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View Full Version : Houston do we have a problem?



scorpion1110
01-15-2018, 12:13 PM
Happy New Year Folks!

So you probably have read a few posts on my 283 build for my 55 Wagon. In a nutshell, I have learned two things; 1) building a motor while on Chemo will cause you to second guess yourself forever, and at least 50% of the parts I buy either dont work or dont fit and go in the junk box. OK but thats not the problem.

We broke the 283 in starting two weeks ago. Ran it for 15 minutes at 2500rpm. Let it cool and fixed leaks here and there. Because I had the valve cover lids off for a bit, I lost some oil and just decided to start from scratch on that and run some new break in with a zinc additive.

I cleaned a round pan to catch the oil. It had been used before and has a curled lip around the edge.

We fired it up to run another 10 and she was popping a bit at start, which she didn't do last time. so we killed it and we retimed her and when I checked the cap and rotor I saw that the rotor had broken at the tip. Why? Because the cap was moving. Its an old Accel 34100 series and one of the cap retainer clamps was loose. That will cause the cap to move. When we were tweaking the timing I believe the rotor tip caught on a brass tip inside the cap. No problem, cleaned out, replaced with new cap, new rotor, tightened the bracket, set the timing at 10 degrees advanced and she fired up and ran smooth. We finished break in and she seemed pretty happy. The pressure was 70 lbs at 2500 and the temp came up until the thermostat opened and settled around 175. There was no smoke and the headers even seemed cool for a break in.

But thats not the issue.

I did a quick check of the drained oil with a magnet, looking for filings. And this is what I found:

8198

Thats all I found. I checked the oil and see no evidence of aluminum or copper and there was virtually nothing else in the oil. I have not cut open the filter yet. This has been bugging me all weekend.

So what is this crap? It looks like the very end of a ring. But we gapped and camphered them. The rings were black and the only shiny ones were the oil control rings. We were careful on install and used a high end compressor and piston hammer. We checked everything twice. There were two of us and we checked each other on the full build.

So these are magnetic so its iron. Of course the motor looked like this when we started:

8202

We had to beat the pistons out and everything was seized. I wonder if this might be a piece of crap that was stuck in an oil galley, or some flash from the block, or a speck of crud that might have been lurking under the rim of the oil drain.

Really the only thing to do seems to be to run it, change the oil regularly and use a magnet on the pan. Check for crap at every oil change keeping them at 50,50,100,100,100,100 until 500 miles.

I really hate the idea of pulling it and tearing it apart and finding nothing wrong.

Motor runs great, no smoke.

Thoughts?

Thnx as always

chevynut
01-15-2018, 12:33 PM
If a piece of a ring actually broke off and fell out of the ring groove, you have a bigger problem than the broken ring. :eek:

I wonder if your distributor gear or cam gear chipped. It wouldn't be hard to check. Not sure where else you'd get something like that. I'd pull the oil filter pronto and cut it apart to see if there's any more, before you trash the engine.

scorpion1110
01-20-2018, 07:56 PM
Well, I pulled the oil filter, cut it open and .......

Nothing. The filter was clean, and the oil looked great. I haven't pulled the distributor yet. I will take a look at the gear. I wonder if it was just some residual crap from the machine work.