Problems with an oil pump drive that had snapped on Friday during practice returned to haunt him on Sunday.
Mosgiel's Adams did not even make the grid as the spare engine he was forced to put in before qualifying turned out to be "no good", after the oil pump failed again, he said.
"There is something major wrong. We are going to have to pull the whole engine to bits and have a look."
He was unable to rejoin the field for the third race.
On Saturday, he also had a frustrating outing when, eight laps into the first race, his power steering hose blew on to the exhaust extractor.
"I had to retire with a bit of a blaze."
Adams' mechanics will have a busy week trying to sort the car out before the fifth round at Teretonga this weekend.
Dunedin driver John Whelan was on the back foot after his Toyota refused to start before qualifying on Saturday.
While the rest of the Toyota Racing Series entrants were setting lap times to determine their grid positions for the three races, Whelan's engineer and mechanics frantically searched for the problem.
A laptop diagnosis of the sensors did not show any irregularities and, although the car would "clutch start", it was not running properly, Whelan said.
Although the team got the car going, he was relegated to the back of the field for races one, two and three but managed to move forward to eighth, ninth and ninth respectively.
He took the qualifying disappointment on the chin and focused on sharpening his racecraft in the Toyota, which differs markedly to the Formula Ford he drove to national victory last season.
"Starting off the back in with the traffic, we are learning how to pass and how the wings and slicks aerodynamics work behind another car."
Whelan is seventh out of 12 drivers going into the third TRS round this weekend.
