Pulled and cleaned all parts, painted engine bay to match wrap.

Painted block and re-asembled

Re wrapped wire harness

More Assembly

Mamba 450 turbos, ported oem housings with larger compressor wheels and different blade geometry

Turbos and Downpipes installed

 

Completed re-assembly for first startup

Runs and drives now, i'm 300 miles into break-in and its running smooth. after break-in is complete i'm swapping the oem HPFP for a stage 1 AMS and dyno tuning engine + trans with racebox in Houston

 

What was the approx. mileage when failure occurred?

 

Eeeek if you re-used the heads high chance they are still leaking from a crack! According to AMS they've never seen the coolant plugs in heads leak, its always a crack

 

I definitely had coolant tracks from the plugs and the thread sealant in the plugs was non existent but yeah the heads are concerning. Before I put it back together I pressurized the block coolant system with a metallic block sealant and heat cured it afterwards. 300 miles later I haven’t noticed any coolant loss like I did before it grenaded. If I start losing coolant again heads are getting replaced for sure

 

Did you change your Oil Pressure Solenoid? I would pull it and check it out just to make sure it's not clogged up before you do more. Just my 2 cents.

 

I actually pulled out the wires to the solenoid when doing the harness re-wrap and cleaned it in ultrasonic. Racebox team suggests unplugging it if you are tuned and my oil pressure has been great. 25-30 psi at idle and 50+ under higher loads

 

@Taustin8 , how long did this little project take from beginning to end? I assume this car is not your daily driver. I also assume this is not your first time inside an engine either.

 

About 3 months total working time, I have a bad habit of DIY'ing everything that i can so all of the cleaning and teardown and honing etc. took most of that time. it is my daily but i work remote so not a huge deal and it was my first time inside of an engine, Alldata and nismo service manuals were a lifesaver. Given that it was my first time i expect that i made some mistakes and probably have to dig in again at some point preferably after i get a daily as backup hahaha

 

Curious what the process is to make sure all the forbidden glitter is out of the block before doing the rebuild? I’ve never town down / rebuilt an engine so curious what that involves?

 

You can take it to a parts wash facility and have them do a hot wash for you, but I went the hard route and used a ton of solvents, pipe cleaners, rags, compressed air etc. If I have to do it again I will definitely strip the block and take it somewhere to have it cleaned professionally just for time sake. Cleaning out the engine was easily the worst most tedious part of the whole project

 

Hey, long time lurker turning contributor. I just finished a full DIY rebuild on my 2018 Q50 Luxe’s VR30 after it tried to self delete. the car was a rental before i bought it and obviously had some maintenance lapses . APX $8.2k on parts not including consumables like cleaning items.

Oil pressure dropped under load starving the bearings. The timing chain on Bank 2 slipped because the tensioner got clogged with dirty oil, throwing off cam timing on bank 2 . I also had coolant leak into the oil from bad freeze plugs. The big damage was a spun rod bearing.

Oh man that is a lot of forbidden glitter, nice job getting her back on the road and fixed up!

Eeeek if you re-used the heads high chance they are still leaking from a crack! According to AMS they've never seen the coolant plugs in heads leak, its always a crack

The forums have deff seen people inspect the plugs and found coolant leaking from them, but yeah AMS themselves haven't encountered that as a point of failure not that it isn't a potential cause for coolant leaks.

 

Love the red alternator. Too bad no one will ever see it.

 

Didn't see it even with the photos till you mentioned it. XD