Topic: engine killer?

[Don R]

 This was an eye opener for me, I'm glad my racecar engine has stainless steel headers.

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1729518887703324

[seanbarney41]

Not sure I believe that there is gonna be that much loose rust after even a year...unless it was out in some weather

but yeah, never really thought about valve overlap when attempting to clear out the muffler mouse nests.

[Deltarider]

A reminder to you all: not all of us are on Facebook.

[ratranger]

I wouldn't get too worked up about it.  Plenty of mild steel exhausts have been run for decades with no issues.  Same with OEM cast iron manifolds on most cars.  If it was a problem the OEM stuff would be stainless or coated inside and out.  Bikes get fancy stainless, chromed, coated or Ti exhausts to stand out.

[Jerry Rxman Griffin aka MuthaF'er]

Just run 'em a little rich or loose rings

[rotortiller]

Tell that to my snow blower or 50 year old motorcycle lol.

[Don R]

  The 383 in our dragster had chromed headers that had rust inside. We did have some dings on the piston tops. I always assumed it was from track sand or pebbles kicked up during a race.
 Sorry, non facebook guys, the video shows a dyno header dropped on the floor and a large amount of rust came out. The engine builder made an intake with a window in it, they started the engine and began to inject oil into the header collector, after a minute it has worked its way into the intake manifold.
 I've seen a check ball that fell from a carb into an engine change cylinders twice before it stuck in a piston. There were 3 dinged cylinders and one ball.

[HondaMan]

  The 383 in our dragster had chromed headers that had rust inside. We did have some dings on the piston tops. I always assumed it was from track sand or pebbles kicked up during a race.
 Sorry, non facebook guys, the video shows a dyno header dropped on the floor and a large amount of rust came out. The engine builder made an intake with a window in it, they started the engine and began to inject oil into the header collector, after a minute it has worked it's was into the intake manifold.
 I've seen a checkball that fell from a carb into an engine change cylinders twice before it stuck in a piston. There were 3 dinged cylinders and one ball.

This also seems to explain something that happened to my brother's 1972 351CJ Mach I Mustang one hot Missouri night: he was jousting with a local (I think it was a Chevy of some kind) and when he went into 2nd the engine suddenly started hammering loudly, then quieted, then loudly again, so he shut it down. Next day he had it towed to the dealer who took off the heads to look: they found a much-hammered nut (estimated to be a 3/16" nut, hard to tell) sitting on top of one piston, with marks in that piston and another one on the left engine side (but not adjacent cylinders). There is no such nut anywhere in the intake tract, so my brother decided it was sabotaged when he was in the local Dairy Princess (the town was too small to have a Dairy Queen, they say) having a burger for supper, and not watching his car. He had dominated the whole town with that Mach I for almost a year, ruffling some long-term Chevy-based feathers there.

Years later he found out that a friend of the guy who owned the Chevy had that night sneaked a nut (1 nut) into the (squarebore) quad's secondaries of the Mach I at the Dairy Princess while my brother was inside, then they laid the 'trap' later that night. But, we never could figure out how 1 nut could damage the tops of 2 pistons, 2 cylinders apart over 1 header.

About 8 years ago my brother completely restored that Mach I. It took him almost 6 years before that to find a new squarebore carb to match his original one, and it was nearly brand-new when he found it! It's a beautiful 1972 Mach I today, the Car of the Decade per motor Trend magazine in 1973.

[Don R]

 I took apart a 68 camaro that had a pencil size piece of metal stuck in a piston. The owner was a railroader and the car sat in the RR parking lot for a day or two sometimes. He had obviously angered someone who had time to pull a plug and drop in shrapnel. I ended up with the Muncie 4 speed and forged 350 crankshaft out of it after he lost interest in paying me to fix it. I put the crank in a 350 4 bolt block in 1981 or so, it's still fast today.

[CycleRanger]

Many years ago I pulled up to a buddies house about one minute after he'd shut down a four-bolt main 350 he'd just finished changing the head gaskets on.

He said he thought he'd dropped a 7/16 nut into the intake but he wasn't sure...until he started the engine and it made a "bad noise".
I was like WTF man! Why did you start it?!    "Well I wasn't sure."

He pulled the head and sure enough it sucked the nut into a cylinder in that brief moment he ran the motor and it beat the hell out of the piston and valves.
If I had gotten there 3 minutes sooner, I would have stopped him.

He tore the motor down after that and ended up selling the whole mess, including the nice rust-free '76 Chevy pickup it was in for like $500.
Thankfully he has gotten smarter over the years. Drinks less too. 

[jonda500]

In my youthful days I have pulled a head off to retrieve a washer that slipped into the intake manifold whilst putting the carb back on a car engine - tapping noise fixed. Next time I heard that tapping noise again, over 20 years later, I realised one of the pop rivets that I had used to repair my air filter housing when it broke off, had sheared off and gone down into the engine. At this time I was a little more mechanically experienced and a little less diligent/caring so I simply revved the c#$%* out of it in neutral to blow the piece of rivet out the exhaust valve. I can't remember where I learned this trick but it worked first try - simply driving it around would probably never get it out!
John

[newday777]

In my youthful days I have pulled a head off to retrieve a washer that slipped into the intake manifold whilst putting the carb back on a car engine - tapping noise fixed. Next time I heard that tapping noise again, over 20 years later, I realised one of the pop rivets that I had used to repair my air filter housing when it broke off, had sheared off and gone down into the engine. At this time I was a little more mechanically experienced and a little less diligent/caring so I simply revved the c#$%* out of it in neutral to blow the piece of rivet out the exhaust valve. I can't remember where I learned this trick but it worked first try - simply driving it around would probably never get it out!
John

An aluminum rivet is a different story than with a steel washer/nut/bolt in there.....

[jonda500]

It was a stainless steel rivet, the bit that sheared off on the inside was washer shaped. When a second one of a circle of eight holding the air cleaner body to the part that clamps around the carb did the same thing I got it to go through the engine the same way after drilling the rest out and replacing them with M5 bolts with nyloc nuts - which are still in there today. Still haven't needed to remove the head since, but that Dastun Kingcab hasn't been in regular use for some time now. The second one took a few tries before it ejected- I guess they'd be in the muffler still!

[MRieck]

Internal combustion is a 2 way street....charge is always going in both directions especially with long duration cams.

[MauiK3]

I had a 67 Jeepster Commando years ago, 231 odd fire v-6, a Buick engine (it was stock in Jeepsters). A nut came loose from the air cleaner and hammered a piston. That engine was an amazing slow turning torque machine. I managed to pull the piston and rod out and put a new one in. It ran forever.

[Don R]

 VW beetle, aftermarket air filter with internal bolts, familiar story, it got a 1500 engine with an 88mm big bore kit after that.