Sometimes, the reason for the death of an engine is pretty blatant. The last engine I killed outright, the LT-1 in the 1994 Camaro I owned for about six hours a few years back, punched a hole in the block big enough for two cylinder’s worth of shrapnel and just about all of the liquid content to come flying out. Sometimes, the damage is internal, like the 1/4″ coating of caramelized oil on top of the pistons on the Mirada/Imperial 323ci engine, or the damage that was done to the Cadillac limo’s 368 after many repeated valve float runs and a WFO neutral drop incident.Those internal issues will only be seen when you get to the task of ripping everything apart. Once you have bits and pieces out of the way, you can see the scored cylinder walls, the impact marks, the shaved metal, and more.
Scotty has two different dead Barra engines in the shop: the LPG engine that came out from the Turbo Taxi after a meltdown incident and a standard Barra unit that resided in the Mazda MX-5 that tore the block a brand-new one as everything went straight to hell. The Taxi’s engine is straightforward…it is nuked, most of it unusable. The MX-5’s engine is shot as well, but there is a lesson to be learned between the two engines, and it comes down to the connecting rod. Check it out!
Thanks for the love guys