I'm ready to eat a bullet!!! Motor problem **UPDATE**

I will mail you mine if you mail it back...

 

Hoping for the best, let us know what you find.

 

Same thing happened to me on a Sportster once. Made a god awful racket and the cleared up.

 

chances are it blew whatever out the exhaust. years ago my brother buddy helped himself to a few of my things and after i found out and reclaimed them the next night i mixed up a "care package" : sheet metal screws,BB'S,1/4 20 nuts and some sugar (10lb) for the fuel system and i'll be dammed if NOTHING at all went wrong with that motor! man i was pissed until a stolen 10yd dump truck backed into it a month later.

 

***** I pulled the head this morning and found a small (1/4") washer sitting on top of the #2 piston. It was kinda stuck in the carbon on top. I barely touched it with a screwdriver and it poped free. NO DAMAGE to the piston, cylinder wall or valves!!!! I am a happy person!! I was expecting the worse but I got LUCKEY. Not sure where the washer came from but I will be axtra cautious when I put it all back together.******
Thanks to all for their support and encouragement during this little ordeal!
Todd

 

Glad to hear you dodged a bullet instead of eating one.

 

No ****! I was like a dog ****t'en a peach seed as I pulled the head off. I was really expecting a disaster. Good karma I guess.

 

time to go buy a lottery ticket!!!!

 

Now you can have a smile at the Labor Day BBQ . You are doing that ? ...........

 

If the washer was laying flat and you can see where the plug hit it and there are no other marks on the piston or head you should be fine. Clean the carbon off the pistons and I'd put a new set of valve seals on the valves while I had the head off and take a look at the valves in that cylinder to make sure one wasn't bent a bit.

 

I Had the same thing happen about 20 years ago, only it didn't work out so well for me in the end.

Had a 250 L6 in my 63 Nova SS with flat top pistons, big cam and 4 speed. I put a velocity stack on the Holley 390 and threaded a single nut to hold it on a long carb stud. Was pushing it at 5,000 rpm when I heard a loud noise and the freeway filled up with white smoke behind me.

When I finally pulled the head I found #3 cylinder beat to heck and cracked in two places. There was this funny flat ridged metal piece welded to the top of the piston. I later figured out that the ridged metal thing was the small nut I had used to hold the velocity stack on.

It had backed itself all the way up the threaded rod and dropped into the engine through the wide open secondaries. After getting into the cylinder it trashed the top of the piston and cracked the block before splitting in half. The ridged part of the metal was the threads!

The engine ran fine after that, but I had to sleeve the cylinder and replace the rod and piston first. Luckily the head was OK.

I think I still have the rod and piston in my box of stupid and expensive things not to do again.

 

I know the feeling. I managed to drop a nut into the distributor hole on a 305. The only good thing was that it was on an engine stand. But it did require pulling the pan to extract the damned thing.
Good Luck!

 

And a head gasket! Good deal, Todd!