Fellas,

Here is an email from a buddy that has a 67 camaro.

Some Background: He has a 67 Camaro and two years ago paid a local race shop in Houston to put a new ZZ4 crate motor in his car. it now has 8k miles and he shifts at 6,000RPMs and does not have nitrous...

honestly he has more money then sense...

He has poured thousands of dollars into the local speed shop and they have rapped him before. He is a nice guy with a great job an likes his muscle car but has no background and or mechanicall ability! If they told him his headlight fluid was down two quarts and was a $400 job he would say....OK...Your the expert....

But he notified me of an recent issue last night, I want you to read this and give me your opinion on if this is even possible or if you think he is being taken for a nice $$$$ ride!

See my comments afeter his email:

His Email:

Hey Michael

Oil leak turns into something more......I was on my way to mechanics shop to have them check oil leak and had a later model (2001-2004 or somewhere in there) Vette pull up behind me on the Katy freeway. He
jumps on it so I do too. From 70-120 he was steadily pulling away.
Something wrong!

I talked with the mechanic and asked when last time we did a tune up, and it had been a long time so instructed him to tune it....Mechanic
does a pressure check and one cylinder is at about 70PSI. Did another
type of pressure check and determined it is compression ring. They say it is the pressure that is forcing oil out around either the rear main or oil pan.

They are going to take engine out and send to their engine rebuilt guy
to open it up to determine total damage in $$ terms. May have to get
my ZZ427 now......though not the aluminum block version, too expensive.


My comments:

I think this is B.S. And feel he needs to verify the compression with a quick test I offered to do! I can't imagine that the shop knowing it is 8K miles would want to immediately tear it out and rebuild if they did not have $$$ on the their mind.

I have never heard of a blown ring causing an oil leak in the pan?

These ZZ4 Motors are not bubba built and should handle 6,000 RPMS for way more than 8k miles.... He mainly cruises this car.. and beats on it occasionaly, its not like it is at the local drag strip weekly... so I would say the majority of the 8k is town driving...Under 3,000 RPM. He is great with scheduled oil changes and maintenace..nothing but the best for his baby...

I'm trying to convince him to yank it out of the speed shop before they get deep into his wallet and let me run some compression tests on it!

a little fishy to me!

What are your opinions? Thanks!

 

I don't see how it could harm him to have a 2nd opinion on the compression.

I'm no expert on these things...but I thought ring problems usually resulted in oil passing the rings the OTHER direction and burning during ignition (smoke, fouled plugs, etc.). I don't see how a bad ring would cause MORE pressure in the lower end to push oil out the pan or main seal.

 

Here was my mail response to him:

regarding the blown ring. The more I think about it is the car smoking on one side at all usually if the rings are damaged you will get smoke out of that side of the exhaust because it's allowing it to burn some oil. And I can't grasp why a compression ring would cause your oil pan to leak...? This should have nothing to do with rings. Like I said it would start burning oil and smoking but I have never heard of a ring causing an oil pan leak. You may just have a oil pan seal leaking! I would physical go there and ask them to show you the compression check and the bad cylinder!

Don't let them sell you a rebuild you don't need because they need some income! Those ZZ4 engines are pretty stout and should take a lot of abuse before they need rebuilt.

If folks only got 8K miles out of those ZZ4 engines they would gone by now... Something just does not add up? Either you are the lucky one that go the defective crate engine... or you are shifting at 8000 RPM or something to cause enough damage to the engine to have issues.

The carburetor could easily be causing it to seem underpowered. Carburetion requires constant tuning to get peak power.

I'm not saying it's not F-ed and needs rebuilt. But it should'nt...for what they cost.

A SIMPLE COMPRESSION CHECK WILL TELL YOU IF THEY ARE FULL OF IT!

 

a compression problem is either valves or rings, either way the heads gotta come off and if rings the pan and head has gotta come off.
then you have to drop the crank or push the piston out the top.. real hard to do with the engine in the car. a cylinder leak down test can be done fairly quickly to check it out

 

If the rings on one cylinder do not seal because they are cracked or shot from some other reason, the blow-by into the crankcase can cause it to become pressurized. The excess pressure will come out of the crankcase somewhere, probably thru the breathers if he has them or ...maybe even the gaskets & oil pan seals - bringing the oil along with it!!!

If he had a detonation problem, he could need a teardown-re ring and overhaul. I suspect the bores would be fine with the low mileage so maybe just a re-ring overhaul would do the trick.

Just a possible scenario based on the information presented.

Are you over reacting? possibly yes.

-Mark.