GM Sent Us a Broken Engine

**The Insane Engine Problem: A $115,000 Race Engine's Surprising Issues**

Bro, you guys are going to love this story! We recently got our hands on a brand new engine, an LSX, that was supposed to be a high-performance powerhouse. However, when we took it apart, we were shocked to find some serious issues.

**The Missing Wrist Pin Circlip**

First, let's talk about the wrist pin. This little cylindrical piece is responsible for connecting the piston to the connecting rod. It's basically just a nice fit with a couple of circlips at either end that keep it in place. But when we looked at our engine, we noticed something was off - one of the circlips was missing! Watch what happens when I push on one that has a clip... (pushes) ...it prevents that motion. Now let me push on the one that doesn't have a clip... (pushes) shouldn't do that.

**A $115,000 Engine with a Cheap Build?**

We thought this was probably exactly how they built catfish Camaros. I mean, our friend has a 40,000-mile engine in his car and it's still chugging along just fine! This LSX is supposed to be a high-performance engine, but it seems like they took some shortcuts.

**Chevrolet Steps Up**

We reached out to GM and told them about the issues we found. They were very cooperative and told us that they would send us an entirely new engine and pay for any repairs on this one.

**Next Steps: Rebuilding and Replacing**

Now, this LS needs to go into the Ranger tomorrow, so we're going to move forward with repairing it. We'll put it back together and then throw it in the truck. We want to hear from you - what do you think we should do with the new LSX when it gets here? Let us know in the comments.

**The Oil Pump: A Cool Robust Drive**

We're one step closer to getting this engine fixed! Now, let's talk about the oil pump. This thing is driven by the crankshaft and spins through all the various nooks and crannies of the engine to lubricate everything.

**Timing Chain Cover Off: We're Getting Closer!**

F! We've got our timing chain cover off, and we can see the oral pump cam gear and cam behind it. This can all come off now, and then we'll be one step closer to fixing this engine.

**Removing the Main Caps: The Crankshaft Bearings**

We're taking off our main caps - these are the bearings for the crankshaft. We're hoping that everything is in perfect shape on this side... (pulls out bearing) ...yeah, it looks pretty good! However, we did find a weird-looking bearing with some diagonal scratches.

**The Block: We're Down to the Basics**

We've pulled the crankshaft out, and now we're down to the block. This is as low as we can go without taking apart the entire engine. We thought it would be fun to take this thing apart and learn what makes it special and reliable along the way.

**Putting It Back Together: The Next Steps**

Now that we've taken this thing apart, it's time to put it back together! We'll throw it in the Ranger, and then... well, who knows? Make sure you subscribe to our channel so you don't miss that and we'll get to it as soon as we can. Bye for now!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is a 7.4 L LSS one of the most legendary V8s of all time this thing has a reputation for being powerful robust and most importantly swappable which is why it's our choice for the engine we're going to be dropping into our Ford Ranger RAC truck build and to get a better understanding of what makes this engine so great and so swappable we're going to tear down this brand new crate engine and rebuild it yeah that's a good idea yeah that doesn't make no sense first of all you've never even touched an American engine in your life I know this is actually the first LS I've taken apart I'm a push rod guy I love push guy through and through have I told you about my catfish Camaro no I actually haven't told you about it I own a catfish Camaro I do know that ooh la nice and clean that think about the size of hot dog this could hold okay so we have our valve cover off and we're looking at our rockers and our valve springs we have an exhaust valve an intake valve exhaust intake exhaust intake exhaust which all exists inside of one of our heads on the back side of this rocker you have your push rod that push rod is coming in contact with our cam shaft and that is what's timing this whole entire process so that things are opening and closing at the right time now typically what you see in a modern engine is a dual overhead cam setup which looks like this the intake valves are driven by their own independent cam shaft as as well as the exhaust valves if the engine's a V8 that means there's two additional cam shafts on the other cylinder bake driving the intake and exhaust valves on that side that's a total of four independent cam shafts that all take up space and all have to be working in a push rod configuration you're able to get super similar functionality from One cam shaft which means that the engine has fewer parts that could be prone to failure but more importantly it means it has a reduced footprint so you can fit it in some incredibly small spaces that were never designed to house a V8 like a Miata okay as we take this thing apart it's going to be very imperative for us to stay very organized and we're going to have our best man on the job organizing our Hardware Jimmy okay Jimmy we have a push rod engine which is much less complex than an overhead valve engine I would say so I think uh because of that it's going to be a lot easier sure what's going to be like 20 volts okay now this is the guts of the engine what are those push rod guides yeah push rods yeah this is factory GM duct tape part number 69 all right check this out this is how you start your super villain uh Arc only a couple hairs sorry look at those brand new pluggies they didn't even they didn't even test fire this engine huh H I think they got it figured out by now okay we're taking our rocker arms off now which basically transfer the power from the push rods from the cam over to the valve springs to actually actuate the valves Joe dude well if you you know damn it job well you were just taking too long I had to help are you kidding me that push rod almost gave Jeremiah a stressinduced heart attack sounds like he could use a break with onx off-road they're celebrating National Stress Awareness Month did you know that was a thing cuz I didn't save 30% on a premium membership or a whopping 50% on an elite membership you can explore 650,000 guided Trails across the US Canada and Baja with each Trail colorcoded based on its difficulty you can see realtime trail conditions check public land boundaries navigate offline and even build custom roots that you can share with your friends let's get rid of the stress and download Onyx off-road to go enjoy beautiful Outdoors as well as some beautiful savings now these push rods are a little beefier than the ones you'd find on a standard LS remember this is an LSX which means that the engine has a bunch of performance upgrades to help us get a little more power now one of the reasons the push rods are so beefy is to overcome the force from the upgraded valve springs this engine uses beehive Springs now beehive Springs are type of progressive spring the ultimate goal is to prevent valve float now valve float is when your engine is rotating so fast it's out running the valve spring spring is just sitting there in a constant state of squish you can't close that valve back down in that same cycle and then it's just sitting there and you're losing power but we got thick Springs and with thick Springs we need thicker push rods I couldn't bend that even if I wanted to all right the next thing we're going to take off are the heads and thing I think we're going to notice a bunch is things that GM did to give this uh engine Extra Strength each head has an additional eight bolts over a normal LS engine all in all it makes for a much stronger head to block relationship and that's what it's all about bolts are out so the head's coming off I'm free whoa look at those fat pepperon yeah dude you called it these are some much bigger valves than I'm used to but at only one or well I guess two valves per cylinder they got to be big who oh yeah I know you like that I know you like that okay should we flip her over punch the Pistons out I'm not going to throw away I'll just put I'll just I'll just put him right there I'm just kidding I'm just kidding okay as we take this thing apart like we mentioned it's very important to keep things organized and lucky for us we're not just leaving this to our own devices we've got the ls doctor here Margaritas of margaritas racing thank you for joining us and helping us make sure that not only this thing comes apart okay but goes back together just fine shall we take this off to look at some connecting rods oh dude I'm going to freak out if I see a single connect oh God wa dude look at that freaking a nice looking crankshaft this thing has not only forged pistons and rods but it actually already comes with ARP connecting rod Hardware which is pretty nice dude this looks Cherry yeah this is a nice nice bit of Kit let's get to it your turn oh I broke a finger nail what the hell what do we got we've got a bunch aware something got closed up in there when they were putting this thing together oh my gosh spot that's crazy yeah wore through the coating wore through the other part of the bearing a few thousands deep this is a very like tight tolerance area we're talking like 3 to 5 th000 of an inch between the bearing and the crankshaft just enough for a thin layer of oil to ride keep the things separated and keep the metal from wearing we've already got wear we've got some bad wear so one thing we always do in this show show is you like to take your fingernail and rub it against the bearing and see if it catches and if it catches your fingernail you got a deep cut of all the engines we've done here at donut and broken apart this is the worst yeah with zero miles on and I know what you're thinking oh well it's cuz you guys were spinning the engine around by hand with no oil in it this definitely didn't get better with us spinning it by hand but that should be fine when this was assembled there was a chunk of metal in there and it has dug into the bearing I've been saying since we started doing this this is stupid we're taking apart a brand new engine but it's a good thing we did right we wouldn't have noticed that and this would just continue to get worse I'm curious to see what the remaining seven look like so me too let's take a gander shall we let's find out that one's much better top half of the bearing actually has a little bit of wear on it not nearly as bad as the first so it's not terrible but it's really not what you want to see on a brand new engine bro they forgot to put the RIS in lo you guys the same what I'm talking about now yeah that's insane okay so the way that you mate a piston to the connecting rod is through the wrist pin which is this little cylindrical piece in there which is basically just a really nice slit fit and then it's captured in this case by a couple of cir Clips at either end you can kind of see riding in that Groove and that just makes it so the wrist pin can't fall out without those circlips it'll slip right out we're missing one of the circlips look at that it's full down see that it's missing a whole circlip for the wrist pin retention watch what happens when I push on one that has a clip prevents that motion now let me push on the one that doesn't have a clip shouldn't do that thees I know I can see something like that yeah we got the most uh interesting stuff we've seen in any of the Engels we've taken apart I think yeah this is probably exactly how they built catfish Camaros no I got 40,000 mil on mine it's been chugging and pugging baby this is a $115,000 race engine like home boy are supposed to just buy this oil in it in their car and you know go to town they never thought someone would buy one of these take it apart and look at it called your bluff Chevy while we did find some problems with this engine we reached out to GM told them about the issues and they're going to send us an entirely new engine and pay for any repairs on this one now this LS needs to go into the ranger tomorrow so we're going to move forward with repairs but let us know in the comments what you think we should do with the new LSX when it gets here okay F oh got our timing chain cover off uh we've got oral pump cam gear and cam behind it so this can all come off and then we're one step closer yep oh thank you okay oil pump coming off I got our oil pump oh cool how does this thing work driven by the crankshaft so this is a cool robust drive down here you see how it mates up with this shape yep slips on there and uh spins this is where the pickup would go it runs down to the sump forces it through the crankshaft and through all the the various nooks and crannies of the engine to all the places that need oil so the crankshaft drives the pump that Lubes the crankshaft yeah it's pretty cool pretty cool so here is our chain tensioner this allows so that we don't have any slack in the chain so the connection from your crankshaft is directly transferred to the cam shaft all right Jar's pulling out the cam shaft responsible for operating all the valves hopefully it looks brand new this look pretty good what mad scientist invented this this is cool okay now we've removed our rear cover uh we're taking off our main caps these are the bearings for the crankshaft I'm hoping uh on this side everything is uh perfect shape yeah I am interested to find out there we go here's number four it's a pretty good looking bearing with one weird diagonal piece of one little scratch in there yeah it's not bad you can't really feel it just some gasket material basket okay so there we've got a really weird looking bearing with some pretty weird looking thrust bearing we're at the as low as we can go once we pull a crankshaft out we're down to a be block 1 two three who drop it nope you got it okay and with that we are officially down to the block of this LSX and I thought it was going to be fun to take it apart I didn't expect to find so many little issues uh so this thing will be fixed we're going to put it back together uh but it was fun learning what makes this engine so special and reliable along the way now the next thing we're going to do with this engine is put it back together and then throw it in that Ranger so make sure you subscribe to the channel uh so you don't miss that and we'll get to it as soon as we get this thing back together bye for nowthis is a 7.4 L LSS one of the most legendary V8s of all time this thing has a reputation for being powerful robust and most importantly swappable which is why it's our choice for the engine we're going to be dropping into our Ford Ranger RAC truck build and to get a better understanding of what makes this engine so great and so swappable we're going to tear down this brand new crate engine and rebuild it yeah that's a good idea yeah that doesn't make no sense first of all you've never even touched an American engine in your life I know this is actually the first LS I've taken apart I'm a push rod guy I love push guy through and through have I told you about my catfish Camaro no I actually haven't told you about it I own a catfish Camaro I do know that ooh la nice and clean that think about the size of hot dog this could hold okay so we have our valve cover off and we're looking at our rockers and our valve springs we have an exhaust valve an intake valve exhaust intake exhaust intake exhaust which all exists inside of one of our heads on the back side of this rocker you have your push rod that push rod is coming in contact with our cam shaft and that is what's timing this whole entire process so that things are opening and closing at the right time now typically what you see in a modern engine is a dual overhead cam setup which looks like this the intake valves are driven by their own independent cam shaft as as well as the exhaust valves if the engine's a V8 that means there's two additional cam shafts on the other cylinder bake driving the intake and exhaust valves on that side that's a total of four independent cam shafts that all take up space and all have to be working in a push rod configuration you're able to get super similar functionality from One cam shaft which means that the engine has fewer parts that could be prone to failure but more importantly it means it has a reduced footprint so you can fit it in some incredibly small spaces that were never designed to house a V8 like a Miata okay as we take this thing apart it's going to be very imperative for us to stay very organized and we're going to have our best man on the job organizing our Hardware Jimmy okay Jimmy we have a push rod engine which is much less complex than an overhead valve engine I would say so I think uh because of that it's going to be a lot easier sure what's going to be like 20 volts okay now this is the guts of the engine what are those push rod guides yeah push rods yeah this is factory GM duct tape part number 69 all right check this out this is how you start your super villain uh Arc only a couple hairs sorry look at those brand new pluggies they didn't even they didn't even test fire this engine huh H I think they got it figured out by now okay we're taking our rocker arms off now which basically transfer the power from the push rods from the cam over to the valve springs to actually actuate the valves Joe dude well if you you know damn it job well you were just taking too long I had to help are you kidding me that push rod almost gave Jeremiah a stressinduced heart attack sounds like he could use a break with onx off-road they're celebrating National Stress Awareness Month did you know that was a thing cuz I didn't save 30% on a premium membership or a whopping 50% on an elite membership you can explore 650,000 guided Trails across the US Canada and Baja with each Trail colorcoded based on its difficulty you can see realtime trail conditions check public land boundaries navigate offline and even build custom roots that you can share with your friends let's get rid of the stress and download Onyx off-road to go enjoy beautiful Outdoors as well as some beautiful savings now these push rods are a little beefier than the ones you'd find on a standard LS remember this is an LSX which means that the engine has a bunch of performance upgrades to help us get a little more power now one of the reasons the push rods are so beefy is to overcome the force from the upgraded valve springs this engine uses beehive Springs now beehive Springs are type of progressive spring the ultimate goal is to prevent valve float now valve float is when your engine is rotating so fast it's out running the valve spring spring is just sitting there in a constant state of squish you can't close that valve back down in that same cycle and then it's just sitting there and you're losing power but we got thick Springs and with thick Springs we need thicker push rods I couldn't bend that even if I wanted to all right the next thing we're going to take off are the heads and thing I think we're going to notice a bunch is things that GM did to give this uh engine Extra Strength each head has an additional eight bolts over a normal LS engine all in all it makes for a much stronger head to block relationship and that's what it's all about bolts are out so the head's coming off I'm free whoa look at those fat pepperon yeah dude you called it these are some much bigger valves than I'm used to but at only one or well I guess two valves per cylinder they got to be big who oh yeah I know you like that I know you like that okay should we flip her over punch the Pistons out I'm not going to throw away I'll just put I'll just I'll just put him right there I'm just kidding I'm just kidding okay as we take this thing apart like we mentioned it's very important to keep things organized and lucky for us we're not just leaving this to our own devices we've got the ls doctor here Margaritas of margaritas racing thank you for joining us and helping us make sure that not only this thing comes apart okay but goes back together just fine shall we take this off to look at some connecting rods oh dude I'm going to freak out if I see a single connect oh God wa dude look at that freaking a nice looking crankshaft this thing has not only forged pistons and rods but it actually already comes with ARP connecting rod Hardware which is pretty nice dude this looks Cherry yeah this is a nice nice bit of Kit let's get to it your turn oh I broke a finger nail what the hell what do we got we've got a bunch aware something got closed up in there when they were putting this thing together oh my gosh spot that's crazy yeah wore through the coating wore through the other part of the bearing a few thousands deep this is a very like tight tolerance area we're talking like 3 to 5 th000 of an inch between the bearing and the crankshaft just enough for a thin layer of oil to ride keep the things separated and keep the metal from wearing we've already got wear we've got some bad wear so one thing we always do in this show show is you like to take your fingernail and rub it against the bearing and see if it catches and if it catches your fingernail you got a deep cut of all the engines we've done here at donut and broken apart this is the worst yeah with zero miles on and I know what you're thinking oh well it's cuz you guys were spinning the engine around by hand with no oil in it this definitely didn't get better with us spinning it by hand but that should be fine when this was assembled there was a chunk of metal in there and it has dug into the bearing I've been saying since we started doing this this is stupid we're taking apart a brand new engine but it's a good thing we did right we wouldn't have noticed that and this would just continue to get worse I'm curious to see what the remaining seven look like so me too let's take a gander shall we let's find out that one's much better top half of the bearing actually has a little bit of wear on it not nearly as bad as the first so it's not terrible but it's really not what you want to see on a brand new engine bro they forgot to put the RIS in lo you guys the same what I'm talking about now yeah that's insane okay so the way that you mate a piston to the connecting rod is through the wrist pin which is this little cylindrical piece in there which is basically just a really nice slit fit and then it's captured in this case by a couple of cir Clips at either end you can kind of see riding in that Groove and that just makes it so the wrist pin can't fall out without those circlips it'll slip right out we're missing one of the circlips look at that it's full down see that it's missing a whole circlip for the wrist pin retention watch what happens when I push on one that has a clip prevents that motion now let me push on the one that doesn't have a clip shouldn't do that thees I know I can see something like that yeah we got the most uh interesting stuff we've seen in any of the Engels we've taken apart I think yeah this is probably exactly how they built catfish Camaros no I got 40,000 mil on mine it's been chugging and pugging baby this is a $115,000 race engine like home boy are supposed to just buy this oil in it in their car and you know go to town they never thought someone would buy one of these take it apart and look at it called your bluff Chevy while we did find some problems with this engine we reached out to GM told them about the issues and they're going to send us an entirely new engine and pay for any repairs on this one now this LS needs to go into the ranger tomorrow so we're going to move forward with repairs but let us know in the comments what you think we should do with the new LSX when it gets here okay F oh got our timing chain cover off uh we've got oral pump cam gear and cam behind it so this can all come off and then we're one step closer yep oh thank you okay oil pump coming off I got our oil pump oh cool how does this thing work driven by the crankshaft so this is a cool robust drive down here you see how it mates up with this shape yep slips on there and uh spins this is where the pickup would go it runs down to the sump forces it through the crankshaft and through all the the various nooks and crannies of the engine to all the places that need oil so the crankshaft drives the pump that Lubes the crankshaft yeah it's pretty cool pretty cool so here is our chain tensioner this allows so that we don't have any slack in the chain so the connection from your crankshaft is directly transferred to the cam shaft all right Jar's pulling out the cam shaft responsible for operating all the valves hopefully it looks brand new this look pretty good what mad scientist invented this this is cool okay now we've removed our rear cover uh we're taking off our main caps these are the bearings for the crankshaft I'm hoping uh on this side everything is uh perfect shape yeah I am interested to find out there we go here's number four it's a pretty good looking bearing with one weird diagonal piece of one little scratch in there yeah it's not bad you can't really feel it just some gasket material basket okay so there we've got a really weird looking bearing with some pretty weird looking thrust bearing we're at the as low as we can go once we pull a crankshaft out we're down to a be block 1 two three who drop it nope you got it okay and with that we are officially down to the block of this LSX and I thought it was going to be fun to take it apart I didn't expect to find so many little issues uh so this thing will be fixed we're going to put it back together uh but it was fun learning what makes this engine so special and reliable along the way now the next thing we're going to do with this engine is put it back together and then throw it in that Ranger so make sure you subscribe to the channel uh so you don't miss that and we'll get to it as soon as we get this thing back together bye for now