So I went to my parents' house this weekend for family christmas, on my way back to town Sunday morning for work I got about 30 miles from their house and blew my engine... It all of a sudden lost all power and blue/gray smoke came quickly from the tail pipes. I immediately pushed in the clutch and she died.

I pulled over to the side of the road and looked under the hood. I saw nothing visibly wrong and tried turning it over and she started but didnt run very well and bluish smoke came from the cylinder 8 region. This made me think it was a blown head gasket. I called my dad and we towed the car to his house.

once we got it there we immediately started tearing into the engine to see what was actually wrong... I'll let these few pics tell the tale




this is the beginning of the teardown process...



and this is what we saw when we got the passenger head off

the valve dropped and impacted the piston, causing it to shear off, it then bounced inside the cylinder impacting the piston once more before punching a hole through and fusing to the piston... did no damage to the cylinder wall but cracked the head unfortunately. It also bent the exhaust push rod when the rocker tried to open the exhaust valve it impacted the valve and bent the push rod...

this is as far as we got until we get parts and i get back up to their house...

this will now become my official build thread so stay tuned for updates through January as we rebuild the engine

-Fritz

 

That's too bad man. Did you clean the piston like that. If not, you had a coolant leak going on, which steam cleaned it quite nicely.

 

Looks like it had been leaking for awhile

 

No I didnt clean the piston thats what it looked like when the head was pulled off.
There was quite a lot of steam when she blew, and the engine ran clean and smooth before this incident. can anyone tell me what RPM I would have been running at travelling 70 mph, 245/50-16 tires, 4.10:1 gears, 1:1 final ratio from trans? my tach doesn't work. and what would the same be it i was running 2.73 gears

 

Your tire is approximately 25.7" diameter.
With 4.10's you're at 3,766 rpm.
With 2.73's you're at 2,508 rpm.
http://www.thirdgen.org/calculations

 

thanks!!! and that site is now bookmarked

 

Items I'm getting to rebuild the engine
Heads, Head Bolts, Lifters, pushrods, pistons, pistons rings, complete gasket set, all bearings, anything else you guys can think of that i'm missing?

 

timing chain and maybe a cam? how much coolant got into the oil? im expecting you to inspect that just incase some debri got in there. but seems like a good time to get some better flowing heads and put the overdrive back in. that thing was screaming down the road, its no wonder it blew

 

OUCH

I've looked for engines and long blocks and finally found a local shop that will do a complete rebuild, parts included for $1300 (305 TBI)

 

well, a bit of an update (its been a while, been busy)

block was cracked



so the next step was yanking the heart




and tearin off the parts i needed or could sell




i then found a guy who had an almost complete 73 Vette engine that ran when it was pulled

i rebuilt it anyway but forgot to take pics along the way until it was fully assembled



just one more weekend worth of work (Feb 4th, 5th and 6th), putting in Cami's new heart, and she should be back to life!!!