Here's how the car sits right now.... as you can see, there isn't a lot of room in front of the car.


But if I back it onto the lift like below... I should be able to lift the front end off the motor/kmember and let the whole assembly roll out from under the car.

 

Dam....I thought it was a twin post for some reason. Hmmm....we'll think of something lol

 

With car 'backwards' on the lift like the second pic, you can use a cherry picker on the front of the car an raise it. This allows you to remove the engine/trans/kmember/etc from the bottom. Then place jack stands under the car, and wheel the whole assembly off the lift using the ramps.

 

im too lazy to look up the links right now, plus i am cookin up a storm in hyeah! if you find the time, send em this way. not just for me but for everyone on the thread who will be looking at it in the near and distant future.

 

Andy (White.Lightning) came over this morning, and we quickly pulled the head. Just as I suspected, the ringland let go on #7 at the 10'oclock position. Good news is the head looks absolutely fine. The block isn't cracked, but you can feel some light scratches in the bore of the cylinder wall. I'm not sure how bad yet, but we'll see if it can be cleaned up with a honing to 3.905".

Here's the combustion chamber:


...and there she blows....


A little j-b weld and it'll be alright I'm thinking...



The cylinder walls don't look too bad, but you can feel a slight imperfection in the wall from where the ring was fluttering.




So, as of now, we're going to flip the car around, then it's time to start tearing everything off the motor to get it ready to come out.

I'm hoping the block is good enough to just do a cleanup and rebuild with a set of forged pistons and rods. Time will tell.

 

Glad to see the heads look good. But you might want to pull the valves out and make sure the seats look ok.

 

Good call. I currently don't have a valve spring compressor, but I may be able to get my hands on one and will do that.

What's your thought on the block, it doesn't fell too bad. I mean you can 'feel' something isn't quite right, but it doesn't feel cracked or scratched.

 

Well time for a upgrade!!

 

can you catch the scratches with your figure nail?

 

I didn't try my finger nail, but they didn't appear to be that way. They almost looked like wear marks. I believe all cylinders looked like that implying it was just 'normal' wear and tear. Maybe Brien can shed some more light.

 

That's the plan.

It doesn't catch, but you can sorta feel them. Hard to explain, check out the picture below.

I think it's from the second ring because it's almost like you can see it in the other bores as well. Thanks for your help/words of encouragement today. Fun to hang out and wrench, even if it's tearing down my trashed motor.

 

doesnt look nearly bad enough to consider getting rid of your block. im glad that is all it was. it probably would have been worse if you had been in third gear pulling some higher rpm's instead of 6th. welp, drop it out and lets get it back in action with more boost and a new rear too! ebay sells easy to use cheap *** valve spring compressor tools, or you can just spend some money and get one you will use for life. useful tool to have for sure.

 

Yeah, my brother in law has one of the c-clamp style ones, I just need to borrow it, but right now, the head valve seat isn't the top priority.

 

How was your PCV system setup? Looks like it was burning a lot of oil. Oil in combustion can cause detonation. It's hard to tell but it looks like detonation in your pic showing the top of the 3 pistons. Looks like it will clean up no problem, even in stock form the rings wear a ridge at the top of the cylinder you can feel.

 

Well, no doubt there's a lot of oil in there right now because I drove home 40+ miles after it popped. I figured what the hell, as long as she's still running I'll limp her home.

I've never cleaned the top of the pistons, so it's not bad considering I have 62k miles on the motor. As for the PCV, I have a line going from the intake of the Procharger hat up to the passenger side valve cover, then from the ls6 valley cover to a catch can, then into the intake manifold. The charge pipe and procharger look clean, but the catch can was full of water. Not sure how that happened, but it was clean shortly before this run. It was weird, when I popped the radiator cap, the level was low. The motor never never ran hotter than 190F with the stock thermostat, so I never bothered putting in a cooler t-stat. Even this day driving out to cars-&-coffee, the engine temp never got above 190. Of course I wasn't data logging on the ride home, but my temp gauge never moved, so coolant had to have gone somewhere.

 

looks like a light hone will clean ya right up. keep us posted on what your plans are for the motor. Id like to see where you send off to have it machined. I want to do the same, just a clean up with forged rods/pistons and use the stock crank. but ill have teh engine shop go ahead and assemble the shortblock. just for some odd reason if i put it together and something was out of tolerance and it blew again. $3500+/pop is expensive lol....

good luck sir.

 

UPDATE 02-18-12

Motor is on the floor of the garage, along with the trans. The block looks fine, no cracks, and should clean up nicely.



No cracks or deep scratches in the block. I got really lucky.

 

Well, ignore what I said, the block is now a coffee table...







That sucks....

 

Sorry to hear man. Time to go big!!

 

Nope, I already bought a stock bore rotating assembly, so stock cube I'm staying. I just need an ls1 block.