Cotton wrote: Did they know he was tracking it when the engine went? A lot of manufacturers like to void warranties if you have a failure while racing or doing a track event (Subaru/Mitsubishi?). I heard GM actually encourages track usage, so am just curious how they handled it. There used to be a board member that have several vette track cars and raced them regularly, I'm not sure if he is still around, but would like to see his thoughts.
They did know he was on track when it happened. He was perfectly up front about it. They said if the engine had been modded or tuned he was SOL, but it was still box stock so they covered it. Took a couple days of referrign up the chain. Apparantly there are some fairly common issues with lack of proper oiling in the LS7 in very specific high-G track situations. Reports of that failure are becoming more common. Also notice they used the other block to build the ZR1 if I'm not mistaken.
the second failure was actually a valve/piston damage issue. sort of. When they replaced the first block the factory spec did not include replacing the intake manifold or cats. My friend was running 130 in third (yeah, that's what I said too) when he came up on a slow moving minivan (yep, said that too) and backed out of the throtte. The noise started just afterward, so he thinks that some small metal debris got sucked back through the exhaust valve when the RPMS dropped so suddenly in gear (backflow, backpressure, etc)
