holiday project (among others) was to pull the sick, tired 4.5 L engine out of my Euro.
I suspected a bad piston or at least a broken ring in #8, as it's compression numbers were 35 psi down from the rest, and there was considerable blow-by in the crankcase.
Well, Russell (my 13 year old) and I finally got down to business and pulled the motor out Christmas Eve......well into the evening, finishing around midnight. Russell did most of the work, following the step by step in the FWMs while I did the heavy lifting. He did a great job, often reminding me of short cuts that I would take but not listed in the directions.....
Today's activities involved engine tear down and pressure washing the engine compartment and short block. Every thing came clean, we removed the cam towers/heads/fuel-intake system/accessories--no blown headgaskets, and it was on to removing the piston/rod assemblies, starting with #8.
What I found was not just
one broken ring land,
but two....with a broken top compression ring. The two broken rings lands were one on top of the other, with the oil holes on the oil ring land exposed---there's your blow by problem!!!!
It didn't get any better from here.
Only #2 piston had no damage, the rest were either broken ring lands or compression rings or both. 7 out of 8 was a heck of a thing to find.....
Some pics below---
--Russ
this is #8--two broken ringlands
pistons/rods and lots of little "other" pieces
this was #4--very typical of the damage on 6 pistons
