So heres the whole story. Driving around and everything is fine, I fill up with gas (unintentionally 87 octane) I drive roughly another 20 mins and i hear a loud "ping" but nothing felt different so i wasnt sure if it was my car or one close to me on the road (las vegas traffic). I enter the highway and get up to speed and about 2 miles later I get a loud backfire, it keeps popping not consistently just kinda randomly. I take the exit to get off the highway and it dies on the ramp, its only one lane and no shoulder so i put it in neutral and try to fire it back up and it starts back up fine still randomly popping and a very distinct loss of power. I pull into a gas station and shut it down. Open the hood and don't see anything glaring at me. I have to get back to the house and its only a few miles down the road so i fire her up and baby it home. This morning i got out to see if i can figure it out and there is no oil on the dipstick, bone dry, i fill it up. There is oil splatter on the passenger side under the hood and on the plug wires and what not. I took off the valve covers and everything seems normal. Fired it up and they everything is moving in rhythm. I replace valve covers. Then I lay down on the ground and right on the bottomr of my motor right near the front i see oil leaking from a shiny piece of metal sticking out of my block. I am pretty new to this whole scene and have no idea what it was sticking out of there or what to do next. I reached up under there and gave it a wiggle and it wiggled right out of there and now i have a hole in the bottom of my block.....any thought or advise....please dont just say, get a new motor. I get it if mines trashed but i want to know the what, why and how.

 

going out to take a few pictures now.

 

Pictures but if you have a hole in your block and oil comes out of it, this is kind of a no brainer. The oil has to stay inside. If it is down power and not running right I would say something broke. Without pictures or looking at ourselves we can not tell you what broke. I know you don't want to hear it but a new engine is on your horizon.

 

i have pictures just havent figured out how to put them up yet. I know something broke obviously, I have the piece in my hand. just not sure what i have to replace. it looks like the part where the piece busted through can be removed and hopefully the whole motor isnt trashed. Just dont know that much about motors. If i can figure out how to put these pictures up it may give you a better idea of what i mean.

 

still cant get these pics up

 

You need to pull the pan and take a look. Is the piece in your hand solid? Almost doesn't look solid but hard to tell.. But without taking the pan off and looking no way to tell.

Someone else might post up their opinion. I have said mine, if it was mine the pan would be coming off shortly.

 

You said the piece was sticking out of the block, but it looks more like it's sticking out of the pan, not the block. There's a few things that look like that piece, but the first that comes to my mind are the dipstick tube, and the pushrods. If you had the valve covers off and all the rockers are in place, and pushrods sitting against the rockers, then we can eliminate those. The bottom of the dipstick is either pressed into the block, or fits into the pan, and if it broke off it could drop into the pan, and get hit by a counterweight on the crankshaft.
It appears to me that regardless of what or where it came from, the crank hit it and shoved it through the pan. You'll need to pull the oil pan first, and then determine where that piece came from, and if there's any other damage. If you ran the engine with little or no oil, I'd suspect you'll end up having bad bearings, and maybe a bad crank too. A complete rebuild seems in the future in my opinion, and might be cheaper to just get a good used or new engine.

 

like i said this my first car like this. and i know very little about motors. so if it was sticking out of the oil pan is there a chance that when i get it off that this motor is salvagable? all the rods were in place and functioning normally. The piece is hollow. If it is part of the dipstick tube could this be an easier fix than previously thought? I had already been planning on a rebuild but I just moved and was hoping to not be FORCED into doing it now. What do you guys think?

 

Ok well next step is to get that oil pan off and scope it out...ill take pictures and now that i know how to post them ill update when i get it off and look at it. thanks for the help thus far.

 

Once you get under the car you'll need to drain whatever oil is left in the pan. Be sure to keep track of how much oil is left, and do an autopsy on that oil to see what else is laying in the pan. You can also check in the pan when it's off to see what else is there. If you find things, post a picture here.
I would also pull a couple rod caps and check the wear on the rods to see if they are scored from lack of oil. If they are, then it means a complete rebuild, and that will be time to decide what route you take. Either a donor engine, or rebuilding this engine.
You will also need to discover for sure what the piece is, and where it came from, and hopefully it will be more obvious once the pan is removed. Wish I had better news for you!