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Spun yet another bearing

J

jaged

Veteran CEG'er
Joined
Oct 18, 2004
Messages
974
Location
NW,Indiana
So this weekend im fairly certain that i spun yet another bearing, this makes 4. i havent had a chance to pull the oil pan off to check for sure. i think i have all the parts to get it back together, i really just dont want to now. so couple questions

1. motor is out of an 04, i have a crank, rod, and bearings for a 00. are they all the same parts or did they change when they redesigned the motor?

2. I have done everything that i can think of to prevent this, ive got extra oil in the pan, accusump with 40lbs of air in it, remote filter, remote cooler. what else is there that i can do? i know the mumm/capaldi cars have a high pressure oil pump but im not sure if the stock seals and whatnot can take that pressure, or even if i can get my hands on one.

I will put the car back together this one last time and then im done with it. im tired of "making it work" i want it to work. i have only had one season where i didnt have to pull the motor, but i guess this season is making up for that with having to do it twice. if it happens again im either going to sell it or put in a small block
 
The crank, rods and bearing from the 2000 should be a direct swap for your 2004 but you should get it rebalanced if you go this route.

You need to replace the factory connecting rods with forged steel rods; K-1s are the most affordable and can be purchased through Nautilus Performance Group. The motor will have to be rebalanced to accomodate this mod. The spun bearing problem occurs because the factory connecting rods stretch over time such that the crush force used to anchor the bearings is lost. The Duratec 3.0Ls use the same powdered metal scintering process connecting rods as the 2.5Ls. Although there have been incidents of low oil combined with high speed right turns causing spun bearings, this is not the real root cause of the majority of failures.

I have heard that you should not use a Taurus/Sable oil pan because they are not designed for the engine mounting angle in the Contour. The Escape oil pan is designed for the same mount angle as the Contour.

If you are not running a DMD on the motor, put one on. Dampening of vibrational frequencies may assist in preventing spun bearings too.
 
I heard somewhere that a reason for the rods stretching is due to being revved over 4000 rpm with no load. I am not sure if this is true, but if it is it leads me to believe alot of downshifting may be a good cause of spun bearings due to rev matching with no load.
 
Damn it man! All that work and you go through motors like I go through underwear :eek:!
 
there is a DMD on the car already, there was the last time it spun as well

what do you mean by mounting angle? they sit in the car level both on the taurus and escape. even if they were a bit off in the angle left to right, or front to back, with what i do the oil is in constant motion in the pan.

tell me about it joe. i really dont know what caused this one, the turn that it let go wasnt even that drastic of a turn
 
It's bull really because you have every precautionary device on your car to prevent this from happening. Just proves that not just a upgraded oil pan will help save your motor. Nothing will save these.


If you were serious about a small block, I say give it a shot. It will take longer to get done but you could end up with quite the beast.
 
i need to do some more researching on it. if done right it would still be street mod legal, but it may be tough. i need to look at the focus builds, and find someone to co drive with next year
 
jaged said:
what do you mean by mounting angle? they sit in the car level both on the taurus and escape. even if they were a bit off in the angle left to right, or front to back, with what i do the oil is in constant motion in the pan.
Click to expand...

I found a discussion thread recently either on CEG, FCO or the NECO forums that talked about this. I agree with you that this "mounting angle" sounds rather far fetched but I thought I would at least pass it along since it wasn't clear if you were running an Escape pan or not.

My money lies 100% on the substandard factory connecting rods being the root cause. I'm in the early phases of doing an N/A 3.0L swap project. The motor is going to get the K-1 connecting rod swap because I just cannot place any faith in the factory rods. Since I can afford to do this, I'm going to do it as an insurance policy.
 
Perhaps the unreliability of these engines is why Noble uses them in 100k supercars....bring your block to a reputable engine builder and call it a day man.
 
Many years ago I was arguing about the spun bearing theories with a certain member. I still wonder what the stock oil pump is flow rated at? If mumm was running a higher rated pump I'd do it. I never once heard of Robert smoking bearings or a motor. Also what are you running for rod/main bearings? I hope you at least put clevites in there? I'm not a fan of the powder metal rods Ford has in the duratec motors, something just doesn't add up with them. So many other manufacturers run them with no problems, yet these cars can't keep bearings in them to save there lives. Email Robert Mumm, get some insight on his Kinetic built motors.
 
What is the deal with people using clevites thinking they are upgraded over OEM? Are they not just OEM replacement parts?
 
a neco member has the mumm car now and he has all of the paperwork from the car. i was told that the high pressure runs 60psi at 4k and 100psi at 6 or 7k, but ill have to double check that.

this time around it was the ford bearings, but i have spun clevite bearings as well
 
2000ZxT said:
Perhaps the unreliability of these engines is why Noble uses them in 100k supercars....bring your block to a reputable engine builder and call it a day man.
Click to expand...

and what are they going to do that i cant, or havent done to prevent this from happening?
 
jaged said:
and what are they going to do that i cant, or havent done to prevent this from happening?
Click to expand...

As I said before: "Upgrade the connecting rods." You haven't done this. Given the history of these motors in general, I am just stunned at the number of people who don't do this.

You should read these two threads on FCO:

http://www.fordcontour.org/topic/10943-conrod-bearing-info/

http://www.fordcontour.org/topic/11133-bearing-failure-analysis-guide/

The Noble M400 uses forged connecting rods (amongst a host of other upgrades):

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20061208/FREE/61204010
 
Did you blow the previous motor with the vortech on? Where are your oil lines running to and from?

Escape oil pan???
 
previous motor had the vortech on it as well. feed line for the vortech was on the rear of the rear head. oil pressure gauge and accusump were on the front of the rear head both times. oil drain line goes closest to the flywheel as it can get this time, previous had the drain line in the place where vortech said to have it on the passenger side of the front of the pan

this new one was a full taurus motor with the deeper oil pan/pick up tube on it.
 
:shrug: Nope, exact same. Just said that cuz i felt like it.

Of course they are different.

as far as the tapping at the head... I thought that was discouraged? pretty sure the turbo pplz tap the block
 
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