I was driving my bosses work van last august, and at 65 MPH on the highway, it died on me. Here is a pic of what happened. after pullin the engine apart, it looks like the head of a valve snapped off somehow. this in turn took the cylinder wall, connecting rod, and piston with it. This was out of a dodge 360 engine. and the newspaper ad saying "half off" is just a coincedence. I swear. check it out:
ha ha good quote! (as I wipe the oil off my computer with my sleeve) Sucks about the motor though. At least you got a cool show and tell outta it. Justin
i once saw a really cool column drop (in a model a) made from a connecting rod. it had a perfect radius bend in it from one end to the other so that one end was perpendicular to the steering column and the other was in line with the dash (i.e., straight up and down). i asked the fella standing beside it how he got that perfect bend in the rod. he answered "that's just the way it looked when it came out the side of the block."
One of my students just did something similar, but with a 351 Ford. Near as we can tell, it went like this: siezed a bearing and blew the side of the rod out. the rest of the rod cracked the block, then continued on it's mery way till it hit the cam, snapping in in 4 places, not to mention shredding the remainder of the rod, and that piston. The front piece of the still spinning cam broke the retainer plate, and a piece fell into the crank gear causing the timing chain to snap. When the cam stoppes, but the crank didn't, 5 pistons hit the valves. The back piece of the cam fell out of place because only the read bearing was supporting it. That allowed the lifters to drop down, and next time the lobe came around, it cracked a lifter in 3 places. oops. -Bugman Jeff
I got my 300 cause of a failure like that. The kid says he was going about 70 on I696 (the Michigan Autobahn) and it just "quit". Yeah, no shit. The #6 piston disintegrated, sending aluminum chunks all the way up to under the carb. The block had a really cool hole in the cylinder wall all the way around the #6 cylinder. And ask Hack or Mercman how cool the rod looks. I knew I was in trouble when I pulled the drain plug and all that came out was antifreeze! Jay
I had a head fall off a valve once too, but not so dramatically. I found piston chunks in all 4 cylinders, and found the valve head lodged in the engine case. I have all the piston chunks in a mason jar on my shelf. It makes a nice display
I bought a 454 once that was "running but had a knock". We pulled it appart and one of the pistons was "gone" (not much more than dust)......and the head of the intake valve was broken off and shoved back through the port sideways. The rod was twisted around about 90 degrees and there was about a 1/4" deep groove in the cylinder wall. Yeah, I bet it did have a hell of a knock when they drove it home.
The Jalopy Journal
