Replaced Voodoo Engine

[Zitrosounds]

I don't think anyone is "fretting" over this. I find it interesting to follow and if anything it encourages me to drive mine more - if she blows, so be it. At least it will be under warranty. I love driving this car, and might even track it after taking the track attack school this summer.

definitely track this car! You will never experience any of its potential if you do not. its a waste really. And the engine is a ticking time bomb, literally. All the way to 8250 RPM baby!

 

[Nfs1000f]

Those with high oil consumption, do you have "carbon splats" on your exhaust tips? I'm not talking about a dry powder look, I'm talking about a black splat look. (I can upload pics later) It's mainly on the inner exhaust tip not the outside tip as much and I drive with the valves open.

I have 2300 miles on my GT350, no track time, just street driving, but I drive it hard once it's above 190 degrees and I followed the break-in procedure. I have noticed my oil move down the dip stick approaching the lower hole in the last 1k miles.... no change the first 1k. The first oil change was at 1100 miles.

Just curious if those with high oil consumption have this phenomenon on their exhaust tips.

FWIW I have driven my car nearly 2000 miles and have added no oil. My exhaust tips are as clean as they day I bought it. With that being said, I have not tracked the car and have driven it like a wussy.

 

[Minn19]

I don't think it's fanboyism. I just think it is a small sample of the total production line and why I mentioned the 1 in 10 statistic that I personally took, plagued, data is skewed, not accurate. Why? There are almost 16k cars produced. the majority of owners are not on this forum or any forum. I am a silent member on a variety of forums and FB pages and we are talking small group of owners that are actually speaking out about anything. Sure you could argue that this number is a good representation but I could argue the contrary and say most owners are not enthusiasts, have not had failures and are not forum members. I personally do not care what the number is, I have gone through this before on a GT350 and on a few other vehicles. It happens. nothing to get all worked up about. Don't like it? Sell the car and get a Toyota which celebrates a 1in 140 something engine failure rate. By the way, German cars are on the top of the list for engine failures and oil consumption.

There is plenty of fanboyism on all of the sites, some are just willing to admit it and others try to hide it. As for selling it, I think you know I'm as all in on this car as anybody for the long haul. This is why I'm interested in this continuing to appear on a fairly routine basis. I had hoped the pace would slow down, but it looks to remain fairly steady which is troublesome IMO.

When I was going to start this thread over a year ago I was at the numbers we are at in this thread. I just don't know how many are duplicates, but I do know there are quite a few that are being left off of the list.

 

[PP0001]

Thanks for the post. Think I need to be retired to have the time to engage in this banter battle. Sample size here is just a bit on the light side. I personally don’t draw any theories/hypotheses/conclusions from this analysis because of the sample size, but to each his own. A fan boy I am not, so kick that jab down the road. I am also not a keyboard racer.

Bottom line is I track my car regularly so I pay attention to this type of stuff. Anecdotal suppositions don’t offer much insight or value to those who can view the world through an objective lens. I know 20+ 350 owners in the region, most of whom track their car, and none have had engine problems. I know of one in the region, who I don’t know, who lost his motor on track. I don’t draw any conclusions from this first-hand knowledge either.

I will listen if Ford, or some other reliable entity, starts talking about reasons for engine failure and/or percentages of failed units. Until then, I’ll keep enjoying the hell out tracking my 350 and all the visceral fun that brings. Life is too short to fret about an unreliably small sample size. Have fun gents!

Well said and I'm done.

;)

 

[Hack]

I do think that people with engine failure will tend to want to tell people about it. Even to the point of signing up for a forum so that they can tell people. There are also a couple instances of people that strike me as a bit suspicious (meaning they might not actually own a GT350, but they posted about engine failure on this forum). It doesn't take much to skew the results.

That is why I would take a forum poll with a grain of salt.

However, I own a GT350 - drive it (almost) daily and so I'm interested to hear about other people's experiences with their cars.

 

[17RubyShelbyGT350]

Thanks!

There are also a few others that are members that have had engine replacements that are no longer active and have not chimed in. Kairoja I think is his board name and couple of others I can’t quite remember, but haven’t seen post in this thread.

Any way, I give you credit and I thought about starting a thread like this last year when a lot of people (including me) were getting engine replacements, but ran into what you are right now. There will always be fan boys of any brand and they can’t even handle a simple count to member ratio such as this one.

Also, I’ve had a number of different brands of cars plus six BMWs (two of them M cars) and I’ve never experienced oil consumption such as this either. Nor the need to check it as often as you need to with this motor either.

Thanks to you and several others who responded to me both publically and privately to express appreciation for this very basic frequency count statistical exercise. I can understand your reticence to do this because of the inevitable kickback from the naysayers, conspiracy theorists (data is made up or “plagued” i:doh. All in response to a frequency count using forum membership as the only available sample of over 300 owners. Actually, some of the pushback comments were pretty amusing although I must admit it was a bit tiring to have to provide the same explanations and definitions repeatedly. I took great care to explain what was doing, how it was done, and what the data may or may not signify re the larger universe of owners. The responses, both indicating understanding or non-acceptance of this simple count, are literally textbook.

I own one of these cars, which means I have both a personal interest and a right to provide input into this forum which is a free exchange of ideas and information. I will continue to add data if necessary although I sincerely hope that no more forum members will report in with blown engines.

Over and out... :cheers:

 

[honeybadger]

Thanks to you and several others who responded to me both publically and privately to express appreciation for this very basic frequency count statistical exercise. I can understand your reticence to do this because of the inevitable kickback from the naysayers, conspiracy theorists (data is made up or “plagued” i:doh. All in response to a frequency count using forum membership as the only available sample of over 300 owners. Actually, some of the pushback comments were pretty amusing although I must admit it was a bit tiring to have to provide the same explanations and definitions repeatedly. I took great care to explain what was doing, how it was done, and what the data may or may not signify re the larger universe of owners. The responses, both indicating understanding or non-acceptance of this simple count, are literally textbook.

I own one of these cars, which means I have both a personal interest and a right to provide input into this forum which is a free exchange of ideas and information. I will continue to add data if necessary although I sincerely hope that no more forum members will report in with blown engines.

Over and out... :cheers:

I don't think anyone said your data was useless or a waste of time. If they did, well fuck it. I think it's safe to say the majority find it useful/interesting.

Everyone was saying the same thing (even you included)....that the data sample isn't big enough to represent the entire population...

 

[honeybadger]

With that said -

 

[Moogatwo]

has anyone noticed their oil consumption start to taper off with higher miles? For the first 6k I was burning about 1 quart every 1k miles.

I just crossed over 10k mile mark in May . I've been driving my GT350 a lot this summer. I started a new job with a longer commute (20 miles versus 4 miles old place). I've noticed my car has been burning less oil when I check it at fill ups. In May I put about 850 miles on the car and my oil consumption was almost nothing.

 

[Austinj427]

I do think that people with engine failure will tend to want to tell people about it. Even to the point of signing up for a forum so that they can tell people. There are also a couple instances of people that strike me as a bit suspicious (meaning they might not actually own a GT350, but they posted about engine failure on this forum). It doesn't take much to skew the results.

That is why I would take a forum poll with a grain of salt.

However, I own a GT350 - drive it (almost) daily and so I'm interested to hear about other people's experiences with their cars.

This is another issue with it. I remember from the RS forum people would join just to try to get information on the head gasket issues. Which would throw off our data in this case.

I did get a little curious, assuming the 6.6% number is correct. I wanted to see how much the engines would cost Ford out of their profit.

From what I could find, Ford has an average profit of 8.7% per car. Where the GT350 falls into that, I'm not sure. I know they have a lot more profit on trucks, and less on cars, I felt that was probably ok.

Figure an average invoice price of $55,000 (rough estimate) on a GT350, and it looks like for brings in just under $4800 per car they make. Multiply that by 17,500 cars built and it's about $84M in profit.

I'm not sure what Fords cost is per engine, but from what I have gathered from White Bear Lake is they sell parts at 10% over their cost. I'm going to assume Ford is probably somewhere near the 8.7% profit on parts as well, which puts an engine in the $11,600 range (it seems high but this is a hand built engine with a very special crank).

Multiply that by 1155 (6.6%) cars that need engines, and youre in the ballpark of $13.4M. I remember Honda used to pay us $90/hr on warranty work, I assume Ford is similar to that, and they list a long block R&R at 20 hours. That packs another $2M in labor on top, which puts it at $15.4M.

I don't want to get too exact on numbers because there are so many assumptions but based on that it's over 18% of their profit.

 

[FPC]

FWIW I have driven my car nearly 2000 miles and have added no oil. My exhaust tips are as clean as they day I bought it. With that being said, I have not tracked the car and have driven it like a wussy.

Thanks for the feedback. I can drive mine for 15 minutes and it looks like this. I think this is a sign of considerable amount of future oil consumption. I think the "carbon splat" look is from condensation mixed with carbon, not 100% sure. Wondering if there is a correlation between high oil consumption and engine replacement. I believe some of the engine replacements are due to catastrophic component failure.... not related to oil consumption, but I believe others are due to burning oil so drastically that people don't realize it until it's too late. That's why I check my oil every fill up.

Next question would be why does mine produce so much condensation?

 

[rick81721]

has anyone noticed their oil consumption start to taper off with higher miles? For the first 6k I was burning about 1 quart every 1k miles.

I just crossed over 10k mile mark in May . I've been driving my GT350 a lot this summer. I started a new job with a longer commute (20 miles versus 4 miles old place). I've noticed my car has been burning less oil when I check it at fill ups. In May I put about 850 miles on the car and my oil consumption was almost nothing.

Seems to vary. Mine consumed no oil the first 2200 miles. Since then, it consumed 1 qt the next 3000 miles, but now seems to be accelerating - added another 0.5 qt over a 500 mile stretch. Currently at 5700 miles and keeping a spreadsheet for all the data. Also added a passenger-side catch can @ 5100 miles, haven't checked that yet.

 

[Caballus]

It's been pointed out that most seem to blow when the mileage is still relatively low.

Any idea of the highest mileage known at time of failure?

 

[CANTWN4LSN]

Seems to vary. Mine consumed no oil the first 2200 miles. Since then, it consumed 1 qt the next 3000 miles, but now seems to be accelerating - added another 0.5 qt over a 500 mile stretch. Currently at 5700 miles and keeping a spreadsheet for all the data. Also added a passenger-side catch can @ 5100 miles, haven't checked that yet.

My situation almost identical to yours except I'm at 11000 miles, almost all long highway trips with high rpm when I can and zero change in driving habits and proper break in. If it gets below 1000 miles per quart I'll be notifying dealer. I am encouraged by reports such as the post above that some cars stop burning oil but I sure as hell wish some one would tell us why. Also glad I have 7 year/100,000 mile coverage as I plan to rack 'em up after retirement in a year. But I wish some one knowledgeable would chime in on how bad it might be to run 60-80 quarts of oil through the combustion chambers and exhaust system in 100k miles. And if it went out of warranty at FPC replacement prices despite that being the selling point of this car I might be tempted to put in a 5.2L CPC with SC if that is possible and cheaper.

 

[MulhollandMonster]

My situation almost identical to yours except I'm at 11000 miles, almost all long highway trips with high rpm when I can and zero change in driving habits and proper break in. If it gets below 1000 miles per quart I'll be notifying dealer. I am encouraged by reports such as the post above that some cars stop burning oil but I sure as hell wish some one would tell us why. Also glad I have 7 year/100,000 mile coverage as I plan to rack 'em up after retirement in a year. But I wish some one knowledgeable would chime in on how bad it might be to run 60-80 quarts of oil through the combustion chambers and exhaust system in 100k miles. And if it went out of warranty at FPC replacement prices despite that being the selling point of this car I might be tempted to put in a 5.2L CPC with SC if that is possible and cheaper.

More power out-the-box.

https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-6007-A52XS