Thread: What do you engine guys see here?

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My other thread has gone into the archives and I don't know how to find it, so I'll just do this new one. Here are some pictures of the insides of Dan's 455 Olds engine. Now that I look at the scoring on cylinder number 3 it looks like the lines are too straight to be some random broken off carbon. It looks like maybe a broken ring? What do you experts on this stuff think?

Thanks,

Don

And here are some pictures of the valves and chambers on number 1 and 3. The engine has maybe 500 miles on it and looks like it has 200,000 from all the oil getting in.

BTW, I found a new bare block locally and we are going to pick it up tomorrow. We just want to start with a clean sheet of paper and build a new engine. I am also going to not use my usual machine shop but will use the guy who did Dan's brake drums and my pulleys recently. He races an 8 second blown S10, so he should know his stuff.

Don

carbon will not do that .steel will..... end gap butting busted rings .looks to have a bad guide in the head or bad valves seal s or both ez to check

Pat, when you say "end gap butting busted rings", do you think one of the rings has busted into several pieces, or what? What would cause that?

Thanks for the reply.

Don

I agree with Pat that looks like metal scraping metal. The burnt oil and carbon build up are really bizarre for only 500 miles too. Don't know what is going on there.

Another two cents?? I'd sure suspect a busted ring or two - but I ain't no eggspurt.

I think I'd just rebuild or replace those heads; new seats and guides, seals, the works.

Is that a little bit of oil on top of the piston , One way to find out what's wrong is drop the rod and piston out , Something in the ring department has been done wrong , I wonder what the side of the piston looks like !
Who built the engine ?

not enough end gap can make the ring butt and bust .looks like the intakes have had new guides put in at one time looks like 502 guides

Pat, that makes sense about the end gap causing the problem. The engine did get up to 230 a couple of times until the cooling system burped the air out, then it would come down and stay at 190-200. Maybe that didn't help.

Steve, it looked different to me last night when I first saw the scoring, but tonight when I took the pictures the true pattern of the scraping showed up and it was obvious they were very straight and deep, like steel had done it.

Rrumbler, yep, we have a new set of C heads that will get the full treatment. The ones we had are Ga heads and were done by someone else and will become doorstops.

Street T, we are going to start pulling things apart so we can disassemble the engine completely. We built the engine, twice actually. The first time was about 5 years ago and it sat so long before he got the car done that we tore it apart and completely went through it a second time.

On the plus side, we can salvage a lot of the parts to reuse when we get the new block back from the machine shop. The car had 50 psi oil pressure and the cam and lifters broke in very well, no wear at all on them. We will have the pistons cleaned up and at least 7 of them should be reusable, so we will maybe only have to buy one to replace that suspect one.

We will take EXTRA care this time fitting the rings and the rest of the parts to make sure this doesn't happen again. While we are talking about rings, what type do you guys like for a street engine.....cast iron, moly, chrome, etc.?

Thanks everyone for the help, I'll post some pictures of what the internals look like when we get it torn down.

Don

This sucks for Dan. It will be interesting to see if a different block and heads makes a difference in the intake manifold fitment.

As for finding your previous post, go to your profile page, in the upper left is a box of links, one of them is for "find all started threads", and there's also "find all posts". This is the stuff that used to be under the "statistics" tab.

i use alot of hasting rings of stock to mild use use there moly top ring rings . for race i use je rings .speed pro hell fire. mahl.total seal tnt. as alot to do with what there going in and how much Nos some rings have a better oil ring expander then others to work with .with stock fitted rings they can be off for gap and can be file fitted i do this all the time its not hard to be off 003 on ring gap for about every 001 of bore. on most every build i like the rings with abit more end gap so they will not butt and i check all ring gaps for every build

Thanks Bob. Roger sent me a PM too, telling me how to find previous posts. Once you guys explained how it was pretty simple.

Pat, thanks for that info on the rings. Is it preferable to buy the ones you have to file to fit over the ones that you don't? I think I will buy a ring filer and do them with that. I saw them using one on one of the car shows on TV and it didn't look super expensive, but it was better than using a hand file.

Today when Dan gets off work we are meeting the guy who is selling the bare 455 block. Sure hope it looks good and if it does I'll drop it off at the machine shop tomorrow.

Don

Hi Don, i hadn't heard of Dans bad luck but just saw this, I'm with Pat as i think the ring gaps were to tight/wrong and as they have expanded they havn't had anywhere to go.

Originally Posted by Itoldyouso

Thanks Bob. Roger sent me a PM too, telling me how to find previous posts. Once you guys explained how it was pretty simple.

Pat, thanks for that info on the rings. Is it preferable to buy the ones you have to file to fit over the ones that you don't? I think I will buy a ring filer and do them with that. I saw them using one on one of the car shows on TV and it didn't look super expensive, but it was better than using a hand file.

Today when Dan gets off work we are meeting the guy who is selling the bare 455 block. Sure hope it looks good and if it does I'll drop it off at the machine shop tomorrow.

Don

KD Tools makes a ring fileing tool part # 870. This is the one that I've used. They can be had for about $70.00 or so. You'll also need to get a ring squareing tool to put rings squaely in bore for accurate measurements. Also if you havn't done this before, I suggest practicing on some used rings before cutting on your new rings.

Steve, he (and I ) are a little bummed about having to pull the body off and build a new motor, but it is what it is. I think you guys are right about tight rings breaking, and maybe in the next week or so we will have it torn down for a looksee.

sbcguy, that KD tool is exactly what I am looking for, and will pick up the squaring tool as well......good advice. Sure beats the hand file and using a piston to square them up as I have always done.

Don