Wow… got quite a bit apart. HOLY FUCK THIS THING IS TOAST! Starting to make sense though, there was actually two failures here- one just happened to rear its head first.
The owner seemed somewhat concerned about detonation, never gave much thought to it, as it just seemed like curiousity at the time if it had anything to do with the failure. Come to find out, the builder of this car originally installed STOCK spark plugs in a car making over 1000 horsepower, along with the wrong head gaskets! The car was driven this way for about 750 miles before it was caught. Can you say PRE-IGNITION? Every single piston has the begining signs of ignition damage, and at least half the top rings are locked up- along with that, obviously is cylinder wall damage (cross hatching is begining to fade in some areas) There was no actual failure, but it would have progressed into an oil-burner as the ring and liners got worse. I am actually impressed that it held together as well as it did considering this… and that it made the power it did with piston and ring sealing damage! Looks like 8 rods and 9 wrist pins are salvageable.
The second, primary failure was the oil starvation issue, witch completely destroyed one pair of rods/pistons. This was simply due to the oil pan/track issue, but it was certainly aggravated- come to find out that one of the main bearings was damaged during install, along with #10 rod being being in upside down! (no wrist pin oil!), as well as a loose con rod bolt, and to top it off, they put the ATI balancer on with a hammer and DESTROYED it.
WTF guys? Do you not understand the meaning of the word “details”!!!
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