UNLUCKY?

[RICHARD TILL]

i had the same exact thing happen on a 496 chevy drag boat motor about 4 years ago. luckily there was no damage on the outer edge of the piston. i thanked the lord, bought a new head, intake, header gaskets and reassembled. its still running today.

Originally Posted by ßill

I think I’ll pass on the PC job at this time, Jeff, I have not pulled the engine so the right side cam cover would be a PIA to get off with out further disassembly of the car. The wife’s ’90 vert helps a little with the vette addiction but I want my car back on the road.

The passenger side is easier than the drivers side

I understand about having it on the road. It's an addiction.

[RedZR]

Thanks for the great pictures! Please keep them coming as you assemble the car.

This brings a question to mind...what bolts must be reinstalled as new and which ones can be reused? Does anyone know?

Dan



Dan I was very pleased to find the minimal damage. My plan is to clean things up a bit, smooth down any rough edges, new gaskets and belts and reassemble. I bought the car 2 1/2 years ago with 85K miles, it had the green stuff in it then and I’m still using about 10% green stuff with water wetter. The head gasket is a little rough around the coolant passages near the bottom of the head. Don’t know what caused it. [/quote]

[Bill]

A few more pictures
The first one “The Screw” stuck in the head between the exhaust valves



This is the piston top after light buffing with a wire wheel, notice the reflection of the piston top in the cylinder wall. I can not see any scoring in the wall.



And this is the head after buffing




Oh yea Jeff you’ve got me thinking about a PC job! Do you have pictures of black w/red letters?

[tccrab]

Bill:

Jeff does a Black Chrome that is to die for.
:drool

There's pics around here somewhere..
I'll go looking.
Wasn't that Phrogs (Johnny) car?

TomC
'90ZR1 #792

[tccrab]

Ah yes, here it is:
http://temp.corvetteforum.net/bss/ph...ne_outside.jpg

And here:
http://forums.corvetteforum.com/show....php?t=1464958

TomC
'90ZR1 #792

[RedZR]

[Did the screw beat on the two valves also? It looks that way. Did you check the screws in the other secondary butterflies to see if ant others were loose?


This is the piston top after light buffing with a wire wheel, notice the reflection of the piston top in the cylinder wall. I can not see any scoring in the wall.



And this is the head after buffing




Oh yea Jeff you’ve got me thinking about a PC job! Do you have pictures of black w/red letters? [/quote]

[Bill]

I don't think there is any damage to the valves. The valves are recessed up into the head so that unless the screw is standing on end it would not contact both the head and piston at the same time. The roughness on the valves is real hard carbon that did not brush off easily.

[Tyler Townsley]

This is a little late but I thought I would post it for future reference. Find a borescope borrow it, use it to look before you take it apart. Get a good vacuum cleaner neck it down to a flex hose that fits into spark plug hole and rotate piston to bottom and suck until it comes out, also can sometimes use a flex magnet. I also have used air pressure through a flexable hose when the motor was rotated with the exhaust valves open, used the air until it bounced the dropped screw(yeah I dropped it down the IH when the intake exhaust valve was open) around and out.

Tyler

[Bill]

Good advise Tyler. Glad you were able to get your nasty little screw out without opening it up. I did try all of you recommendations except the bore scope. I was not able to find one small enough to fit through the spark plug hole and then flexible enough to bend around inside the cylinder. Also tried both vacuum and air pressure to no avail. Just my luck! So it was time to learn what was under the covers of the LT5. This thread is my effort to share the knowledge as I gained it. The big thing that comes to mind now is how hard the head blots were to remove. Because of their length (9”) an impact wrench is useless. As you know an impact wrench works by a series of rotational blows, all this did was to twist the length of the bolt then relax, then repeat. What worked was a ½” breaker bar with a 36” handle and all the muscle I had. Now it time to start cleaning parts and pieces to put things back together, and hopefully running.
Wish me luck
ßill