75:1 Comp, BIG cam, all the good stuff came out complete and sat in the corner of the shop for 6 months while I build the car. When I put it all back together, I noticed the oil filter was still on it. My buddy checked the trans oil, still full, and the phone rang. While I was talking he went for burgers. I kind of assumed that he checked the motor oil as well and since the trans was full and the filter was still on the motor, I didn't give it a second thought. I fired it up and let it idle for a minute or so when the damn phone rang again. Shut it off and bs'd with a customer. I re-fired it and noticed no oil pressure, thought wow that's weird, gauge must be acting up. Reved it a few times, still nothing. Noticed a little oil weeping on the back of the gauge (mechanical type) and thought Ahhh, it's not reading as the loose line is loosing the pressure at the gauge. Let it run a few more minutes, Reved it to 5,000 or so a couple of times (damn that motor sounded good with that much compression and cam) and after a short idle, shut it off.
I'm sitting in the can reading a favorite mag when my buddy comes back. I come out and he's checking the oil. Says "we better put some oil in it before you start it". I don't say anything and pout in some oil, hmmm, 5 qts to bring here up on the dipstick. I tell him about it and he looks at me like "You Dumb-shit", I just shrug.
WELL the bottom line - That motor did over 38,000 more miles that I know of, including a couple of High 10 second passes, before I sold it and lost track of it. I reckon it was fine.

 

Given the current cam sticks available these days, unless it is a roller cam, the cam would be my biggest concern, then the oil pump, then the #3 & #6 rod bearings.

Since it is a fresh motor, I would pull off the oil pump, pull the cover off and look at the condition of the pump rotors and end plates. If they are scored up, you will have to look at the cam lifter surfaces, unless it is a roller cam, they likely will be scored up as well. I would also pull the pan and check #3 & #6 rod bearings as well. If this stuff shows any sign or wear, I'm betting the cam is a goner. I'd pull down the motor and redo what ever it needs. Even new cams are a crap shoot these days, your cam is at a disadvantage over normal cams.

If the oil pump rotors and end plate surfaces look OK, and the rod bearings look OK, I would probably take a chance on the cam. I would reinstall the pump and the pan and take a chance filling the motor with oil, priming the pump with the Mopar priming tool, and fire that bad boy up.

If the motor had 10,000 or more miles, I would have filled the oil, primed the oil pump, and ran it. Mopar 383s are tough motors. A fresh motor has not had enough time for everything to begin to work together yet.

Back when we were dirt track racing, our car got into a fender bender and the car devoloped a smoke trail that went on for about 3 laps before it quit smoking. The car ran at racing speed (about 6,000 rpm) for another 5 laps after the smoke quit. At the end of that race, we had to race in the next race and only had a couple minutes to prepare. We found a hole rubbed in the oil filter, bent the offending object away from the filter, installed another oil filter, added 5 quarts of oil, and sent the car back out to race. That motor went on to race another 5 nights before the season ending wreck killed the car. The motor was put into my work truck where it outlasted that truck. Gene

 

I agree............and that is the great strength and much of the appeal of the HAMB..........but that is secondary to my main point......that being......for all the diverse opinion, the OP is footing the bill and would be best served by doing what he deems is in his best interest.

The pan removal and bearing inspection many of "us" have recommended is the more conservative approach, but also inexpensive and not especially time consuming.

The other options aren't necessarily "bad", they may work fine, but cost as much in time and effort........and just a bit more chancy....

Sort of the kind of choice Dirty Harry offered.........
"are you feelin' lucky.........?

Ray

 

4woody>>>Did I Just Kill My New Engine?! >>>

No.

Jack E/NJ

 

Well, a few weeks ago I bought a Nissan Altima that was wrecked. I ran it all day off and on just playing around and having fun. I drained the oil and poured 2 - 16 oz bottles of oil dry into the engine. It ran for about 15 minutes before I shut it down. Cranked it up the next morning and put her out of her misery. Maybe you didnt damage it.

 

Moot point. The OP is $ at risk, as well as time, stress, ect. There is no one 'right' answer to approach this problem. Ego aside.

 

So what did you decide to do ????

Scotty

 

The smart thing to do is to take the bottom end apart to see what the damage is if any. Why would you run it and chance destroying an engine that is salvageable ?

 

Whose "ego aside".....yours or mine? You seem to have a beef with my opinion, in particular, which is kind of odd, considering it is essentially the same as at least half the others who posted.


Ray

 

I have seen this same thing happen at the drag strip a few times and it even happened with a Top Fuel dragster team whose name I won't mention to avoid further embarrassment.

Once they realized they had drained the oil but did not replace the oil and dropped the pan and remove the bearings and much to their surprise they did not look bad!!!!

The tricky thing is how long did you run the engine and how high did you rev it?

I have seen guy's start brand new engines right from the machine shop without realizing they did not properly spin and prime the oil pump.

Best of luck Jimbo

 

X2 -
Fresh vs old equal a big difference !

Be careful with your expectations on what to find in the pan.
A new 1.5 hr run time engine will have some metallic particular matter in the pan and filter any way had it not been ran dry. Don't confuse the normal with what might be abnormal.

Chances are you didn't kill it and maybe maybe there is no damage.
Best case scenario you put a few thousand miles wear on it it 5 mins running dry.

 

On the other side of the discussion... I bought a really nice 84 Caprice wagon with a 350 that only had one thing wrong with it - the oil pan was rusted through. I put a new pan on it and drove it for almost a year before the bottom end went out.

I have no idea how long the previous owner ran it dry of oil or how often. But now I wish I had checked the bearings when I had the pan off.

 

Im sure you now have enough opinions on what to do before you refire her so I just wanna say Yes it really sucks but I can see how it happened...guess im saying its not like you should feel like an idiot.
Weve ALL done stupid stuff to our rides.
Hope it works out well for ya.

 

EDIT: i would like to remove the inappropriate verbage regarding gene snow (not capitalized out of disrespect); It was completely inappropriate and i apogle to any affected parties.

Additional notes:
1) i am not apologizing concerning any behaviors or actions he practiced with adults. i did not mean to imply anything he did with adults was inappropriate or distasteful. But, as you may know, not just adults were involved in his particular case.......

2) The part about me, however, about pulling boners in the past and very likely pulling more in the future IS appropriate----because it's true.