Engine`s gone

[Homeoboxter]

I visit this forum because I enjoy reading stories about engine failures and I love to get an insight into the process of troubleshooting. I particularly find it interesting when a chain reaction of events leads to a catastrophe and turns the engine into a boat anchor in a fraction of a second, I guess that`s because of the dramatic effect and the irreversibility of the outcome. The story is somewhat less enjoyable though when the subject happens to be my car. Anyways, here it comes, I thought I share:

Yesterday on my way home the engine started making some weird noise, and stopped. I was able to pull into a parking lot with the engine off and I see this super thick white smoke coming from the exhaust. My first thought was, ok, it must be the AOS, but then I see coolant dripping from the overflow tube. Btw, the engine was not overheating, CEL was not on, there was absolutely nothing to indicate there`s something bad about to happen. I check the oil, looks fine, no signs of intermix. The oil level went up about two units though...

So I tow it home, pull the plugs assuming they are all oil-fouled. No oil, but one looks like this:



Oops. That`s not good.

So I peek into the cylinder with the borescope and find this disaster:







So, this is where I am at now, I`m not sure what happened, it looks like a D-chunk failure, the liner is clearly cracked, which explains why the oil level went up. This is the engine I rebuilt two years ago from scratch and there`s 12k miles in it.

I`m undecided whether I should rebuild it again using another core or I should just sell as a roller. Anyways, just wanted to share :ah:.