Boom #3, first look inside

Boom #3, page 3, first look inside.

I ntro Boom #1 Boom #2 Boom #3 Boom #4 Boom #? Boom #6 Boom #7 Boom #8 Boom #9 Boom #10

Step one of the autopsy was to pull the heads. Once again, Joe "CoolPix" Gervais comes through with documentary photons, presented below. The shot on the left (the driver side) hits me as a classic "what's wrong with this picture?". Be sure to click on the thumbnails. One thing to note is how clean the piston tops are after 20k miles. This car has been "pampered" with Chevron most of the time, and Union 76 occasionally. I have never used any fuel injector cleaner additives other than what came from the pump. Maybe the good gas really does help keep the combustion chamber clean.

OK, we know there's some serious damage awaiting. The gash in the pan shown on the previous page, and the twisted sister pistons shown above give it away. The close-up of the piston from cylinder #3 below suggests at least a bent valve or two, a suspicion confirmed by the intake valve pic on the right. I get a kick out of engine-builder Mike Blackstone's magic marker reminder not to use the valve for anything. Click on the thumbnail to read it.

Turning the engine from rightside-up to upside-down on the engine stand resulted in the sound of lotsa small pieces of something clattering around. Pulling off the pan revealed that something to be an incredibly large number of pieces of gravel that, taken together, once comprised a Chevy powder-metallurgy LT1 connecting rod. On the left you can see the gash in the bottom of the pan, plus another in the side, and what looks like inside-out hail damage from the rod gravel. The shot in the center doesn't do justice to what we saw when the pan came off, although it does show that rods #3 and 4 have seen better days. The other pic is a bottom view of twisted sister piston #3. Shouldn't that wrist pin be aimed the other direction? Now we know where all the coolant came from.