It wasn't something simple and it won't be easy to fix.
I celebrated fathers day by investigating one of my more recent failures. I was tired of working on the mega-porch so I pulled the engine out of the truck.
I got it on the stand, dropped the oil pan and saw...
Not much, really. No broken parts, no pieces of shrapnel, no loose bolts. Just a lot of very gray oil. I wrote off part of that to the assembly lube and cam lube, etc. but it also wasn't right, because it was gritty. Everything I touched felt like it had sand in it. I know I didn't screw up that bad.
I pulled the caps off the main journals and the bearings were completely wiped and the journals were severely scored.
The rod bearings were better but still in bad shape. #1 and 2 journal was the worst of it...
More tear down was needed, but I ran out of time because to take off the driver side accessory bracket, you have to remove the PS pump. To remove the pump you need to remove the pulley. The little flange that the puller grabs on the pulley broke so I spent an hour or more trying to get the
pulley off.
I did see this in the oil pump though...
Scoring and pitting on the pump gears. The problem I have with this is that I never opened up the pump before running it so I don't know what the condition was prior to me running it.
Fast forward to this afternoon.
I get the intake off and everything I feel under it is gritty. I get the heads off and see some scoring on the cylinder walls.
The lifters were roached, except for 3. They looked like they were riding on a grinding wheel instead of cam lobes.
One of the 3 that weren't toasted...
So now I can pull the cam. It was toasted. The lobes were visibly worn, like up to 1/10" in some cases. You can see one of the good lobes behind the worn one in each of these pics.
I think I found the source of the grit. It looks like the cam break in went horribly wrong. Yes I used cam lube. Yes I used engine assembly lube. Yes the block, crank and other parts were cleaned up. It looks like the cam just disintegrated. The valve adjustment was pretty good according to the vacuum readings I had. The engine ran for a total of about 15 minutes.
Even the pistons are tightened up on the rods. They move but you can feel how stiff they are now. I think the only usable parts from the short block is the block and maybe the connecting rods.
So now what? Never one to wallow in grief for too long, I'll see if the crank is salvageable. If not, looks like I get to build the 383 I've thought about for so long. This is a severe case of the mightaswells.
BTW, the mega-porch is coming right along...
