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YouTuber Tears Down Her Broken Corvette C8 Engine

It looks small in the car...

A great look at the cylinder spacing on the LT2

YouTuber EmeliaHartford decided to get her 2020 Corvette C8 twin-turbocharged. And then she decided to dial up the pressure to what could be called “unsafe levels,” ie it was making nearly 1,500 HP at full boost!

In her previous video before this one, she did one pull on the street and heard what sounded like a cylinder letting go. They used a boroscope to look inside it, and it looked like half a piston was missing…

Since she was planning on building the motor to a more powerful and durable racing specification anyways, they decided that with what could be a cracked piston, it was worth dropping the engine.

Corvette C8 Engine
It doesn’t look THAT big…

And when they drop it, that small little engine you see from the top of the engine housing turns out to be one hell of a monstrously huge engine…

Corvette C8 Engine
… until you put a human being beside it. And she isn’t short!

So, after pulling the exhaust, taking off the valve covers, and pulling the manifold, they finally get to inspect the pistons. And to their confusion (with some censored swearing), all the pistons are present and accounted for.

Corvette C8 Engine
“Un, what the (bleep), where’s the broken piston?!”

So, what was causing the noise?

Two simple words that anyone that deals with forced induction absolutely hates to hear: Bent rods.

However, thankfully for Emelia, she was going to rebuild the engine anyway, so a few bent rods just means that she’s moving up her timetable. A “win” from a bad situation is always a win.