[Shotimes] Rod Knock or Tensioner Slap?

[Ron Porter]

SHOs with bad rod bearings at under 100K are not THAT unusual, there's
already been a few on the list.

That said, my former GREEN '95 (the POS, as I had referred to it!!) had a
very questionable past prior to the 68K mile mark when Brian Moore bought
it. When I got it from Brian at 78K (after he had about $5K of service work
done in 10 months), I discovered that the oil pressure sensor wire had been
CUT (by someone before Brian, I am sure), and the ABS light was pulled out
of the dash (obviously the ABS was dead!!). There were also some very weird
things that we found about the car. The car "may" even have been in a flood,
or dunked in very deep water. This was also the car with the defective (my
belief) MTX that blew diff pins after 5 dragstrip runs, was totally rebuilt,
then blew them again after 5-6 runs at the very next dragstrip trip. The
used 93K-mile MTX that I bought from Al Fitz then did at least 75 dragstrip
runs, and Summit Point, before I sold the car back to Brian.

Anyway, it was pretty typical rod-bearing noise, as diagnosed immediately by
Doug Lewis at the hotel in Frederick.

Ron Porter

-----Original Message-----
From: shotimes-admin@autox.team.net [mailto:shotimes-admin@autox.team.net]
On Behalf Of John J. Weidenbenner
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 8:13 AM
To: 'SHOTIMES'; 'Leigh Smith'
Subject: Re: [Shotimes] Rod Knock or Tensioner Slap?


Yup, I'm going by my experience with a 3.8 Windstar, 62k miles, that
antifreeze had seeped into the crankcase, slowly wearing the rod bearings.
It would rod knock at start up cold and rattle for a few blocks
progressively getting worse.

Perhaps Ron's track related damage manifested itself differently? Why did a
SHO with 86k miles loose it's rod bearings?

Anyway more diagnosis should occur.

John W.