Blowing oil and smoking part 2. Not good

[VadersV6]

My instincts told me it wasnt a head gasket, but either way, I knew the head needed to come off, even though the car was running and getting me around, sort of.
I've never gotten this deep into my motor, but in 2 hours, by myself with hand tools, I had the heads off and the results arent pretty.
The combustion chambers show very healthy burning and I see no obvious signs anywhere that the head gasket went. Although there are a couple slightly suspect areas (discoloration around the fire ring, but not in an area that aims toward the lifter valley), its not a sure thing. Whoever rebuilt this motor is a moron. He used a big belt sander to surface the heads. You're supposed to use those to surface exhaust manifolds, not heads. But somehow it seems they've stayed sealed...I think. I saw a million heads come into JMS after someone had belt sanded them and they blew head gaskets within 500 miles.
Anyway, the cylinders are wiped out. They show the cross hatch all the way around, except for the piston skirt's path of travel, up and down the top and bottom center of the bore. The skirts ground the cylinder down into a nice oval, except for the top 3/4" or so.
When I grab the pistons and push them side to side, they move ALOT. The cylinder with low compression moves a little more. Im really surprised I was getting 130psi in the othert cylinders, based on what I see. But I see no blown out ringlands, but I do see the rings, right from the top, lol.
****. I cant have this right now.
Engine part donations anyone? lol

 

[BetMinesFaster]

You can have my old pistons and rods, May need some rings, they are 100K parts but the cyinders are worn very little and are round, Yours for the pickin if you would like them, Good luck with this deal, I wish I could help more!! Ryan

 

[Junior Samples]

or i got some 30 over, 2 dot rods in case you have to bore your block.

Have em on ebay now and for 5 days the bidding is up to a whole friggun dollar..id rather give em to you then sell em to some cheapskate.

I got set of 8445's as well..needs cleaning

Mike

 

[VadersV6]

Thanks guys, Ill let you know. The bores are already .030. I found a highly suspect part of the head gasket on the weird cylinder. It looks like a piece of debris was inbetween the deck and the gasket when they clamped it down, which damaged the fire ring. But its facing toward the outside of the motor on the exhaust side, not aiming toward the lifter galley, and there is a thin section of that fire ring left, which looked like it was sealing. If it is head gasket failure, it would have to be the strangest case of it, given I can see nothing obvious. Theres a heavy lip in the fire ring, which is supposed to be considered "failure" due to extremely high cylinder pressures. Before this all started (turbo dying and now this), I was setting up my boost controller, and I had it set to high, and hit 28psi for a couple seconds. I got no detonation but it was still probably hard on things. Since they sanded the heads, its obvious they werent sealing well, but not in any direction that would make sense. The pistons all flop around in the cylinders, not just that one. And they arent as oval as I thought. There is no major scoring or lip or anything obvious. The cross hatch is completely worn off in the piston skirts path, but not like a deep groove. But there is enough slop to clearly see the top ring...like 1/4 of the width of it is visible. But Ive seen that before. There is no oil in the chamber or on the spark plug. I would think that a ring/bore that is damaged enough to be bleeding off more than half of the cylinder pressure, would throw alot of oil on the plug. One strange thing in that combustion chamber, is what looks like tan colored threads fanning out of the exhaust seat. Like a thick layer of deposits that blew out and dried. Really strange looking.
Its normal to have a thin layer of carbon on the face of the pistons. The adjacent cylinders to the bad one, have a clean spot on the intake side and a clean spot on the exhaust side. The bad cylinder doesnt. Just uniform carbon. I'm wondering what created the clean spots.
Im starting to think that because there is no oil in the chamber, maybe its worth my time to see if I can just get the heads milled, then Ill swap out the valve springs and maybe clean up the ports a bit this week, and throw the heads back on next weekend. I'll do a compression check, and if its still bad, then out comes the motor. I'm dreading that idea...

 

[VadersV6]

Man I dont know what to do. I really see no sign of a bad head gasket, and the cylinder/piston isnt so much worse than the others that it should be doing this. The "thread" looking things may be a cracked exhaust seat...maybe coolant leaking out and burning....someone already mentioned this in the other thread and he may have been onto something.

 

[need boost]

Well look at it this way, go ahead and have the heads redone and checked out totally, valves, valve guides, etc and magnufluxed for cracks. Either way your not really wasting any money as you would want this done on a rebuild anyway. Get them done and put her back together and see what you have. If the compression is back then your golden, if not then you have one less thing to do on the rebuild. I feel your pain man, didn't have my turbo buick but 4 months or so and it whiped a cam lobe out causing me a rebuild. Daniel Ray

 

[fc227]

Pictures ?

 

[10secvega]

I have a set of 40 over pistons you can have for shipping.

 

[VadersV6]

Those .040 overs sound good. Are they stock hypereutectics? I'll let you know. I'm going to get a head gasket...wish I could buy just 1. I'm going to pop it on, bolt the rocker assembly back on and compression test again. If the compression goes up (Id be surprised if it did go up), then I'll put it back together. If not, the motor is coming out. I poured a bunch of oil in the bad cylinder and its not draining. But its only pooled up on the outboard side. I swished the oil around to the top of the bore several times, and it doesnt seem to be leaking past the rings. This would be a perfect time to build the motor up right, but the gods of finance arent blessing me at the moment. Theres alot of good stuff on ebay for really cheap, but I wonder about the quality. Like h-beams for 350 bucks, pistons for 150, a steel main girdle for 100...Im a machinist, so if the girdle didnt fit perfectly, I could fix it. But then Id need a line hone.
Oh well thanks for the help people....