First of all who the hell tuned the car??? Secondly, how do you get add extra fuel because of weak stem seals?? Third, nobody bothered to notice the consistent smoking at idle to pull the valve covers off, rockers off and do a check on the stem seals??

Your tuner shouldve been able to notice a erratic PE command on WOT with the plugs being half ass. For Instance, Constantly missing target AF ratio no matter what the adjustments. If he richened if up that much it shouldve been showing a massive STFT negative percent as the plugs started to foul out more and more. Let alone the amount of misfires detected!! Did your tuner tune the car for Open loop only and kill the Closed loop functions??? Did he also shut off the front o2 sensors?? Did anyone use a wideband??

Not trying to put you on the defensive just alot of variables here.

 

if this ends up being because some numb nut tuner did a jury rig... :mrrg:

there's a lot of "professionals" tuning cars out there, and not ONE of them will ever lay their grimey mitts on my car. :facepalm:

 

hope things turn out well OP. sorry to hear about all the damage.

 

Tuning any car can be a coin toss. For those like me that lack the skills / time / tools to do it ourselves we have to place out faith in a tuner. Good luck with the diagnosis and I hope there's as little damage as possible.

 

The fuel builds up and side burn happens cracking the piston rings which causes the scoring.
Thoughts.

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I can't see any pics and I am still concerned by the side burns, they are out of style you know.

You need to have a known good professional take a look at your car, it sounds like your car was at a Honda tuner shop.

 

I really don't want to turn this into a point finger thread so I will refrain from saying who did or didn't tune the car. It was first tuned by a newer upcoming business with support from a veteran tuner. Then retuned by a veteran tuner from a big shop. Finally road tuned again to by a local smaller tuner. I can't begin to get into the details you asked about but I know the AF ratio was a relatively straight line if I remember correctly, at least thats what I think I remember them saying. That stuff is like hieroglyphics (did i even spell that right) to me. Regarding detonation, the tuner said I would seriously notice it. Not so sure, I know the car would put children and small animals to sleep if you stayed too long near the back end of the car from the fumes come off this thing. It still had cats and mufflers on it. Oh and not sure about the open/closed loop stuff either, front sensors... Sorry I really wish I could provide the details there but your definitely giving me more areas to research so I appreciate the questions.

I will try to fix the picture problem, it shows the valve seals all tore the hell up and compressed or stuck in place and the cylinders blackened like a gourmet fish on savannah dinner menu.

 

Please Work

 

Okay got the pics posted. You can see some of the casings shredded, some craked, the polyurethane split, and springs broke off and all it had its way around in there. Forgot to mention, I was running NGK TR55 plugs, but it didn't really matter since they got so wet so quick. Also, the car always felt under powered. The excuse was it was an auto which is why its numbers on the dyno weren't as impressive as expected. 422 at best, 378 after stall was put in, ran it at the track once with the stall in it and best time I got was a 14.2. too many variables with that though, more focused on the mechanical failures. Has anyone ever seen seels fail like that before, do these even look like the right ones for an LS2? What else may cause scoring in the cylinders, if in fact an abundance of oil was being dumped in the engine. You could argue the valves not working would keep things lubed up better then usual? I don't know, wish I just had a damn trailer to take this thing to someone to look at before I go tearing more of this engine aprart.

 

Yea, those valve seals are smurfed. It looks like they were hammered by the valve spring retainers.

 

Would incorrect spring height cause the seals to look like that? What valve springs were you using? Were there any shims under them?

 

I believe the springs came with the TSP Torquer v3 cam so I think they would be comp cams springs. There weren't any shims.

I ordered new valve seals and I realized that the new ones don't look anything like the ones that I just pulled off. The metal casing is thicker and are two tiered like they are meant for double spings versus a single spring setup. It got me to thinking, are there special seals for double springs that should have been used?

 

This is a picture of the new seals they sent me. Fel-Pro SS71039

 

Ive seen the same thing happen to valve seals. But the moment it started to develop a light smoking at idle we pulled the valve covers and started removing the springs. This happend with the Patriot Extreme Dual springs with that same looking seal. Reason why it happened was a larger lift cam was installed with aftermarket casting PRC 227cc heads. Those heads sport a large bronze guide. The guide held the Stem seals up a little bit higher, but the issue of them smashing was due to the larger "SUPER LOCK" retainers used by the patriot dual valve spring design. Started measuring around with a micrometer, switch the car over to PRC .650 Dual spings and it has worked great for over a year now!!

Were any of the valve spring retainers cracked or broken??? It would be nice if you could just ask a regular tuning shop to run a HP Tuners scan on your car and give you the file to post to the rest of us to see what the tune looked like.

Don't know if it is possible or not but would an overly long pushrod be able to throw the rocker tip down far enough to smash the springs, or it would pull the end off the valve??

 

Valve geometry would explain your symptoms. Excessive lift did in your seals. Could be compressed height or over revving. Likely your guides are beaten into submission as well. Compression and leak down are fine because the valve seats and bores are fine. At the light, idle vacuum is pulling oil through the guides.

How many miles are on this engine? How aggressive have you been driving? My guess is you need the heads re-done and you'll find you are too close to bind on the springs with your cam. PCM tuning isn't going to fix it.

 

Hmmm I'm guessing that the stock seals were reused when the cam swap was done. This is improper and there should have been new seals for the dual valve springs. You saying that they look different from the seals you just bought adds to the likeliness of that being the case. My friend reused his stock seals with his dual valve springs and ended up binding a few of his springs causing them to break. He broke a few rockers too from them not being seated correctly.

 

the new seals you have shown will not work with duals springs. Those Felpro units are stock replacements that work with single beehives.

You need seals just like the ones you took off, or best for you to measure the OD of the valve guide top where the seal seats, and order that size. Should be like .500 or .530
you have issues of some sort with that cam as you know....I'd try to find out what is going on there. Measure retainer/lock to seal clearance and see if the cam has too much lift for your spring package.
The V3 cam if I recall is like .640 lift so it ain't no joke to just stick in and run it regardless of what TSP will tell you. You need to check PTV and other items.

 

The engine has around 40K miles, I think I put about 6K on the car over the last year since the mods were added (cam, intake, exhaust...). I really don't drive that agressively but occassionally open it up on the highway. Been to the track once, did a time attack track day once also. Beyond that, I drive it on base where we get tickets for driving 40 in a 35.

I know its not unimaginable for a shop to sell a cam and springs set that may not exactly pair up, but I would hope for the sake of us rookies we would be protected better. Are you recommending that I get a different set of springs because these were meant for a divorce from day one. What do you mean by head work? I have the stock 243 castings. I looked at the guides and they seemed to be okay but maybe I yall would know better. What should I look for? This sucks, realistically, am i looking at buying a new engine here?

 

Im pretty certain these guys didn't reuse the old seals, and they put new ones in when they changed out the cam. Im glad you told me the valve seals won't work, now I just have to get the right ones. Sorry, i got a little lost on some of the stuff you talked about A_VAS but wouldn't issues with PTV clearance show on either the valves or the pistons? Niether of which showed visual signs of damage that I could see, aside from a boat load of carbon build up. Would changing out the stock rocker arms to some form of aftermarkets help correct the geometry issue?

 

Probly not looking at a whole new engine. Have a machine shop check your heads and valvetrain. Maybe give A.I. or TEA a call and see what they can do for you.

 

You need to assemble the heads with checker springs on cylinder number one, put the heads back on and turn the engine over. You want to measure the distance between the top of the valve guide and the valve spring retainer at max lift. I believe your spring retainer is coming too close to the guide and crushing the seal. You either need different retainers or you need the top of the guide machined down a little.

 

I found out that the seals and the springs are made by PAC. Has anyone heard of them? Not sure on the specs, still trying to get more information. I also pulled out a flashlight and looked down the cylinders a little better then before. The wanted to see if the scoring I saw before was as bad as I thought. The one I saw before wasn't so bad. What I did see was in the back cylinder on the the passenger side closest to the firewall, there was a score that made my heart drop. I now know what they mean about catching it with your nail. Its that bad. So with that being said, now what is the coarse of action?

 

PAC makes the springs and retainers/locks....but the seals are all pretty much the same in most kits. PAC springs are good quality and usually considered the best you can buy at this point.

Your shortblock is most likely fine, scrape the carbon off the piston tops and call it good.
If the compression and leak down tests were done properly and showed good results, the rings should be fine.
Seems like the smoking was caused by the seals being damaged...fix that issue and you should be ok. While it is apart I would measure the PTV just so you know what it is.
But yes if you don't have marks on the pistons then they haven't hit yet...but I'd want to know how close it is on the intake. You can then choose a head gasket thickness to give you a little more clearance if you need it when you re-assemble. If it's pretty tight clearance even a thicker gasket may not be enough. There are options you can do with head work to increase it (valve job and sink the valves a bit).

 

Took a few pictures of the cylinders I was talking about, best I could with the camera I have. Maybe you can see the scoring I was refering to.

 

cylinder walls are ok in my opinion, some scoring is going to be normal

 

It looks like the incorrect spring height for the cam lift. Seals are beat to crap. This pic will make you feel better.

 

On the seals, does anyone know which size seals to order - .500 or .530? I can't seem to find a point of reference. They are stock 243 heads, stock valves. The only difference are the PAC double springs which are .650 lift spring rate. Anyway, anyone have a clue on the size so I can get these heads put back together.