- This is our 2005 Nissan 350Z that we slapped a turbo on.
(heavy metal music)
And it was absolutely great until-
(engine revs)
- [Nolan] Uh oh.
- Oh no! - You hear that?
- [Aaron] Yeah.
- [Nolan] Low Car broke.
- We blew it up.
But the question is, how did it blow up?
Was it 'cause of the turbo?
Was it 'cause of the install?
Was it 'cause of Nolan? (dramatic synth sing)
Today we're gonna get to the bottom of what killed Low Car
so it doesn't happen to you.
Let's go. (smooth jazz music)
Thanks to Omaze for sponsoring today's video.
My name's Jeremiah Burton,
and giving you the chance to win this car is my business.
I'm out here at the Peterson Museum in LA
to give y'all the exciting news
that the good folks over at Omaze are giving you
the chance to win this Superformance MKIII-R
with taxes and shipping included for US winners.
Just go to omaze.com/donut22
to enter for your chance to win.
This iconic American Roadster is modeled after
the iconic Shelby Cobra
designed by the legend Caroll Shelby himself.
You ever heard of him?
It's got a 7.3 liter Ford Godzilla V8 engine,
a five speed manual,
and slithers down the road with a striking 650 horsepower.
Not to mention if you win this you get to pick
whatever rootin' tootin' beautiful color you want.
And to top off this happy sandwich,
donations benefit the Peterson Automotive Museum.
That's where I'm at right now.
A nonprofit that preserves automotive history
and its impact on the world.
They work with underserved communities,
boasts educational programs,
and lead preservation activities,
and your donation will help them
continue to build automotive history.
So head on over to Omaze.com/donut22 today
to enter for your chance to win.
Good luck.
All right, now who do I have to talk to
to get my catfish Camaro in here?
Huh? Anybody around?
You ma'am with the blazer.
Nope?
Nope, you're not, nope.
If you watch our channel,
you know that we took a stock Nissan 350Z
and put a bunch of cheap parts on it,
most notably this Rev 9 Turbonetics Turbo Kit.
And to be honest,
we didn't exactly do
the most professional job installing it.
- Nice little trip down memory lane.
We used these zip ties
so the intake would clear the radiator.
Powerade bottle as a catch can.
This is how we do it.
We really (bleep) this car.
- So our plan of attack
to diagnose Low Car's engine is this.
First thing we're gonna do
is we're gonna crank up the engine and take a listen
and look to see if that will help us in the right direction
where our problem is.
Next we're gonna do a compression test
and see which cylinders might be causing that problem.
Then we're gonna use some actual science
and send the engine oil off to a lab for analysis.
And then finally, I'm gonna fully tear apart this engine
and see what broke and why.
And to have a little fun,
in this envelope I wrote down what I think happened
and we'll see if I'm right at the end of this.
If you wanna play along,
leave a comment down below
if you think you know what happened.
Don't skip ahead to the video
and then come back and comment.
I'll know.
(upbeat rockabilly music)
Before we even touch the engine on Low Car,
we have the luxury of being able to start it.
Nolan's in there, he's gonna crank it up.
We're gonna listen to the engine
and we're gonna see what kind of smoke
is pumping out the back.
Nolan, crank her up.
(engine starts)
- Already some smoke coming out the hood.
It smells. Yeah.
- Now one thing you can do to diagnose a potential problem
is looking at the color of the exhaust smoke.
So right now this is bluish gray,
which is a good indicator that we're burning oil.
If it was black it would mean we'd be running too rich,
so maybe some sort of air-fuel ratio problem
or a clogged injector or a clogged air filter.
If it was whiter and smokier,
it's a good indicator that it's coolant.
So you look for a head gasket leak or something like that.
But because this is blue and gray,
we know that we're burning oil.
Also, it sounds like total dog (bleep).
Which is a very good indicator
that one of the cylinders is probably down.
Don't put your finger in there, dude.
Yeah, I know, But what if it went unseized real quick?
The last thing we need is Aaron to lose a finger.
It's getting worse as it goes and the engine is,
sounds like it's about to die.
So we're gonna pull it into the shop
and we're gonna do a compression test
and find out which cylinder is giving us the problem.
- There's oil on the bottom- - Nice residue.
- That's like an anti rust kind of coating.
Keeps the carbon from rusting.
- So compression test is a way to check out
how much pressure is being created inside the cylinders
as the piston moves up and down.
So what we can do
is test the compression of each cylinder on Low Car
and determine if any of them are low or have no compression.
After we know the bad cylinder or cylinders,
we can take it apart and assess the damage
on those particular areas.
Well, that's great.
There is a ton of oil on this plug.
Either the rings are bad or cylinder's bad,
but that much oil on a plug is not good.
Got a little cardboard piece that Jimmy gave me.
the heart and soul of Donut,
so I could write down each cylinder.
Okay, ready Nolan? (engine cranking)
Hold up. - That was weird.
- That was a weird noise.
- [Jeremiah] We're getting zero PSI on this cylinder.
- [Nolan] Well, I think that's our problem.
- Let's check the next cylinder.
(car cranking)
We're about 145.
(car cranking)
160.
We have our first non oily plug.
Everyone clap it up. (everyone clapping)
(engine cranking)
150. (engine cranking)
- Where are we at? - 150. Whew.
- The final one, Nolan. (engine cranking)
Almost 150, 148.
All right, so the right bank of cylinders is pretty good.
We're at 150, 148, 150.
When we move over to the left side,
160 pretty good,
145, pretty good,
then zero, which is a pretty big problem.
You know you have a problem when you pull the plug
and there's chunks of metal and a lot of oil in it.
So once we get this engine pulled,
we'll break it down,
and that will be the cylinder that we focus on
'cause likely that's where the problem is.
- All right, so obviously this thing is broken,
but got some really cool stuff in the works
to make it unbroken.
Maybe not with this engine,
so make sure you like and subscribe this video
to see that when it comes out.
- So cylinder one during the compression test
gave us a reading of zero PSI.
Pretty good indicator of where our problem is.
And there are a couple of ways a cylinder can go
from 150 PSI to zero PSI.
So while Nolan and Aaron pulled the motor part,
we can talk about them.
In order to keep compression in a cylinder,
you have to keep a seal between a bunch of parts.
And if any of those parts fail you lose your seal,
and with it your compression.
So let's talk about some of these parts that could fail.
You got holes or cracks in the pistons,
the valves don't seal and leak,
the head gasket could blow, damage to the cylinder wall,
a bad timing belt or chain in our case,
or missed timing in general.
Also, the rings on the piston could fail.
So already there are seven things that could be wrong
solely based on our compression test.
But in our case, we can rule some of them out.
For example,
a blown head gasket on a VQ
will drop compression on multiple cylinders.
So we know it's not that.
Now a bad timing chain or belt
would also imply other cylinders have bad compression.
And again, we only got one problem child here.
Which brings me to my next point.
We don't just have low compression,
we have no compression.
So I would guess that we have some sort piston damage
and/or ring failure.
And when you get those failures,
you typically also get cylinder damage.
All of which can lead to zero compression.
And I can confirm that
without even taking a single bolt off this engine.
Well actually just one bolt.
We're gonna drain the oil.
So just by looking at your engine oil
is a good way to figure out
what could be going wrong with your engine.
The purpose of your engine oil
is not only lubricate your engine but also clean it.
The a combustion process, that's really dirty.
Just like soot residue being left over after a bonfire,
there are byproducts from burning gasoline
and the detergents in engine oil remove those byproducts.
Now this right here is new oil,
and you can see that it's Amber in color.
This is old oil and it's black in color
as a result of the hydrocarbons in the engine.
Now this Milky looking oil
is a result of a head gasket leak,
meaning coolant mixed with the oil.
Color is one thing but we also give it a whiff.
You can smell the oil.
Does it smell like gas? Does it smell burnt?
Either of these can lead us down the path
to figuring out the health of our engine.
But my unsophisticated human eyes and nose
are only so accurate.
So we're gonna need
some highly specialized scientific equipment to help me out.
Now there are a few companies out there
that can take a used oil sample
and using a method called spectroscopy
determine what's going on inside your engine
without you having to do a full tear down.
It's like sending your blood or pee pee
to the lab for tests.
So I went ahead
and sent samples of Low Car's oil out to a lab
and here are the results.
(frantic electronic music)
Now the main one we wanna focus on are our wear metals,
particularly aluminum iron and lead.
Now aluminum, we have 50 parts per million,
which is well over the average of 32 parts per million
from all other hundreds of samples
sent into Blackstone Laboratory.
The next one is iron, which is higher
just a tad bit at 37 parts per million,
and then lead, which is 29 parts per million compared to 16.
Lead indicates we have a bearing failure.
So based on this report,
I think it's fair to say we have some piston ring damage
and some cylinder scoring.
But I'm not gonna leave you guys hanging with just a guess.
Let's tear this engine down and see what really went wrong.
(chill hip hop beat)
Now so far, nothing we've talked about
has anything to do with a turbo.
So let's talk about what a turbo even does
and why it could, in theory,
cause damage to an engine like this.
Now obviously the end goal is to get more horsepower,
but there are some drawbacks to it.
A byproduct of a turbo is heat.
Now because exhaust gases are hot,
this sucker gets really, really hot,
like 1,000+ degrees Fahrenheit hot.
And when you take something that hot
and you put it in an engine bay,
it's radiating a ton of heat
that the engineers who've built this car didn't account for.
Now there are ways to manage that heat
like a turbo blanket or heat shielding.
But Low Team, they didn't do that.
Guess where this hot turbo was placed?
Right next to cylinder one. the one with no compression.
Very interesting, Nolan.
Also to make matters worse,
the oil being supplied to this turbo to lubricate the shaft
is the same oil used to lubricate the engine.
So that means the oil's getting hotter,
which means it does a worse job
at lubricating the internals.
Add the fact that this engine had
over 100,000 miles on it to begin with
and it wasn't intended to withstand
the added heat and power of a turbo,
it's no surprise that something failed.
I'm not saying it's impossible to turbo a car like this
but Low Team definitely took some shortcuts
and time crunch played a big role
in why heat management was skipped over.
Here's Nolan talking about all the things he did wrong.
- Just opened up the exhaust box
and our exhaust doesn't fit.
We have missing hardware, the (bleep) don't fit right.
- We're kind of on a time constraint,
so we'll see what we come up with.
- Maybe we didn't request the right part, whatever.
- Our pan is steel.
We're definitely not gonna be drilling any holes
in the block of our VQ.
So we're gonna have to figure something else out.
- I don't know if their car's gonna run. Ever.
- You good, Nolan? - No.
- Freaking Nolan.
I knew it was Nolan. I knew it.
So now that I have this engine torn down pretty good,
I'm gonna do the final step,
and that is pull the heads off
so we can see what went wrong with Low Car's engine.
(jazzy piano music) (drill whirring)
All right, here we go, the moment of truth.
we've pulled off the right side head, looks perfect.
Doesn't even look like it's got 50 miles on it.
This is the trouble head.
This right here, this cylinder is the one we had zero PSI.
So we're gonna pull this head off
and see what the damage is.
(smooth jazz music) Oh.
Look at the old pancaked piston.
Now we'll check my envelope so I'm not lying.
What I said at the start of this
was that we had a failed piston and failed rings.
And that looks like a failed piston and some failed rings.
So what causes something like that to happen?
Well, too much heat.
You can see that it literally mushroomed the piston over.
So it kind of folded over on itself,
almost looks like lava flow.
You can't feel it but I can feel it.
The inside of this cylinder wall
where that piston is destroyed is just totally etched up.
Got a real bad groove in it.
Because of that we had no compression in this cylinder.
See cylinder three, super healthy piston, looks great.
Cylinder five also looks good.
So those three had good compression,
these two had good compression.
This one right here, totally effed.
So for a piston to melt like this, it's gotta get hot.
Much, much hotter than the normal combustion temperatures.
And about one of the only things I can think of
that could cause this would be an extremely lean condition.
And when I say lean,
I mean the air-fuel mixture has a higher concentration
of air to fuel.
A lean air fuel mixture can cause detonation,
which is combustion inside the cylinder
after the spark plug fires.
And you can actually hear it, it's called knock.
That knocking sound
is the pistons smacking around inside the cylinder.
That causes more heat to build up.
When you have more heat, you have more detonation,
and in no time quick,
things can get super hot and pistons can melt.
Not only that, if you have a ring failure,
oil can get past those rings.
And when you burn oil and gas you lower your octane level,
which creates more detonation, which creates more heat.
You have a snake eating its own tail.
But what caused the lean condition?
Well, there are two things to think of.
You either have a faulty injector or an improper tune.
Now I know for a fact
that Low Team didn't spend a whole lot of time
getting their engine properly tuned.
Every time that Low Car was tuned,
it was in a rush to get the car on the road
and to the track.
Also, it's really not the tuner's fault for this car.
It's our fault.
When you tune a car,
it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience
to get it right.
And patience and time where things we didn't have.
Also remember this is a turbo car.
The turbo is adding a bunch more air.
And if you don't match the fuel requirements
for that increase in air,
you get a lean air fuel mixture and then you get detonation.
And it just so happened cylinder one
was the cylinder that broke first.
Whether it was because it was right by the turbo
and there was a lot of excess heat there,
or this engine just had 100,000 miles on it
and maybe that piston already had some previous damage
and we didn't know about it.
Who knows? No one will know.
But I do know one thing.
Nolan broke this car and it was Nolan's fault.
So that's the answer.
(smooth jazz music)
♪ Out with me, if you're out with me ♪
♪ You could slide with me if you feel like ♪
♪ Ride with me, if you ride with me ♪
♪ You could slide with me if you feel like ♪
♪ 550 on the five stick ♪
♪ That's a deal right, that's a bet right ♪
♪ That's a bet right ♪
♪ That's a deal right, that's a deal right ♪
(bouncy trap beat)
- Thank you guys so much for watching.
We got High Low coming in.
This engine is dead but it doesn't matter,
'cause we got two other engines going in High and Low Car.
Stick around for that series,
it's gonna be absolutely great.
Check it out.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
Bye for now.
- Hold on, hold on, check this out.
Nope. Let me get this right, Phil.
Oh (bleep).
Coming at you, Phil.
Oh (bleep). (laughing)