I thought the term was "hydrolock". I guess it could be called several things. You know, the old you say "tomatoe" I say "tomahto" thing.

Interestingly enough I almost suggested hydrolock when this thread started. I was going to ask if you ran it through a deep puddle. Alot of these new little 4 cylinder cars get it when the owners put cold air inductions on and run through deep water. But then you said you rotated the engine with the bar and I dismissed the notion.

I've never personally heard of excessive fuel hydrolock. Usually just a cylinder washdown with fuel. Unless it happened instantly I'm trying to understand how this happened. You should have all kinds of ECM codes and safegaurds. How could the injectors dump that much fuel all at once? This is defeinetly an unusual case I would think.

I ran across these sparkplugs when doing some research about a week and a half ago. I thought it was interesting. I guess they would have helped you.
http://www.prepsparkplugs.com/frames.htm

Well, I wish I was some kind of help but I guess all we can do is hope and pray the crank, pistons, rods, heads and block withstood the lock.
Maybe Accel will do the right thing and hook you up with some compensation.

 

All that gas in the oil is very bad. It tears bearings and cams out like crazy. As long as it wasn't running long it might be Ok. Since the LT1 has a roller cam that's even better. Change the oil a few times before you drive it again.

I had a friend that had an engine built up for his Chevy 2. It had a conventional hydraulic cam. On first startup it was running poorly so he tweaked it enough to keep it running and get the cam broke in. He ended up dumping a bunch of gas into the crankcase....WAY to rich. It destroyed the rod bearings and cam/lifters. Good oil pressure until the end. He figures a combination of jetting (carb) and timing caused very low vacuum with held the power valve open and dumped lots of fuel to it. Amazing it would even run.

If you have good oil pressure and no knocks after a few hundred miles I think you would be fine...no damage. Good luck!!

 

If it hasn't been mentioned, make sure you have no sparks from ignition wires or anything else when you crank out the fuel from your cyls. My nephew about burnt his car to the ground in the exact same scenario as you're going thru.

 

oh, yea, about that... I learned the exact same thing... it was good the hose was very close by. It did melt a couple of rubber vacuum lines, but no real damage.

As for the oil/gas/filled crank case.

I still don't know WHY it happened, I just know it did.

When the engine died, it quit. I mean QUIT. I don't think I drove very far or very long with this problem. Maybe 10-15 seconds? It died on Saturday, then cranked, then locked.

The prior wednesday, I put a quart of oil in, cause it was low. At that time, the oil was still oil. This is good. Whatever damage might have been done was slowed by the flooding out of the cylinder.

There were zero codes on the ECU/CCM. Nada. And I checked that first.

Today's plan:

1) Fill the engine will new oil (Castrol GTX 5-30).
2) Squirt a small amt of oil into each cylinder (This is a suggestion via PM from MSeven - GREAT idea!).
3) Test the injectors. Make sure no fuel is pouring out of one.
4) Reinstall and start. Keeping it at idle and monitoring oil and fuel pressures (I have a gauge).

I am going to take nathan's suggestion and get an internal fuel pressure gauge. If one of those had been on the car, I suspect I would have seen a spike just before the car died, which would have saved a lot of this research.

I am SO glad I know how to do this... cause a shop would have gone through the same gyrations, at $50.00 to $100.00 an hour. I would be bankrupt before a fix was in.

I still need new plugs, but I am waiting on that.

 

If it's been hydrolocked, it's easier to do than you think, and injector stuck open etc, then you probably have a couple of bent pushrods

 

bastet44's car hydrolocked, and didn't bend anything.

I suspect a bend is more likely to occur if the lock happens during normal operations, not during a low rpm, or after a stall - and that's what happened here.

I am off to work in it!!!

Keep you all posted!

 

Hey Andy, been watching your thread here, sorry for the ongoing trials and tribulations of (multiple)Vette ownership.
Are you be inclined to pop off the valve covers and get the pushrods out? I rudely and crudely roll them on a flat glass surface/table to check for straightness sometimes.
Wishing ya luck.
(not even going to mention valve stems so as not to jinx) [/unjinx]

 

I ain't worrying about bent metal! I will find that in a few minutes when I try to start it.

If I hear noise, I am done... if all is well, I am happy. See?

What the problem is, if I keep taking stuff apart to inspect, where do I stop? If I have a major internal problem, I will hear it, period. Let the motor tell me what is wrong.

The engine is soaking in simple green (sides only!) and I am going to hose it off before I crank it over. the idea is to make sure oil is spread around. I have the coil fuse pulled right now, so it won't start. If I can do that, and it doesn't spread gas everywhere, I will start it.

I am going to pull plug #4 after the test crank to see how it looks. that's one that was full of gas earlier.

I will keep you all posted. Expect to hear something within the next 30 minutes.

 

12:33pm, PDT, And my poor little car is in the drive way, running like a champ!

No rattles, no knocks, nada... just smoke from the oil I squirted into the cylinders. That has all but blown off. I can hear it from here, and it sounds pretty good. The idle is smooth (as smooth as an SBC is) and sounds even (or, as even as this one ever has considering the batch fire injection).

I will be putting the various panels back together and driving over to autozone for more oil. Currently, I am waiting for this oil to get hot enough to boil off the nasties. Then I will feel good about changing to synthetics again.

Watch the C4 Tech area for a summary of what was learned. I will link the two threads, but I feel a separate summary page will be useful.

Thanks to everyone!!!!

 

You did install fresh oil and a new oil filter right?

If not, SHUT IT DOWN IMMEDIATELY and change those out.

Jake

 

I had no choice, Jake... the crankcase was FULL... with about 2 gallons of gas/oil... it wasn't pretty.

 

Sorry to read of your troubles Bogus and am glad you got her to fire. If you remember my fuel system troubles from when I joined the forum I replaced every part till it hit the right one the FPR. It seems we sometime neglect to check the easiest thing first but since my problem I have seen several other possible FPR failures symptom usually are hard start after being shut off warm and no problem starting after sitting for a day or 2. Just a reminder to all on this topic.Could easily mimic leaky injectors.

In your case it seems to me to be a catastrophic failure of the FPR not something that happend over time right? Did you have any hard start warning?

 

Bogus,
Glad to here all is well, Knock on wood, and the car is running good. Congrats on getting the problem resolved, now all we need to figure out for all of us is how to make a system that wont allow fuel back down the vacume line. Again Congrats

 

 

Good! I'm glad for you.

So what's the final verdict? What was the root cause? Did you determine if you have a leaky injector? Did you do a FP test and see if it holds pressure?

 

A bit of a summary:

I did run a pressure test, and it is running just under 40psi at idle, going up from there, as it should. The base setting is a bit lower, but, with the FMS 24# injectors, it should be a good balance, really.

The pressure is holding. I let the gauge stay on the fuel rail for a good 45 minutes (while I assembled the fenders and such) and the pressure was over 20psi when I vented it.

The car restarted just fine after the cool down, too.

I did have some clue - there was a hard start condition when cold (first start of the morning).

But there are SO many things that can be wrong, that I had to go through it step by step.

as stated earlier, I will post a summary thread to outline all steps taken and the results.

 

I'm glad you've got things under control Andy! That's good news! Congratulations are in order!

 

awesome nice job troubleshooting!

 

as stated earlier, I will post a summary thread to outline all steps taken and the results.

No offense, but seems its all been covered in the last 6 pages

 

Just because you read the book, doesn't mean that you can't enjoy the Reader Digest version.

RACE ON!!!