Kaboom!

Right, so now the original engine is out of the car and hanging from an engine crane. I hadn't drained the oil before we pulled it out of the car, and now my tired brain decides that we have to do that before we tuck it over in the corner. Even though we're desperately curious to see what has gone wrong in this engine, it's late, and we've had a long day.
So we pull the oil drain plug and the fun begins. As we're watching the very black oil pour into the pan, Brent, who has the plug in his hand, glances down and notices this-


The previous owner had the foresight to install one of those magnetic drain plugs, and that is one alarmingly large piece of metal stuck to it. Well, that's certainly not suppposed to be there, is it?.
It looks like it was once part of a spring, but those are all supposed to be up in the cylinder head - roughly 16" away and separated (ideally) by pistons, rings and all sorts of other barriers. Very intriguing...

Well, now we just HAD to at least drop the pan...this was too good. Unfortunately, the engine is hanging by a chain while the new motor is on my only engine stand. No matter - we're resourceful young lads! In a remarkably hillbilly-esque procedure, Brent literally hugged the engine while I broke loose the oil pan screws. As I pulled the oil pan off, the tale of this engine's final moments started to unfurl before our very eyes. The debris in the bottom of the pan was both startling and glorious. What distinctly looked to be the remains of a piston skirt lay shattered across the bottom of the oil pan. We giggled like schoolkids for several minutes.

After we regained our composure, we snapped these:
Click for a larger version - it's worth it.

Did you click yet?? C'mon!!


The liquid at the bottom may look like oil, but it's more of a metallic "pudding" I grabbed a magnet, and passed it along the outside bottom of the pan, and you could literally watch the slurry deform as the metal particles aligned with the magnet. I wish I could have captured it with a camera - it was really cool.
At this point, we grabbed a flashlight and looked up into the engine from below.
More laughter - several minutes worth.

The #1 piston top was jammed up at the top of it's stroke. The connecting rod and wrist pin ripped the whole bottom half of the piston into the shards of aluminum that we saw in the pan. Ok - so now we're desperately curious to see what's going on in the cylinder head. A piston can't just stop at the top of it's stroke while the engine is running - bad things happen (as if chunks of said piston in the oil pan aren't bad enough).

Mind you, it's probably 10 or 11 o'clock by now, but we decide that we MUST see the rest of the destruction. It's time to pull the head off. So it's back to the hillbilly engine hugging.
The process of removing a cylinder head is a fiddly procedure even when you do it the right way. Much less, our way....
We stubbornly forged ahead, and a mere hour or so later (don't ask), our curiosity was satisfied. We were greeted with one of the best piston "grenades" we had ever seen:

clickee for biggie™




The destruction was very, very impressive. Notice in the 2nd picture you can see the clean area where the piston top was beaten into the top of the combustion chamber. That's not just clean, the metal is actually depressed there, resulting in the crack. Also notice the four distinct gouges where the valves were repeatedly smashed into the piston.

Well that was quite a discovery. As near as I can tell, this engine is nothing more than scrap. After the piston let go, the connecting rod and wrist pin slapped around in the cylinder, gouging out the walls in four places. I'm pretty sure even a .030 or .040 overbore wouldn't take care of it. Even if it did, the expense of the engine work, oversized pistons, and all the labor involved would seem stupid when you can get a fully functional engine for $300.

At least this engine provided some chuckles on it's way out....