So on my way home last night [6/2] around 7:30p. Driving with traffic 70 / 75, high speed lane, giving I gas, no response. I was in manual mode so I shifted to 4th, still no accel, moved over to the middle lane and felt some serious bucking (almost felt like I was riding over rumble strips). Still tried to give it gas, no luck. Saw some white smoke pouring out of the drivers side front tire, first thought was crap flat tire, then crap maybe it's shredded (although as I was thinking, well that doesn't seem right for run flats but maybe i'm way off). The smoke continued to pour out as I moved over to the breakdown lane. Looked in the rearview and couldn't see anything across all 6 lanes of the highway (3 lanes north, 3 lanes south), complete white out. In this mayhem, a vehicle behind me crashed into the guardrail :/ (luckily he's ok sustained minor injuries and was sent off to the hospital, I didn't speak to the gentleman as I was preoccupied with on-star and figured I was the last person in the world he'd want to see). Rear of my car, covered in oil. Oil was leaking from the front end under the drivers side. The initial diagnostics said intake manifold failed (On-Star diagnostic). Anyways, tow truck guy showed up a little before 9 (left show around 7:30). He tried to turn it on, it wouldn't turn over, made an absolute racket (slightly concerned that I now have a wicked serious issue). Car is now sitting in the parking lot of the dealership.

Side note, was @ the dealership 4/28 getting the radiator replaced.

Vin#: 06631
Miles: 2,600

6/3: Update: Hole in the block, located passengers side under the headers. Can't be seen from above, no further information at this time. Root Cause: TBD
6/5: Update: Working with GM, team will be evaluating the vehicle.

 

damn....

 

Sounds like it broke a rod. Sorry to hear the bad news. Completely stock vehicle?

 

Sorry for your loss

 

Wow, what a Buzz Kill on a brand new car. You said the hole in the block was beneath the header. You talking the factory exhaust manifold or did you add LT's. Either way, hoping the best for you and speedy recovery for your Ray,

 

Damn! Sorry that happened to you. Please do keep us updated as to the diagnosis.

 

I hope your warranty is in tact.

 

Oh ****.... Nothing else you can say there.

Sorry for your loss. Completely stock?

Quick addition - sorry for the guy behind you, as well - if this turns out to be a stock car, GM should be dealing with that insurance company, not having to hit your insurance.

.

 

No oil pressure warning or anything like that?

If not my first guess will be dropped valve, good chance GM will not want that engine touched by the dealer so you may never know the cause.

 

If this is stock (which I believe it is), you can expect the claims team to be there (quite literally) tomorrow.

Catastrophic failures that pass CVN checks get people on planes, especially on new models, and especially since you have another vehicle involved in an accident caused by the damage.

Man oh man...

 

going to stay tuned to this.. I am interested to hear the outcome.. and also to hear if the vehicle was modded at all..

 

Well... in a way, I guess you're about to be famous once this starts hitting blogs, etc.

Not the best way to get there, but still. I really liked your car, too..

 

OP said on another site the car was 100% stock.

 

good to know.. thx kp. Now I wanna know what happened even more!!

 

Well, if my engine blew up I certainly wouldnt post on a forum and say it WASNT stock with my license plate and VIN. No reason for me not to believe him, GM will try their best to find out..

Stock engines fail, LS engines had oil pump issues early on, LS7 (C6 Z06) drop valves etc. A 50 cent valve keeper can cause a lot of damage so nothing is immune. Could have had an injector failure and hydraulic locked a cylinder, timing chain etc etc..

 

My C7 stock auto developed a rattling sound at idle that mimics the marbles in a can torque tube sound from the C5 years ago.

Took it into the dealer where I bought it, they did not hesitate to replace the entire torque tube assembly. I was told that the bearings were toast.

Others are having this issue as well. I have heard three other C7 Autos, and they sound perfectly quiet.

I checked with another dealer and they went through there service bulletins and found some reference to this issue. The car had 3,700 miles, with 99% of those miles driving through the winter months. No burnouts, no abuse whatsoever.

Other mention of this issue: http://www.corvette7.com/forums/showthread.php?t=354524

In my case the dealer did a fantastic job and got the car back to me in less than 5 days.

 

I have wondered whether we would see any cases of hydraulic lock with a DI setup from massive injector failure. If that is what happened I expect there will also be a DTC set because of fuel rail pressure being well below what was commanded.

When HPCR setups first appeared in the diesel world there were quite a few cases of burned and cracked pistons from injectors that would stick partially open due to foreign matter in the injector causing overfueling of a single cylinder. Leakage in a diesel is a bit less likely to cause catastrophic failure from hydraulic lock because the fuel is heat ignited and will begin to burn long before the piston hits TDC instead of remaining in liquid form but with the gas engine the fuel is going to build up waiting for the spark.

However there are going to be some failures including those resulting in catastrophic engine failure. As KP notes something as cheap as a keeper can fail and take out an entire engine. I remember Ford went through this a few years ago where a single cheap failed retainer was taking out most of the valve train in very low hour engines.

 

The same basic Gen V engine is going into a lot of new pickups and there doesnt seem to be a high failure rate, granted they are not as high strung as the LT1.

I worked for Ford in the 80s and early 90s and there were some good ones, both drivetrain and suspension/brakes, you just didnt hear about them because automotive forums werent around like they are now.

It absolutely sucks when you get a 'bad' engine, sucks even worse that some guy driving through your dumped oil or smoke cloud crashed. Hopefully the other driver isnt seriously hurt and the OP gets his car back in a timely fashion with some explanation as to what happened.

 

If it was an injector failure it was probably a manufacturing defect that would have shown up in any DI engine it fit regardless of the level of tune. I wouldn't expect these injectors to be a high failure item but rather a new source of failure joining other very low risk/low occurrence problems. It doesn't mean they will never occur but I expect if that is the problem it will be very rare.

Dumping oil which led to another accident is truly bad and of course it could have also led to a spin by the C7 driver. Nascar style oil spin incidents on the street are definitely not a good thing.

We all need to keep in mind that this incident is bad but at this point it certainly doesn't provide data indicating a systemic problem with the 6.2. Several years ago I was driving back to Cosby TN after dark in my nearly new 1991 GMC pickup and I had a sudden flat with lots of odd noise. When I took the pickup to a shop the next day to have the spare tire mounted on the regular aluminum wheel and to get a new tire for a spare the shop found a very slightly used disc brake pad which had fallen off someone's car and gone inside my tire and stayed inside the wheel. Surprisingly the aluminum wheel was fine but it shows what kind of odd things can happen. I could have understood a brand new pad that had never been installed but this one had slight use and thus apparently separated from someone's brake assembly.

 

BMW's direct injection injectors are very high failure, so I wouldn't rule that out with GM and this new generation of motors. There is always some place where the are engineering out costs, they usually reveal themselves in short order.