toyota 2zz-ge rod bearing failure, syntec 5w-30

[00 scrub]

Recently on the Celica club forum i frequent a person who tracks his 2000+ Toyota Celica GT-S with a 8200rpm fuel cut 2zz-ge destroyed his engine with a rod bearing failure. He said that what saved him was his Castrol Syntec 5w-30. I have the same engine and drive similarily to him. This kind of scares me.

[ August 26, 2003, 09:27 PM: Message edited by: rugerman1 ]

 

[Pablo]

saved him what?

 

[00 scrub]

he had soem sort of knocking sound and when the dealer pulled his engine and looked at his rod bearings ther ewere deep scores according to him. So I guess they hadn't compleatley failed. BTW why can I not link to the celica website?

 

[Ken2]

"destroyed his engine"..."what saved him was his Castrol Syntec...."

I guess the Syntec saved him the trouble of sweeping his parts off the road.


Ken

 

[Propflux01]

let me see, he revs to 8200RPM his engine bearings are toast and your saying the syntec saved it??

 

[00 scrub]

well since i cant link to it and everyone is getting confised I'll just quote his story here and see what people think.

quote:

---

Went to SF just two weeks ago. I started hearing a noise like my rod bearing were going out. When I opened the hood, it sounded like it was in the valves. So, still under warranty I took it into the local dealer here in Reno. They pulled the motor and stripped it down, being they couldn't find anything wrong in the upper engine. As they pulled the rod bears and the rods out I watched as three supervisors and three mechanics stood in awe. Each rod bearing was scored only down the middle and the entire bearing looked copper in color.

Well, to make a long story short. What is happing with the celica GTS or 2zzge engine is, when I was racing at the track I was punching the rpm's up to 8200 to keep the car in the power band. At that high rpm the crank wants to bust were each rod connects to the crank. So, at 8200 rpm's the crank starts to flex causing the bearing to squeeze out the oil and caused friction burn straight down the bearings. That sucked. They only thing they said that saved the engine was I was running Castrol Syntec 5w-30 oil.

Oh..and they covered it under the powertrain warranty. So, no cost to me, and they are being cool about and are putting my new clutch kit, flywheel and pulley kit in while the engine is out.

I guess some times a bad thing can be good thing.

---

 

[Pablo]

To be honest - he's lucky it was covered under waranty. "Racing at the track...." usually isn't covered. (And people worry about API, sheesh

)

8200 RPM is "in the powerband". Wow. OK. Well it sounds like an awfully weak design if reving in the powerband killed the engine like that, or the oil didn't do it's job, so basically I don't get it.

 

[Hirev]

Are you saying Toyota shuts the fuel off at 8200 RPM??? If that is the case there should be melted pistons in the motor also. I don't sound to me like syntec saved him. If the dealer is rebuilding the motor. About thoes kind of RPMs. If you want to play you got to pay.

 

[jsharp]

The redline on that engine is 7800 RPM. The fuel cutoff should be 8200-8400 and it shouldn't be run into cutoff consistantly. I guess Toyota knew where the redline should be set...

 

[alexiskai]

The 2ZZ-GE is a VVTL engine - variable valve timing and lift. The "lift," which I think means the valves are open longer, occurs only at the very top of the powerband. So when 2ZZ-GE owners are racing, they sometimes try to stay over 7K RPMs all the time, downshifting as much as necessary, in order to use the extra power from the lift. This guy appears to have taken that to the extreme and stayed just under the rev limiter for a long time.

 

[quadrun1]

Yeah I test drove that thing when it first came out--yeah, the power doesn't come on until, oh, 7,000 rpm or so? Kinda extreme!

The salesdroid actually encouraged me to drive a brand new Celica GT-S that way!

 

[Dan4510]

Give me an engine design that has a flat torque curve from 2000 rpm to red line. I hate to hunt for power at high rpm. I like the engine to pull extremely hard off idle.

When I built my last motor, i started with a large cam and went back to a much smaller one in terms of duration for this very reason.

Dan

 

[cangreylegend]

I remember hearing why the Legend/NSX used specially ground bearing interfaces on the cranks that were ground like a valley to "trap" the lubrication at high RPMS. F1 racing pays off.

Always heard that the new Celica engine is a "glass" engine. Toyota probably is aware of this.

 

[alexiskai]

Some quotes about the 2ZZ-GE engine:

"The 2ZZ-GE is a 1.8L (1796cc) all-aluminum in-line 4 equipped with Toyota's VVTL-i technology and a refreshing peformance G head design, developed once again in collaboration with Yamaha. The 2ZZ block is bored out from the 1ZZ's 79mm to 82mm, and the bores, instead of using thin-wall iron liners, use a metal matrix composite (MMC) with bonded-in ceramic fibers. The stroke is shortened from the 1ZZ's 91.5mm to a more rev-friendly 85mm. Next, the compression is pushed up to 11.5:1, and the piston skirts are coated with iron and tin for wear resistance. The end result is only 2cc's extra displacement but a whole different world in performance."

"The VVL portion of the system is similar to Honda's VTEC system, incorporating two distinct cam profiles. However, the actual mechanism is quite different. Both cam lobes operate a single wide rocker arm that acts on both intake or both exhaust valves.A needle-bearing roller on the arm follows the low-rpm, short-duration, low-lift lobe, forcing both valves to open and close on that profile. The roller design and roller bearings on the rocker arm pivot help to minimize valvetrain friction. The high-rpm, higher-duration, longer-lift lobe rubs on a hardened steel slipper follower mounted to the rocker arm with a spring. Even though the high-rpm lobe is pushing down further than the low-rpm lobe, the spring absorbs the extra movement. At 6000rpm, the ECU sends a signal to an oil control valve at the end of the camshaft that puts oil pressure behind a lock pin in the rocker arm, sliding the pin under the spring-loaded slipper follower, locking it to the rocker arm and forcing the arm to follow the high-rpm cam profile."

As you can see, the problem is it's just really hard to get 180 HP out of a 1.8L naturally-aspirated engine. Toyota shortened the stroke, increased the compression, and even then they had to put in an extra set of cams to eke out extra performance over 6K RPM. The result is an engine whose wimpy performance at "normal" RPM ranges encourages drivers to keep their foot to the floor, which can unfortunately lead to situations such as the one described above.

 

[Patman]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dan4510:
Give me an engine design that has a flat torque curve from 2000 rpm to red line. I hate to hunt for power at high rpm. I like the engine to pull extremely hard off idle.

---

Me too! Which is why I love the LT1 engine in my 95 Firebird, and why I love driving this car daily! It's peak torque is 325ftlbs at 2400rpm, and it makes 90% of that number between 2000 rpm to redline!

 

[Ryan00TJ]

Same here Patman! My LS1 makes 258 rwtq at 1800rpms. 280rwtq at 2200 rpms. 310 rwtq at 2500 rpms. Peaks at 361 rwtq 4500rpms and holds above 300 rwtq all the way to redline at 6500 !!!!

 

[Drew99GT]

Seems Honda got it right in terms of hp/liter small high revving engines. My buddy bounces off the rev-limiter (8200 rpm I believe) daily in his 93 Civic with a Japanese spec B16A that has way over 150K on the clock

No problems what so-ever. We even had the oil pan off the motor when he first got it, just to check things out, and the rod bearings were perfect. This engine was out of an 89 model Civic from Japan.

 

[novadude]

quote:

---

Give me an engine design that has a flat torque curve from 2000 rpm to red line. I hate to hunt for power at high rpm. I like the engine to pull extremely hard off idle.

---

That is the beauty of my 5.0 HO Ford!

 

[Hirev]

Yahza, 85 mm stroke at 8200 RPM is some serious piston speed. Seems like to much for a street motor to me. 327 Chev motor is only 82.55 mm. Seems to me the motor should have a much bigger bore and much shorter stroke If they want to RPM it so high.

 

[cangreylegend]

GM does not export as great a percentage of cars to countries that tax based on displacement. That encourages big engines with less technical precision and supposedly greater longevity. Honda learned what it took to spin engines from the late 80's and their record on engines show it. Too bad those engineers are now probably retired and that is why they can't compete in F1 now.