[Wayne 962]

Hi Mike. I spoke with a few people today, and mentioned your engine to them. Consensus is that 3.0 rods do not break - they are broken by something else. We won't know until we open up the engine. There could be many salvageable parts in there, but we won't know until we get it on the stand and tear it down. Even if you were to sell it as a "core" on eBay, you wouldn't get more than a couple of bucks for it, because all the parts inside are in question - it needs to be opened up to find out what went wrong, and also what is salvageable for your next engine and/or to be sold.

That said, there are a few things that are very suspect:

- This is a new rebuild, which means that there is a chance that there was a "builder error" in assembly. A piston installed upside down will function find until an overrev, and then slowly disintegrate.

- Rod bolts falling off, if they were not tightened properly will do the same.

- Dropped valve seat. Not very common on these cars, but very common on VW type IV engines. If you look in our tech articles, you can see a Type IV that had a rod do through the case due to a dropped valve seat.

- Along the same lines, it's possible that something fell into the combustion chamber. Basically, the rods don't break - they are broken in the process of something else failing. Your engine didn't stop because of a broken rod - the rod was broken by something else that then made your engine stop.

Bring it on by next month, and we'll take a look at it.

-Wayne