Washer fell into motor. Am I giving him bad advice ??

[fastfredracing]

Although I have been down this road myself, this one is not mine, nor a clients .
One of my good friends is also in the biz. He manages a dealer body shop .
He called me over the weekend for some help . He has a really nice 1968 camaro ss 4 speed with a pretty healthy small block. 10:1, 2 4 bbls, big knarly cam etc.
Any how, he was trying to get it running after sitting for a few seasons,and somehow lost the little washer for one of the air cleaners .
Knucklehead, started the car, and moved it from his house garage about 200 yards to his other garage where he could work on it better
. He said it was making a " tingy " sound .
He plied me with beers, and let my son use his pool, so I went over there Saturday night , pulled all his plugs, and stuck my borescope down the cylinders .
Cylinder #5 ate the washer, and as you can probably imagine, there is abstract art in there .
My advice was to not even bother extracting the washer, its time to pull the head, and evaluate . Most likely needs at least piston, and probably some valve work . As far as we can tell from borescoping, the cylinder walls look o.k. The piston, looks like a mad man took a hatchet to the surface , and the intake valve looked pretty beat up as well . I could see significant denting around the edge of the piston , directly above ring lands .
He sent me pics yesterday showing he got the washer out and said the car seems to run ok after replacing the plugs . A mechanic at the dealer told him to just send it .
I say, he is just kicking the can down the road, with all those dents on the piston crown, he will get detonation , and most likely , the top ring is pinched in the top groove . The one valve really took a beating and could possibly fail. A loose valve head in a cylinder is game over ...
He just wants to cruise it for the rest of the season . No way Id be taking that chance with my own stuff, thinking it will only cost more later .
Here are the photos he sent me . Trust me when I say, the piston in this photo looks waaaaay better than the image I saw when I was scoping it .
I threw in a photo of my buds GT3, that I inspected yesterday just because this is a porsche site, and it was in the same group of photos in my phone .

[masraum]

Holy hell! That looks/sounds like an expensive mistake. My guess is that his brain is trying to suppress the trauma that he made a huge mistake and is hoping that it wasn't that bad. Like you, I feel like running it with fingers crossed is just begging for things to go from bad to worse.

Nice GT3. Damn shame about the motor in the camaro. I love a '67 or '68 more than a '69.

[1990C4S]

Tear it down and fix it. Now.

Or plan for a more costly rebuild later.

[faverymi]

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

Tear it down and fix it. Now.

Or plan for a more costly rebuild later.

What he said

[Flat Six]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

Although I have been down this road myself, this one is not mine, nor a clients .
One of my good friends is also in the biz. He manages a dealer body shop .
He called me over the weekend for some help . He has a really nice 1968 camaro ss 4 speed with a pretty healthy small block. 10:1, 2 4 bbls, big knarly cam etc.
Any how, he was trying to get it running after sitting for a few seasons,and somehow lost the little washer for one of the air cleaners .
Knucklehead, started the car, and moved it from his house garage about 200 yards to his other garage where he could work on it better
. He said it was making a " tingy " sound .
He plied me with beers, and let my son use his pool, so I went over there Saturday night , pulled all his plugs, and stuck my borescope down the cylinders .
Cylinder #5 ate the washer, and as you can probably imagine, there is abstract art in there .
My advice was to not even bother extracting the washer, its time to pull the head, and evaluate . -- YES Most likely needs at least piston, and probably some valve work . As far as we can tell from borescoping, the cylinder walls look o.k. The piston, looks like a mad man took a hatchet to the surface , and the intake valve looked pretty beat up as well . I could see significant denting around the edge of the piston , directly above ring lands .
He sent me pics yesterday showing he got the washer out and said the car seems to run ok after replacing the plugs . A mechanic at the dealer told him to just send it .
I say, he is just kicking the can down the road, with all those dents on the piston crown, he will get detonation , and most likely , the top ring is pinched in the top groove . The one valve really took a beating and could possibly fail. A loose valve head in a cylinder is game over ... -- YES
He just wants to cruise it for the rest of the season . No way Id be taking that chance with my own stuff, thinking it will only cost more later . -- AAAAAND YES
Here are the photos he sent me . Trust me when I say, the piston in this photo looks waaaaay better than the image I saw when I was scoping it .
I threw in a photo of my buds GT3, that I inspected yesterday just because this is a porsche site, and it was in the same group of photos in my phone .

Many decades ago I did the same with a Fiat 850; even with that POS I didn't feel right just 'sending it'.

[herr_oberst]

Well, for a contrarian opinion, remember the adage - 'nothing runs bad longer than a car from GM'.

(But the proper fix might be doable without even taking the motor out of the car, a weekend project if the parts were in hand)

(When I first glanced at the thread I thought the GT3 had suffered the misfortune! THAT sould have been terrible!)

[ErVikingo]

nah the upgrade minded says run it and if it blows do a big displacement upgrade!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

Well, for a contrarian opinion, remember the adage - 'nothing runs bad longer than a car from GM'.

(But the proper fix might be doable without even taking the motor out of the car, a weekend project if the parts were in hand)

(When I first glanced at the thread I thought the GT3 had suffered the misfortune! THAT sould have been terrible!)

Right, pull the head and pull the piston with the motor in the car.

[Paul T]

Originally Posted by ErVikingo

nah the upgrade minded says run it and if it blows do a big displacement upgrade!

That’s exactly what the 20 something me would have done! That said, I think the right advice was given - pop a new piston in (assuming cylinder wall is fine), replace valves and move on.

[unclebilly]

It’s only a few hours and not much expense to pull the intake and head.

It probably needs a valve and maybe that seat replaced or ground. It’s a few hundred bucks.

Why doesn’t he do a compression or leak down test to see how bad the valve is at a minimum?

[unclebilly]

Originally Posted by masraum

Right, pull the head and pull the piston with the motor in the car.

Can you get the oil pan off to pull the piston while the engine is in a 68 Camaro?

[masraum]

Originally Posted by unclebilly

Can you get the oil pan off to pull the piston while the engine is in a 68 Camaro?

My guess is "yes", but it's likely to require taking the bolts out of the motor mounts and raising the motor a bit to get the oil pan out. I had a car many years ago, and did the same. The oil pickup and crossmember/steering gear was in the way of pulling the pain completely out until I raised the motor 2-3", then it came out. Of course, a camaro is a smaller car and may have limited space. The thing that most comes to mind s the distributor and firewall interference, but then if they are pulling the intake and head, then the distributor is no longer an issue.

[Scott Douglas]

C'mon man, how long is going to take to pull the engine, get it on a stand and tear it down to fix it right?
The guys on Road Kill Garage would have this back up and running in a weekend.

Kind of reminds me of when I dropped a nut down the open distributor hole on my brother's newly rebuilt 283 that we had just put in his Cameo pickup. He'd spent a lot of time getting the pan sealed up just right on the stand and now we had to pull it off in the truck. Ugh!

From then on we put rags in the open holes that mattered.

Pales in comparison to the time his FI unit spider leaked and he hydraulic-ed two of the cylinders.

That one included bent rods.

[Paul T]

Originally Posted by Scott Douglas

C'mon man, how long is going to take to pull the engine, get it on a stand and tear it down to fix it right?
The guys on Road Kill Garage would have this back up and running in a weekend.

Kind of reminds me of when I dropped a nut down the open distributor hole on my brother's newly rebuilt 283 that we had just put in his Cameo pickup. He'd spent a lot of time getting the pan sealed up just right on the stand and now we had to pull it off in the truck. Ugh!

From then on we put rags in the open holes that mattered.

Pales in comparison to the time his FI unit spider leaked and he hydraulic-ed two of the cylinders.

That one included bent rods.

Yup, that’s a lesson that everyone has to learn the hard way! We’ve all done it….hopefully only once though.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by fastfredracing

She plied me with beers, and let my son use her pool, so I went over there Saturday night , pulled all her plugs, and stuck my...

Dear Penthouse...

Seriously, what a great sentence to the start of everything I have ever wanted to read.

Other than that, I got zippy

[unclebilly]

Not going to be easy to pull that pan with the engine in the car… also sealing up the corners of a SBC oil pan at the rear main can be a bidch on the engine stand let alone underneath the car. Not saying it’s impossible but it won’t be easy.

[Tim Hancock]

If it was my personal occasional use car. I think I would do a compression and leak down test to see if that cylinder reads any different than the others.... If it is not leaking and has good compression, I would probably drive it a bit then recheck. If still good I would probably do nothing more.

[LWJ]

Fred. You are right. Pull the piston. Fix the valve. THEN, do smokey burnouts.

[Magyar Kiwi]

I like Tim's plan at post 17 for a personal occasional use car.
Compression and leak down tests for all cylinders, to determine if damaged cylinder is consistent with other cylinders and to check that damaged inlet valve is still sealing.
If all OK drive for 500 miles and then repeat.
Any issues found would drive the repair plan.
Cheers
PS the risk that needs to be considered/contained is a dropped inlet valve and bore damage.

[Alan A]

If you have to pull the engine to fix - and it was mine - assuming compression / leak down checks out I’d run it till it grenaded then swap in a [built] crate motor.