Hey guys first off my monte is heavily modded. I just put on a second intercooler core both short stacks, ported the blower inlet, lq4 maf with north star throttle body to a wiz air cai. I also put a belt wrap kit to help tension the supercharger belt. 3.0 pulley, hotwire fuel pump kit and a voltage booster. I also did an e85 swap. I had the car than flatbed to my tuner. He put a base e85 tune on the car so it would be drive able. Oh yea by the way it's the original PCM so I stayed with my 1 bar map for now which zzp said would be fine until I send them my PCM to update the software. Like I said it's an 03 monte l36. So we start the car. It takes several cranks but fires up. The car was misfiring and from the engine bay you can hear a knocking. My tuner said it sounds like the motor is shot. The car sat for a month while being built up again and I had the original 93 octane drained because gas sitting for that long is not good besides switching to e85. Anyway he is double checking the coil packs and spark plug wiring that my mechanic possibly messed up. Maybe a vacuum leak? Anyone have an idea? Like I said the car ran perfect before these mods. My mechanic said he may have put the wires on wrong which is the easiest part lol. Any comments appreciated thanks guys

 

Ok so the tuner called. It's a bad ls7 lifter that's only a year old.... How could that happen?

 

Unrelated, I understand switching to e85, if this is not a flex fuel set up you would want to drain the fuel (especially if it's being retuned, tune it on the fuel you intend to use). But I find it funny that you mention the car sat for a month and the gas was sitting too long to use. My Monte is parked all winter long with a full tank of gas and stabilizer in the tank (I know people who don't use stabilizer during winter) and I have no issues running that tank in the spring (but it does get somewhat poor MPG).

As for the bad lifter, any list of things could have gone wrong. A failure in the install process, a poorly manufactured part, issue with lubrication. Unfortunately it's tough to say.

Any other findings?

 

Yea the fuel was drained completely. Also now pushrod 1 is bent like a pretzel. Zzp said the ls7 lifters have never had problems like this and my tuner uses ls7s on his 1000hp cars. Him and the mechanic are blaming each other but the mechanic said that he may have increased the timing too much in the base e85 tune and that would cause my problem.... Anyway 2200$ in install besides the cost of parts, 2400 more for my tuner to fix it so I'm in the hole 2200$ I'm livid right now. These parts are only 1 year old so I'm not sure which person screwed up but I'm paying for it now

 

You mentioned a severely damaged pushrod. I am not an expert in this part, but it sounds like some where, somehow the geometry of something on the valve train was bad.

 

The car sat for a few weeks, but maybe the left over grime or grease froze the pushrod and lifter and when the car was finally started, the lifter and rod were still frozen and finally broke the still position and overlapped too fast? The lim was never taken off when the other work was being bolted on. My tuner said he never adjusted the timing, so that's my conclusion I guess

 

None of that sounds right. I still think something in the geometry was wrong (perhaps a wrong push rod, or lift or something). But that is my thoughts.

 

The car ran fine for a year with those parts. Ran fine the day I drove it to the shop with new parts ready to be installed. There is no way they go bad after a year and especially since I don't beat on the car. What a nightmare this car has been. Defintley the first and last time a mod a car