I had drove the truck not to long ago and it ran fine, all the fluids were brand new since I had just changed the head gaskets. also i have a fuse on my battery since trucks don't come with one so I added one. The day before this I made an attempt to crank it but ot barely spun and popped the fuse, so the next Day I bought a new fuse and changed it and attempted to crank it with no luck and then I attempted to turn the crank by hand with no luck and then that's when I discovered this and breaking things down, I started with the plugs and just kept working my way down with every couple parts removed attempting to turn crank as I go until I found this

 

o.k., im not trying to be too smart, but i reckon "barely spun" is where the damage happened. but not dry.

i have some experience with leaking gaskets, fluid in cylinders and starting the engine like that. i bent a rod twice like that, i my youth, on different engines. but not dry. are you sure it was dry?

 

the gaskets were brand new and i had just put arp studs, im dropping the heads off at the local machine shop who did the cnc porting on them originally and he's going to go through them and repair the damages and resurface them and do an all around check on them making sure everything is OK. Explain what you mean by barely spun? What are you assuming happened? I'm not being a smart *** either, I honestly want to know so it doesn't happen again

 

i think:

1. the starter cannot bent rods/destroy pistons. does anybody disagree?
2. engine running even for a couple of revolutions can.
3. only if fluid is in there. how else?

btw, im not at all familiar with the "fuse". what is that, a breaker in the starting cirquit? 200+ amps?

 

when the head gaskets were changed i pulled the oil plug and let it drain over night and when I replaced it I did my best to dry and clean everything as best as possible, unless my heads were warped and I didn't know it and they were still possible leaking, and yes u put a 250amp fuse on the positive side of the battery. I didn't like that it was designed with no fuse on the power supply.

 

Update, heads are at the machine shop, 250$ for the repairs, there a very well known shop and they said the can repair that's it's not a problem. Piston and rod is in route to my house so I'd say about 2 weeks and we should be back on the road, fingers crossed everything goes well

 

Thinking that if it hydrolocked the first and second ring lands would have broken first , not the oil ring land . Hard to determine the exact chain of events, once broken the next time the rod came up the pin was no longer lined up properly and pushed the piston into the valves / head . Don't know , could be wrong here. What caused it to fail in the first place ? Over reved at some point ? Who knows with thar first shop that just took your money. Possibly a flawed piston , doesn't seem likely and haven't seen anything else fail like that . Earlier exposure to detonation maybe ? Again upper ring lands would usually break first . Just my thoughts

 

makes sense, just makes me nervous be ause I'm hoping what I'm doing is enough to fix it, hoping I'm not missing anything and yet your right, there no telling what they did to it, mind you that's when it began over heating from the start, it wasn't running hot or anything before I sent it, it almost makes me want to go ahead and pull all the pistons and rods and inspect them while I have the pan and heads pulled

 

isnt there some ultrasonic procedure for checking the pistons from the top?

 

that's above my knowledge, that's why I ask because while I have the heads, oil pan and windage tray removed, if there's anything else I can check over or anything that's a must to check over.

 

One thing you can do is put a dial gage at the top of a cylinder and rotate the crank. Measure the piston height. Then measure all the others. Make sure they’re all the same measurement. That should show a bent rod or some other malfunction.

 

OK I'll definitely do that then, I think I'm going to try and find me and aluminum 5.3 block and start working on it on the side and hopefully get a few months out of the one I have or at least long enough to put another one together. I hate leaving vehicles shocked up not running, even more so when they have e85 in the tank

 

Update, so apparently the valve seat ran away? That's the term that machine shop used, I understand the concept of what has happened but not sure if I'm saying it right, but apparently it came up over the valve and jammed the valve and caused the rod to bend and broke the piston. Heads now a yard decoration but machine shop had a spare one and is port matching it to the still good head and it was originally milled to .030 and now is milled to .035 which was just a precaution because the original good head may not have needed resurfacing but he went ahead and surfaced it. Just waiting to get it back and I'll slap everything back together. I got my hands on a matching piston and rod also so hopefully all goes well. Hate to buy another head gasket again, as this one literally has Maybe 5 miles on it, was considering using it again as it still looks brand new but not sure how good of an idea that is.

 

You can definitely reuse MLS head gaskets and since those are so new, I'd reuse them.

 

really? i definitely just ordered some new ones but ill gladly keep the $110 if i can reuse them

 

Oh yeah, guys have reused the factory ones when doing junkyard boosted builds.
I'm not real hip to that since they usually have 100K miles on them, but new ones like yours, absolutely reuse them.

 

10-4 that's awesome to hear, im tired of buying the same parts over n over lol

 

MLS exhaust manifold gaskets are reusable as well.

 

I've reused the exhaust gaskets before. Just wasn't sure on the head gaskets. What's your opinion on the copper coating spray?

 

So the valve seat worked its way out of the head , jamming the valve open which led to piston to valve contact and the rest is history. Good to know what happened!! Man , you have no luck! Good that you haven't given up , you will be enjoying it soon