Scott, weren't you on ThirdGen.org? Your car looks very familiar!

 

Yes, moderator of the History/Originality forum. I still have the car, but now I have another.

 

Wait...you weren't the iron fist guy, were you?? He had a black one IIRC...

 

I used to have a 91 Z28, Bright Red, 305 T-Tops

 

A warranty replacement engine will have little, if any, impact on the future value. At least that's what I've seen at recent auctions and I don't know why that would change. It isn't like they are going to put a SBC in the car.

 

Got a call today that they finally got the engine removed and started to take it apart. I was told that I wouldn't believe it until I got there. Lets just say it wasn't the chain that caused the hole in the oil pan. They feel confident the noise was caused by whatever caused this result.


https://www.dropbox.com/sc/s7jhfqkpd...kUuGzPCRzwyf4a

 

Wow. You're getting a new long block right??

 

Oh that looks like it hurt.

 

What caused THAT?!?!?!?

 

My Brother had a 56 Chevy Race car and that happened one day. Same look!!! It was caused by bad timing at high rpm.

Well it will be all better soon. Good Luck

 

Ya think? What would be salvable?
I would not be surprised if the exhaust manifolds and cats are full of junk and possibly the intake manifold and throttle body.

This is the definition of catastrophic engine failure.

 

New engine, intake, and throttle body are going in today. We could see into the top of the upper cats and there doesn't appear to be any metal in them. The headers were completely clean also. The tech will inspect them further this morning.


The old engine will be boxed and sent out this week and go straight to the R&D department. Hopefully they will report back with their findings at some point. All we know is that piston 1 and 5 were starved of oil and got extremely hot.

 

Sweet and well done!

Traditionally engines are oiled from rear to front. Usually a single horizontal main oil galley running from the back to the front of the engine with (In this case 5) vertical feeder branches off of it dropping down to each main journal oils the rods and crank (And valley located cam in single cam, pushrod engines which this is not). The main journal bearing has a groove cut in its circumference to feed the pressurized oil from the gallery into an oil hole on the cranks main journal. That hole is cross-drilled through the crank web to the rod journal where it’s branched in two exit points, each one feeding one of the two rods on the cranks rod journal.

From what I can see I think it was the front two rod bearings that failed. If none of the other rod or main bearings were affected, it was likely isolated to that galley branch and was not a global low oil pressure issue. If that main bearing wasn’t affected, it’s likely something was plugging the oil galley in the crank. If the main and both rod bearings were affected there was likely something in the feeder branch.

Once the rods let go (Catastrophically fail and depart the rod journal) the next half to full revolution of the crank throw or balance weights usually catch what’s left of the big end of the rod and pulls the piston and rod into the pan where the crank beats the he11 out of them as seen in the pix. Sometimes the crank pushes the rod/piston up into the chamber first and takes out the head too. Either way, that engine is a door stop at this point. Note the case is broken at the main bearing saddle.

John

 

Thanks for the info John!


I got the car back last night and so far everything seems back to normal. Inspected for damage and only found a scratch on the strut tower brace, which will be replaced. Haven't seen any leaks and it sounds good. So far so good, but we'll see over the coming weeks how she does.


The broken engine gets shipped today or Monday and it could be weeks until the dealer hears back. I'll post their findings if/when I get them.

 

last time I saw that kind of carnage was looking at the engine that blew up after the driver ran a sub-10.0 1/4 mile and the rod shot out the bottom of the oil pan.

 

This is what happens to a Packard built Rolls Royce Merlin when a fork rod lets loose at 120 inches of manifold pressure and 3400rpm. When the engine was disassembled the block fell in two at its new formed parting line~

John

 

John, do you have a link to the video? All I see is a picture.

 

I don't have the video just a couple stills takem from it.

John