(Zack sighing)
- What do you do when your engine
is making a terrible knocking sound?
(engine knocking)
Is this rod knock or is it some other noise?
And how do you figure it out?
Well, that's what we're gonna do today
because luckily my RB is making an awful racket.
So we're gonna take this opportunity
to take a dive into this engine
to diagnose a knocking sound.
It's gonna make me cry potentially.
I'm Zach and this is Money Pit, baby.
Let's rip this thing open.
(lightning striking)
(bright music)
(tires squealing)
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(engine revving)
(techno music)
- So a few months ago, right around Thanksgiving,
I had this car out in the mountains,
I was ripping around and it felt great.
It was making good power,
had a huge smile on my face,
making all the good noises.
I ended up next to like a mountain basically
and I could hear some knocking
bouncing off the mountain back into my ears
and I thought, oh, my God,
I think that's my car.
So I pulled over as soon as I could,
hopped out, listened to it real quick,
listened to it for long enough
to realize oh, that's a problem.
That sounds like some real catastrophic issues.
I do think that the noise is coming
from the bottom end of the engine,
the rotating assembly,
basically the crank, connecting rods, pistons,
that sort of end of the engine.
But the question is how do you figure out
where the noise is coming from?
What part of your engine is making the noise?
Well, the first thing we need to do,
unfortunately, is listen to it.
So, I'm gonna fire this thing up
and we're gonna listen to it knock
just so you guys can kind of catalog what this sound is
and then when we figure out what exactly is making
the noise, we'll know what that sounds is correlated to.
So, I guess it's time to start this thing up.
Okay.
(engine revving)
All right, that's enough, that's enough, that's enough.
Well, it's the first time I've started the car
since the day this first happened
and it sounds just about as bad
as I remember.
So, now we gotta figure out where
that sound is coming from,
but before we can do that,
let's kind of talk about the options
or the possibilities for where that noise
can be coming from.
To do that, let's go look at the spare Miata engine
that I got over there.
So, one of the first options is what
you call piston slap
and that is pretty much what it sounds like.
It's the piston slapping around in the cylinder bore
and smacking into the sides of the walls.
Basically that happens if there's too much clearance
in between the piston and the wall of the cylinder.
That can happen due to wear
or due to being put together poorly
or machined poorly or all sorts of reasons,
but the fact is if it is happening,
it can do a lot of damage and cause
a lot of wear to your pistons and your block.
So, that's basically what piston slap is.
To check for that, you kind of gotta get
your eyeballs into the cylinders
and ideally onto the sides of the pistons.
I have a bore scope that we'll be able
to stick down the spark plug holes
and look around and see if there's any damage.
Moving right along, let's flip this engine over
and get the oil pan off of it.
(techno music)
Okay, now let's talk about one
of our other options for where this noise
can be coming from,
one of the most famous options, rod knock
or Rodney Knock as he's known where I'm from.
So, first let's talk about what rod knock even is.
First off, well, we gotta understand
the connection between our crank shaft
and our connecting rods.
Basically your crankshaft is connected
to your pistons by the connecting rods.
And your connecting rods
are connected to your crankshaft
by way of a bearing.
So the clearance in your connecting rod bearings
should be very small,
a couple thousandths of an inch basically,
just enough clearance for a thin film of oil
to separate all the parts
and keep things moving nice and freely.
Now if that clearance isn't big enough
or is too big, well, the oil can't do its job
and you end up getting a bunch of wear
and you end up with a bunch of excessive clearance
because of all that wear
and then you end up with rod knock.
So, one way to test for rod knock
is to take your oil pan off
and wiggle all your connecting rod bearings.
Now, all these feel pretty tight.
There's always gonna be a little bit
of side to side play here, so that's okay,
but in this direction,
none of these feel loose,
which this is not an engine that was supposed
to have rod knocks, so that makes sense.
Okay, so there's our rod cap.
Looks like the bearing stayed behind.
Okay, so, my bearing was left down here.
So this looks fine, I mean, there is some wear,
but this is a pretty standard looking bearing.
I mean, I'm sure if we take all these caps off,
they're all gonna look pretty much the same.
Let's do it.
I'm actually kind of interested just on a side note
to see what the bearings look like in this engine,
so I'm a take 'em off.
Basically same deal,
got a little bit of wear going on down there.
Oh, and here's a good look
at how these things get oiled.
So you've got your big oiling hole
in the rod journal here
and that's where oil is forced through to,
you know, create that thin film of oil
that everything rides on.
So the oil comes from the oil pump
and eventually out these holes in your crankshaft
to force that oil pressure into these bearings
and keep things happy and healthy.
So oil pressure is obviously super important
to keeping your engine happy and healthy
and the thing that really in a lot of ways determines
oil pressure is your bearing clearance.
So, depending on this clearance,
you'll have different oil pressures.
If this clearance is very tight,
then you're gonna have,
well, you're generally gonna have really good oil pressure
because not as much oil can escape these holds, right?
But if this tolerance is really loose,
well, more oil can fall out this hole
into your bearings and, you know,
down back into your sump.
So you'll have lower oil pressure.
Now I bring that up because it's also kind
of a decent way to know if you've got a rod knock issue.
You can see, I mean this thing is supposed
to stay like this.
It's supposed to be dropped in,
this tang locates it,
you bolt it in place
and it should never spin.
The bearing should stay still.
But if you're tolerance is too tight or too big
or you've got improper lubrication
for any reason and your crank shaft actually makes metal
to metal contact with your bearings,
it can spin them.
Now, if it does spin the bearings,
well, then you've obviously got problems, right?
That's gonna cause rod knock.
You know, maybe the bearings will double up
on one side.
One side will have no bearings
and then basically you've got a huge gap
on one side of your rod journal,
so that not only creates the noise,
because that gap that you now have
let's your crankshaft smash into your connecting rod,
making that deep knocking sound.
But another thing that happens there
is that your oil pressure will drop
because since you've completely removed
a bearing from where it should be,
it's no longer helping to control oil pressure.
So, if you spin a bearing,
it can be because you lost oil pressure
or you can lose oil pressure
because you spun a bearing.
Now, the 240 still has fantastic oil pressure,
100 psi at startup, so I don't really think
it's a bearing or at least a spun bearing
for that reason, but it could be,
though I don't think so,
but it could be, but I don't think so,
but it could be.
Without further ado, now that I've kind
of laid out some of the options,
some of the possibilities for these knocking noises,
let's dig into the 240 and try to figure out
where my knocking noise is coming from.
All right, so it's great to understand
the potential possibilities
of where this knocking sound
could be coming from,
but actually finding it
is a little bit of a different story.
The fact is you really gotta get in there
and see the issue with your eyes
to know what it is.
So that's what we're gonna do
and we're gonna try to do this in an order
that makes sense, you know,
try to go from easiest to hardest.
So the first thing I'm gonna do is real simple.
I'm just gonna check to make sure this thing
is still in time.
When I just started it
and we were listening to the noise,
I noticed that my timing belt is pretty loose
and that could potentially mean
that this is a valve train issue.
I don't think that's the case,
but it's incredibly easy to check.
To do that, I just got a socket
that I'm gonna stick on my crank pulley here
and I'm gonna turn it until our top dead center mark
on the crank lines up with our top dead center mark
on the timing cover
and then our timing marks on our cam gears
should also line up with our timing marks
on our timing cover.
So, just gonna spin this thing till it gets
to stop dead center.
All right, so now that I have this all lined up
and I've got my crank pulley at TDC,
we can check our timing marks
and once we check them, we can see
that we are in time.
So we haven't jumped time.
That is good news.
We still have a super loose timing belt
so that's gonna need addressed,
but that's no big deal.
The next easiest thing to do is gonna be
to pull the spark plugs out
and gander down into our holes.
Okay, so I've been pulling out the spark plugs,
pulling out the last one right now
and obviously as I pull them out,
I've been inspecting them to make sure
that they don't look awful
or like there's any signs of damage
or anything like that.
Maybe a little dark, like running a little rich,
but they look fine, really.
So the problem doesn't align with these,
but now that we've got all the spark plugs
out of the way, we can look down in the cylinders.
This is my bore scope.
I'm actually ogling over it.
This is the first time I've used this one.
So this just sends out a wifi signal
and then sends the signal right to my phone,
so it's really simple.
It's just this
and my phone and an app you download,
so it's a really handy tool to have around
and should make poking around in these cylinders
a lot easier.
So, let's go jam those down in my holes.
I'm gonna turn the crank so that whatever cylinder
we're working in, the piston is at bottom dead center,
so we can see everything
and basically I'm just gonna look around,
look for any signs of damage,
look for anything that looks out of place,
look for any blown holes in the sides of anything.
Yeah, I mean, really that's it.
We're just looking for anything that looks bad.
So, let's look.
Okay, so right here I can see a little bit of wear.
You can kind of see some striping,
but that doesn't look very bad.
That's certainly not enough to make any noise
and you can see crosshatching
and I can still see some vertical wear,
which isn't great, but it doesn't look terrible.
So, I'm gonna keep doing this
through all the cylinders.
I'm gonna just be looking around,
keeping my eyes peeled for any damage
and if I find anything,
you'll be the first to know.
(techno music)
- [Cameraman] All right, Doc, give it to me straight.
- Well, we've definitely got some wear.
It doesn't look great.
Okay, so after sticking the camera
in all my cylinders, we've got visible wear
in pretty much all the cylinders,
concerning visible wear in at least two of them,
so that alone is enough for me to take this thing out
and rebuild it,
but we're gonna keep poking around.
We're gonna take the oil pan off
and see if there's anything weird going on down there.
Okay, so now we got the car up in the air.
So now I'm gonna drain the oil
and we're gonna take a look at the oil
as it comes out and see if there's any chunks
of metal in it.
I do see some reflection in the oil,
like some little tiny pieces of glitter,
not what you want because those are usually pieces
of your engine.
So now that we've got all the oil out of the pan,
I'm just gonna take the pan off
so we can get a look at what's going on inside of there.
So close.
Okay, so to get the oil pan out,
I need more room in between the bottom of the engine
and the sub frame.
So I'm gonna support the engine
with the support bar and then I'm gonna disconnect
the engine from the engine mounts
and then I can either raise the engine up
with this bar by cranking up that handle
or I can lower the sub frame.
You just have to disconnect the stuff
that connects the sub frame to the car.
So when I bring down the sub frame,
I'm also gonna bring down the front suspension brakes,
so I have to disconnect the coil overs
from the strut towers
and then we're ready do loosen the sub frame hardware
and drop this puppy down.
(screwdriver whirring)
And now the sub frame should move
and the engine should still stay still.
[Cameraman] Okay.
Okay, now before we can go toying around,
I'm gonna put this sub frame back up.
Okay, now that that is safely suspended.
First, let's look in the oil pan
and see if there's any junk or debris in there
and then we'll poke around in there.
It doesn't feel nice in there.
Well, those little gold pieces,
that looks like bearing bits to me.
It's okay, it's just an engine.
It's just engine parts.
Well the news is not good.
All right, well, so we definitely have
some well, it looks like bearing particles
in our oil pan,
so let's go touch the bearing spots.
Let's go see if we've got any loose connecting rods
and figure out what the hell we're gonna do.
Now what we're gonna do is basically just try
to wiggle the bottoms of all of our connecting rods
and see if any of them have apparent play.
And they might not, I might not be able
to get too much play out of them,
so we'll probably ultimately take the caps off,
but first thing you're gonna do is just spin it around.
Give all these a good wiggle.
Number two feels aight.
Three Feels aight.
- [Cameraman] Probably gonna be four.
- [Zack] Yeah, I couldn't see it.
Number four feels all right.
Okay.
Number five feels okay.
Oh, baby, and it is lucky number six.
You see it? Nice and silvery?
- [Cameraman] Yeah.
- [Zack] Good.
That's how they all look and like how they should.
And number six comes around,
you can see a little hot spot.
Looks like we had some heat going on
on the inside of that that thing there,
so I'm gonna guess that that's where my bearing issue is.
So we're gonna pop that puppy off
and take a gander.
Here she comes.
- [Cameraman] Is the bearing that high up?
- Yep, and the other one's halfway down
around the other way and I can see
a chunk of gold flake coming.
I got oil in my ear.
- [Cameraman] Right in the frickin' ear, dude.
- That's what I get.
Well, ow.
That's not how she's supposed to be.
Bearing seems to have spun,
so number six is our problem.
You can see a hot spot.
You can see wear on the backside of the bearing.
The bearing is supposed to stay still
in the connecting rod
and the crank is supposed to spin in it,
not any of this type action
and you can see we've got some of that going on.
So, I think we found our smoking gun.
Number six was making the noises
and also we've got some pretty concerning cylinder wear
that I found in all of the holes.
So, yeah, we gotta take the engine out,
we gotta take it all apart,
we gotta take inventory, take stock
of what kind of shape everything's in.
Then we need to order some new parts,
find a machine shop probably
and then put it all back together.
No big deal.
Yeah, no big deal.
We have the tools.
It's just car parts.
It's very sad.
I'm crying on the inside.
But it's gonna be okay.
We can rebuild it.
We can make it better.
On that note, I guess we've
got a few more episodes to make,
so thank you guys for checking this one out.
I hope you had a good time.
I had a terrible time, so please subscribe
to the channel to make it all worth it
and follow me on Instagram @zackjobe
and follow Donut @donutmedia
and I'll see you guys next week.
Goodbye (imitating crying)
- Turbos are awesome,
but they don't even have a mascot,
which is downright not awesome.
So we decided to take matters into our own hands
and give turbos the reputation
that they deserve.
Introducing Spinney Boy
the official unofficial mascots of turbos
and the people who love them.
♪ Stu, stu, hey ♪
♪ He'll speed past any foe ♪
♪ Watch that turbo, go, go, go ♪
♪ Here to help and bring you joy ♪
♪ Watch out world, it's Spinney Boy ♪
Spinney Boy is sentient turbo charger,
100% dedicated to providing power
to anyone who needs him.
He's cute.
But he's dangerous, just like us.
Oh, that's where I put this thing.
To commemorate the birth of our beautiful new friend,
we put him on a shirt.
It's stu, stu, stupid soft
and stu, stu, stupid comfortable.
Congratulations little guy.
It took Nolan two years to get his own shirt.
Right now, Spinney Boy is the official unofficial mascot
of turbos and the people who love them.
But I honestly believe if we work together,
we can make him the official, official mascot
of turbos and turbo enthusiasts.
We've done this before guys.
Remember about forces?
That didn't mean anything before.
We can do it again.
Let's ride.
If you can, get a shirt to show your support
and your love for Spinney Boy
and if you don't buy a shirt,
I don't really care.
Post a picture of your own turbo with #spinneyboy.
I wanna make him a star.
I love this little guy.
If you want a shirt,
you can get him at donutmedia.com.
I love you.
Now back to the show.
♪ Stu, stu, hey ♪
♪ He'll speed past any foe ♪
♪ Watch that turbo, go, go, go ♪
♪ Here to help and bring you joy ♪
♪ Watch out world it's Spinney Boy ♪