LB7,LLY, LBZ piston failure question.

SmokeShow

Well-known member
Nov 30, 2006
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I know of a guy who has recently lost a piston in a pulling truck and always ran additives.

Piston no. 7 One of the ones that gets the worst airflow from the intake. I think the piston failures are heat related.



C-ya
 

JoshH

Daggum farm truck
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Feb 14, 2007
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#4 here, and I know of a 200 something thousand mile stock 01 LB7 that was worked hard that had a failure very similar to mine on the same piston.

No additives, was running a fairly conservative (for me) tune, and had 5w40 synthetic oil in it at the time. I think the oil temps are a big contributing factor to piston life.
 
Mar 27, 2008
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Sheridan, IN.
If heat, either in cylinder, or oil, is main and contributing factor why is only one piston failing in most trucks, instead of numerous piston in the same trucks. I know there have been a few with multiple failures, but the majority only one piston failure. I woudl think this would be rather uniform from cylinder to cilynder, so why are most just losing one. If it is from oil temp it would make sense to always be the ones furthest from the oil pump suply, the oil would heat up more,from radiant heat from the engine, the further in route to and to oil galleris. From reading it sparatic on which piston goes when one does go
 
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McRat

Diesel Hotrodder
Aug 2, 2006
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The answer to that is balance. There is always "weak cylinder", and it will be the one to go first. If you get the balance perfect, you can push the engine harder, and all will fail at the same time.
 
Mar 27, 2008
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Sheridan, IN.
In a truck with a single piston failure, do the other piston normaly show signs of stress that could leed to piston failure? Is the "weak cylinder" the main contibuting factor to failure of a piston? What are the difference between the other cylinders and the " weak cylinder" on average.
 
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duratothemax

<--- slippery roads
Aug 28, 2006
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I know there have been a few with multiple failures,

:angel:


oil cooler sounds good to me too, but ive heard of problems with KB's oil cooler starving the engine of oil on cold startup...where I go to school it gets -20* in the winter and that could turn into a bad situation. :(

I still keep meaning to hook up my 'slick' oil temp guage that integrates into the stock instrument cluster.
 

McRat

Diesel Hotrodder
Aug 2, 2006
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There are various temperature flow solenoids that can stop starvation.

The hot ticket is an "accumulator" like they use in airplanes. It stores pressurized oil for use when starting or nothing at the pickup.
 

SBCNX20

Junior Member
Aug 7, 2006
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Im wondering are all the pistons cracking above (parallel to) [or in line with] the pin. The ones I've seen are.
 

Cougar281

Well-known member
Sep 11, 2006
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St Louis, MO
The thing is.... There's no need to run that much timing... Use Michael's pw vs CA degrees spreadsheet and see how much duration is needed for a 3000 us pulse at 4600 rpms It will blow your mind. 82.8 degrees of duration! :eek:

So if you subscribe to the 50/50 theory then you need 41 degrees of advance to make that happen. Not an ideal situation...

Shorten up the durations by using a larger injector orifice and you'll be able to run less timing and get the injection duration down to 30 degrees or so. This will decrease heat, increase power output per fuel used and be easier on the motor.

At 1500us duration you only have 41 degrees of total duration, which is roughly 20 degrees of advance for a 50/50 shot.

In JNeals motor we've targeted 12 ATDC for EOI which equates to 26 degrees at 2000us. This has proven to make some very good power on an otherwise stock motor, single pump, w/ cheetah. The truck runs dead clean after spool up and only runs 1450 going down the track with 40,000lbs behind it.

Using Michael's spreadsheet, at 4500 rpm we should use 42 degrees of timing advance for an EOI at 12 degrees ATDC. We're not loading the motor up there though, we just use that for inertia getting off the line. The truck carries around 3400-3000 rpm going down the track, and this is where the spreadsheet tells us we should be running, you guessed it 2000us and 26 degrees advance ;) If the motor was built I wouldn't have a problem running it out to 42 degrees advance at 4500 rpm but if the situation arose where we encountered a heavy load at that RPM I'm sure it would spell disaster on stock rods/pistons.

Just something we've learned and proven on the track. I really need to get some CP data from the truck. I think it would be interesting.

Brayden

This is pretty much what I thought, but when I asked about it, no one really gave me much of a straight answer like yours, Brayden. What do you think would be the ideal size injector for a DD with occasional drag strip, and possibly sled pulling in the future? I need to get a LBZ/LMM CP3 and modded FPR, maybe I should have the nozzles honed at the same time.

I still keep meaning to hook up my 'slick' oil temp guage that integrates into the stock instrument cluster.

Do tell.... :)
 

duratothemax

<--- slippery roads
Aug 28, 2006
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some of mine were starting to crack at random parts of the lip when I tore my engine down, parallel to the wrist pin, perpendicular, 45* to it, etc...
 

SBCNX20

Junior Member
Aug 7, 2006
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some of mine were starting to crack at random parts of the lip when I tore my engine down, parallel to the wrist pin, perpendicular, 45* to it, etc...



Hmm
Jasons Ross pistons have small cracks at all of the edges of the valve reliefs but the worst are inline with the pins
 

LBZ

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Jul 2, 2007
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Hmm
Jasons Ross pistons have small cracks at all of the edges of the valve reliefs but the worst are inline with the pins

This is what I have seen/heard about the LBZ piston's that fail which seem to lead me to believe that Pat is correct with the whole pressing the wrist pin in issue.
 

othrgrl

Diesel Addiction Owner
Mar 10, 2008
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This is pretty much what I thought, but when I asked about it, no one really gave me much of a straight answer like yours, Brayden. What do you think would be the ideal size injector for a DD with occasional drag strip, and possibly sled pulling in the future? I need to get a LBZ/LMM CP3 and modded FPR, maybe I should have the nozzles honed at the same time.

I put 90hp Industrial Injectors in mine when I upgraded to an LBZ CP3 and 71mm Cheetah. These are about 45% over stock injectors. It will take some tuning to get them running right on your truck but myself or Fleece can help you with that. My pulse width and timing are much lower now and the Cheetah cleans up the smoke almost completely. On a stock LBZ CP3 I hold about 21K PSI of rail pressure on my 12.4 runs and my EGTs are way down. I'm on stock bottom end - we'll see how long it holds up making 5-10 passes a week at the track and driving the hell out of it on the street at this power level.
 

Cougar281

Well-known member
Sep 11, 2006
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St Louis, MO
Thanks for the info Dustin. Sounds like the injectors and Cheetah (which is also on my list; one thing at a time, unfortunately) helped cool things off, which is what I'd like to do.

I put 90hp Industrial Injectors in mine when I upgraded to an LBZ CP3 and 71mm Cheetah. These are about 45% over stock injectors. It will take some tuning to get them running right on your truck but myself or Fleece can help you with that. My pulse width and timing are much lower now and the Cheetah cleans up the smoke almost completely. On a stock LBZ CP3 I hold about 21K PSI of rail pressure on my 12.4 runs and my EGTs are way down. I'm on stock bottom end - we'll see how long it holds up making 5-10 passes a week at the track and driving the hell out of it on the street at this power level.