engguy

I'd llike to hear from others. How many have experienced engine problems? And what exactly was it?

Erix

Boy, one motor goes bad with a visable case and now we forget like the last 2.5 years of cars ever existed or proven they dont go pop left and right.

Sorry, you may really be curious, but you then again maybe not. I just am blown away how one thread has the sky falling.

FWIW I am a GM critic with some obviously questionable decisions they make to save a few bucks, but this stuff is about as wearing as the JSB threads.

If i rained tomorrow I wouldn't start building an ark.

Vindication

mine ticked really loud on cold start ups...had to buy a new motor instead

*C7*

Mine keeps burning up the tires....

No, really it does. Honest.

Painrace

It just can't help it's self!

American Power

So far so good 15K of drag racing/road racing 7K RPM shifts beat the **** out me miles.

vertC6

It appears to be alot more than one motor from what I have read, it sounds like there could be some major issues with rod bearings, valves, and valve springs. I am reading more and more problems, I know the first FI procharged car with 5 psi blew up on the guy on his way home. Guys with LS2 run 10 + with no apparent problems. Don't get me wrong I think it is an awesome design, but it looks like GM needs to investigate these issues. These are individually hand built race engines, problems should be very few and far between, and not as often as they keep poping up.

427Z

been here a long time and since the cars hit the streets, i can recall about 12-15 blown LS7's reported on this board. some let go on a leasurely drive, some at the track. so by my count, 12-15 engines since sep 2005

Racin Z06

My 06 Z06 went past 18,000 miles while at Thunder Hill last week. Nearly 9000 of these miles have been on tracks all over Northern California and Nevada. This car has been driven hard from the minute I wrote the check and it has never whimpered.

I wore out the stock brakes and replaced them with Baer S6 front and rear. These brakes are absolutely incredible!!

Oh.... and lots of tires have been shreded!!

Dave

Doctor Electron

I would think GM looked hard at the components mentioned. I had two LS6’s let go with broken valve springs, one @ 22,000 miles and one @ 55 thousand miles. 14k on the LS7 so far. It really burns much less oil that the LS6 and LS2s I owned and ruins a lot cooler oil temps. We are their ultimate test mules.
Doc E.

Foosh

Yep, it's as predictable as the sun rising in the east with the "newbies."

allanlaw

47 - the hamsters just got plum tuckered out . . .

engguy

I'm just curious what is failing on them. I mentioned in another post, the person doing the assembly is the least likely cause. Though humans can goof up. I would first blame the origin of the parts involved.
I would like to know from the builders that frequent this site what kind of checks they are doing in the process? Do the parts come to you in a tray and you just put it together or are there certain checks that are done other than fastener torques?

Foosh

Not many are failing, and it's nothing in particular. There is usually no pattern to random failure modes, just as in all things mechanical on all cars.

It is also important to remember the comparison set. You can't compare a LS7 to a Civic engine failure rate. The more power you put out, the less reliable the engine will be. That is a truism. Nonetheless, even that difference is rather small, percentage-wise. Add to that the type of owner who buys a high performance car and how they tend to drive them as opposed to the average Civic owner.

In addition, when you're dealing with performance engines, a lot of people can't resist the urge to tune and otherwise modify them. Thus, it becomes pretty impossible, pretty quickly to lock in on causal factors, that are due to stock design and production issues vs. self-imposed mods beyond the stock design, and driver behavior. This is especially true in an internet enthusiast's forum, which is not representative of the general population of owners.

So you see, what you have here is a hopelessly and completely, confounded, scientific sample within which it is impossible to draw general conclusions within the overall population of engines in general.

layjzay

It is mechanical! High performance!! SOME will break.

Nothing unusal about that

CodeBlack

do yourself a favor and don't ask that question. All kinds of self proclaimed scientists will come out of the wood work without factual data to support there kool-aid drinking theories even though members have posted problems.

Janet Curran

Last production year 40,000 C6 built,8200 are
Z06. A very small percentage of engine failures but a number thast is still to high.






a

fiveodude

I get a feeling some people here try to justify their 70k purchase that broke by saying "all cars have problems." I've been around high horsepower cars a long time and understand all of the nuances that come with them; but outright failure is a different issue all together. The pushrod motor has been around since the 50's, we should have rod, springs, and rocker arms figured out by now. It would be nice to know what the real MTBF for the Z is as it relates to the motor itself. I would also like to know the real number of Z06 owners on this board and how many have had total motor failure at < 20000 miles. If all Z owners (~12000?) visit this board then 15 total failures is a small percentage. If there are only 200 Z members on this board, then 15 failures is a very big deal at 7.5%.

vetteship

Zero problems, and loving every mile I drive ,

TAILWAG

good point...however, there are TONS of Z06's with members that drive their cars without issues and do NOT visit forums. Sometimes, when issues arise, they seek the internet help by visiting forums like this to find answers to their issues...the percentage of issues you will see is NOT directly correlated to the number of Z06's on the board...it will be considerably higher.

By the way....10,500 miles and running EXTREMELY strong...