2013 Pentastar engine failure - feedback please

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: webfors
Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
I've looked through all the pictures of the head itself, and I'm missing the failure point there. What on the HEAD actually failed?



The head that failed isn't in any of the pictures.


I'd love to know the casting #'s off that head.

Looking at the pics I would be willing to bet big $$ that head was pried off. I would look at it as a blessing in disguise. A new engine is an awesome deal!

 

[Timo325]

Congrats on the new engine.

1. Pentastar engine is a decent engine.

2. You probably did nothing to crack that head. They have been know to have issues.

3. New belt, everything else should come with the engine. If you have money to throw at it might as well get a new WP. Otherwise drive on for another confident 50K.

 

[bdcardinal]

Originally Posted By: webfors
I was wondering when someone would mention that possibility. Pictures #64 and #68 clearly show a depression on the block just to the right of the crack, indicating some force was applied to that area.

Trav, exactly correct. I will not bring it up since this is playing in my favor. If it wasn't under warranty I would be there first thing Monday morning to meet with the service manager.

It's too bad I couldn't get pictures of the head they pulled. The service advisor stated it was 'sent off'. I'll ask again Monday. I will definitely ask to keep the right good head, or least spend an hour with it. I really want to see under the valve cover after 52K miles of VWB at 8-10K OCI's. Ideally I could get pictures of the 'bad' head since the left head runs much hotter.



They can't let you have it since there is not only a core charge on it, but warranty parts have to be saved for disposition from the manufacturer. If they pay for the repair they can call them back for whatever reason they want.

If it were my dealer, we would have no problem with you taking pictures before they slap it back on the block to send back.

 

[The_Nuke]

Am I the only one that laments the missed opportunity for testing out the claims made on the back of the JB Weld packages?

 

[FlyNavyP3]

Originally Posted By: Trav
That was my first thought after looking at picture #6 but didn't want to say anything. That's why I asked if its under warranty, no point throwing accusations out there if it is, it worked out better this way but if it wasn't I would sure say something to the dealer.
Just out of curiosity why would you change a WP with only 50K on it are they know to prematurely fail? I mean might as well throw a front transmission seal at it at the same time right if we are changing parts that are not even at 50% of the life expectancy. I know GM specs a min of 112K minimum life expectancy on OE parts I am sure Chrysler and Ford have similar.
Not saying I totally disagree with starting off with a clean slate but to me it seems a little wasteful. JMO.


My basis for the water pump suggestion was nust based upon it's relative difficulty to replace due to it's location smashed up against the strut tower with all of the front dress in the way.


The being said I suspect it will probably come installed on the new long block anyway.

On the topic of the broken block, hopefully I didn't step on any toes with that. My background started as a mechanic as a high school kid because I couldn't afford to pay anyone to fix my broken trucks and cars that I insisted on racing and breaking. That transitioned to a job at a Dodge dealership and eventually working in 4 different engine machine and race shops. Then came the Navy and eventually college where I eventually earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, fast forward about 5 years and the Navy sends me to school to train to be an Aviation Safety Officer (think NTSB crash investigator). I say all that to say this... I've spent a good portion of my life trying to identify the why or how something failed and trying to walk that back to part failure or human influence. I didn't mean to imply that the OP should point fingers at the dealership when he's getting an all new engine, only to ease his mind that the new engine should be trouble free.

 

[Trav]

Originally Posted By: FlyNavyP3

My basis for the water pump suggestion was nust based upon it's relative difficulty to replace due to it's location smashed up against the strut tower with all of the front dress in the way.
The being said I suspect it will probably come installed on the new long block anyway.


Makes perfect sense. I didn't realize it was that much of a bugger to change after the fact.

 

[webfors]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: webfors
Originally Posted By: 440Magnum
I've looked through all the pictures of the head itself, and I'm missing the failure point there. What on the HEAD actually failed?



The head that failed isn't in any of the pictures.


I'd love to know the casting #'s off that head.

Looking at the pics I would be willing to bet big $$ that head was pried off. I would look at it as a blessing in disguise. A new engine is an awesome deal!


I will be asking for the casting # tomorrow. I'll report back.

 

[The_Nuke]

The fact that they are replacing the head under warranty makes it a foregone conclusion it is one of the pentastar heads with the casting defect it would seem to me...

 

[webfors]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: webfors
Reading over a few forums/articles on this issue where is states poor quality gasoline, environmental conditions (aka heat) and specific use case scenarios as being the 'root cause'. This sounds to me like possible detonation from using low octane (regular) gas under hot/towing conditions. We did a lot of all three I'm sure camping with our pop up trailer (2000 lbs wet) through small towns, up north and out east. Thoughts?


I read that too. I'm wondering if you have an AA, AB, or AC head on that engine? The 2012's had AA heads and they were prone to failure. At some point in 2013 that problem was supposed to have been resolved, but from what I've been told there were several early 2013's produced with the AA and AB heads. There are a handful of 2014's with the problem as well, but I haven't been able to figure out what head they had. It was also stated that the AA and AB heads might have been in limited use in later model years, to use them up.

The left head is buried under the upper intake manifold and does get considerably hotter than the right side. That could be a reason for the failure.


How/where would you identify the head version? Let me know the details and I'll dig in to confirm.

 

[webfors]

Spoke with the service manager today and he confirmed the long block replacement. They also confirmed there would be no labour costs with a new water pump and serpentine belt. Cost for each were (keep in mind this is Canadian dollars):

Water pump - $218
Belt - $78

Prices seem steep, but that's OEM dealer pricing.

New spark plugs come with the long block.

 

[The_Nuke]

Originally Posted By: webfors
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: webfors
Reading over a few forums/articles on this issue where is states poor quality gasoline, environmental conditions (aka heat) and specific use case scenarios as being the 'root cause'. This sounds to me like possible detonation from using low octane (regular) gas under hot/towing conditions. We did a lot of all three I'm sure camping with our pop up trailer (2000 lbs wet) through small towns, up north and out east. Thoughts?


I read that too. I'm wondering if you have an AA, AB, or AC head on that engine? The 2012's had AA heads and they were prone to failure. At some point in 2013 that problem was supposed to have been resolved, but from what I've been told there were several early 2013's produced with the AA and AB heads. There are a handful of 2014's with the problem as well, but I haven't been able to figure out what head they had. It was also stated that the AA and AB heads might have been in limited use in later model years, to use them up.

The left head is buried under the upper intake manifold and does get considerably hotter than the right side. That could be a reason for the failure.


How/where would you identify the head version? Let me know the details and I'll dig in to confirm.


IIRC the AA/AC is stamped on inner exhaust port manifolds where they exit the head...should be able to see from outside without tearing down in other words

 

[webfors]

Would the following be considered an AA head?

https://www.moparpartscanada.ca/oem-part...TMtNmwtdjYtZ2Fz

If so, why would they still be selling the original problem head?

 

[The_Nuke]

Originally Posted By: webfors
Reading over a few forums/articles on this issue where is states poor quality gasoline, environmental conditions (aka heat) and specific use case scenarios as being the 'root cause'. This sounds to me like possible detonation from using low octane (regular) gas under hot/towing conditions. We did a lot of all three I'm sure camping with our pop up trailer (2000 lbs wet) through small towns, up north and out east. Thoughts?


All probably contributed to final straw that caused the casting defect to make itself known and kill the head...no single clear route to make it happen tho...i killed one by running E85 for 2 weeks straight...well, that and doing multiple WOT runs every day to datalog didn't help I'm sure

 

[The_Nuke]

Originally Posted By: webfors
Would the following be considered an AA head?

https://www.moparpartscanada.ca/oem-part...TMtNmwtdjYtZ2Fz

If so, why would they still be selling the original problem head?


it has been awhile since I researched this subject but from what I remember it's not quite that simple. You cannot identify a problem head by part number alone. It's part number plus year they were made plus some other things. They have a problem with the way they are casting the heads that they may not have even pinpointed or figured out yet. They just know they have a problem and can identify which heads are susceptible to it by certain batches.

So for one year, it's the AA heads, another is the AC, and so on.

Again, I may be misremembering some of this, but that's what I recall from my research on it all.

 

[The_Nuke]

Keep in mind that just because a head was cast in a batch that had some bad heads that doesn't mean every single head in the batch is going to be bad. It only means they consider all heads in that batch susceptible to this problem.

 

[The_Nuke]

The way I see it if there is a casting problem every single head cast with that casting problem is bad. The difference lies in that you have to cause the problem to happen and thereby causing the head to go bad. Not everyone can do that.

 

[440Magnum]

Originally Posted By: The_Nuke
The way I see it if there is a casting problem every single head cast with that casting problem is bad. The difference lies in that you have to cause the problem to happen and thereby causing the head to go bad. Not everyone can do that.


Its just the nature of casting metal that sometimes "bad things" happen. Voids, porosity, etc. A certain percentage of every batch have issues, but these days that percentage is usually really, really tiny. You can have a problem with a mold and casting setup where a larger PERCENTAGE of the batch has a problem than other batches, but it still doesn't mean that every part from the whole batch is bad. Classic case- the first 426 race Hemi in 1964. The whole first batch was cracking main bearing saddles and cylinder walls during qualifying runs and testing, so they hand-modified the molds to thicken the affected areas. After that, *most* of the blocks that came out were still bad, but they managed to cherry-pick enough good ones to give to all the teams at the 1964 Daytona 500. Then they went back and did the REAL fix to the molds, and the yield rate was fine.

That's why I tend to think the Pentastar issue was not a foundry/casting problem per se... I think it was a more identifiable design issue that they didn't go far enough toward fixing with their first (2012) revision and only finally nailed down in the 2013 revision. And you're right, its something that the usage cycle (loading, heat, whatever) very VERY strongly influences whether its going to fail or not. So I personally agree with you that all those early heads have the POTENTIAL to fail, but not because of a casting issue. The other thing that makes me think its more of a design issue is the fact that the first symptoms aren't coolant in the oil or something like that, it seems to be either a loud valvetrain noise or a more and more frequent cam phasing error (which would indicate cam or valve binding to me).

But that's all guesswork... its been very silent out there as to what the ACTUAL problem with the early Pentastar heads was. Unlike the 2000- early 2001 pre-"TUPY" 4.0 head casting where God and everybody knows its a propensity to crack from a water jacket into the under-valve-cover area above #3. Only God and a few engineers seem to know the skinny on the Pentastar... ;-)

 

[webfors]

What is the confidence level with this engine should I get a 2016/2017 long block from factory?

 

[Huie83]

That crack goes right into the water jacket, it would have been leaking coolant pretty bad before you brought it in.... Whether it was caused by the tech or a defect, glad they are taking care of you.

 

[bunnspecial]

Originally Posted By: The_Nuke
The way I see it if there is a casting problem every single head cast with that casting problem is bad. The difference lies in that you have to cause the problem to happen and thereby causing the head to go bad. Not everyone can do that.


In my little world of car interest where head failures come up, all North American spec heads from 1968 or later are suspect. I've heard that with the last casting number(CAM11106) you're having a good day if you find two uncracked ones out of five. I'm fortunate in that I have a rebuilt 12A2923 head lying here and a known good rebuildable CAM1106 lying here.

Since there are no new parts available, we just deal with the ones we can scavenge.