349 CI on the cheap

Well, It's like this, on Thursday afternoon when we finished making changes and fired the engine again, everything sounded real good, oil pressure was up to 75 psi. Everything sounding strong and just double checking everything. Then the engine just quits like you turned the ignition off. Go to restart the engine and it won't turn. Water level is fine so out with the plugs and all are dry and looking like they should until the last one. The plug came out real hard, keep in mind I just put these plugs in so I know that there wasn't any issues with them. Upon taking the plug out of #5 cylinder the tip was gone. The engine never made a noise, but just quit. Then after some thought I took the head and intake off and found that a valve on the #5 exh. had broken the head of the valve off and lodged between the head and the piston. Needless to say the piston is trashed and will be replaced. I'll need to put a seat in the head also. When the valve broke the valve head flipped over using the valve stem as a punching tool and punched 4 nice little holes in the top of the piston, before jamming the engine. So I never made it to the track, man what a dissapointment. But hey life go's on.

So today I pulled the pan and removed the rod and piston and found no metal in the pan except the 4 punched out pieces of piston. Everything in the bottom end was as clean as when built. So I have another piston but will need to get another intake and exh valve. Just go's to show that even the best parts fail. It looked like the valve wasn't fully heat treated properly, and how are we to know what the valve is when you take it out of the box. You can only trust the manufacture with there product. But hey S**T happends, it's a part of racing and engine building, as most go right some don't, this just happens to be one of the times that it didn't.

Being that I have a piston here I'll only be out about $100.00 for oil and rings and a rod bearing. I have more head gaskets and intake gaskets so if anything went right I guess that you could say it did. As it could have been much worse, good thing it was idleing, but 1,300 rpm's still did a good bit of damage.

Now there calling for rain for the next 10 days here, so this gives me time to get the parts fixed and reassembled. I'll be ready for the next time. So sorry for no news on the engine. But we took 2 other cars and made it down to 3 cars again with one of them. So all in all the weekend turned out OK as the money that we made will fix the engine. But hey we'll get it, it's just a small set back. I guess the time wasn't right for it yet, but I'll let you know as soon as I get the chance to get it there.