There are few noises that will leave a brick in your stomach quite like a repetitive “chirp” noise with a vibration as your engine’s power falls off of a cliff. It only means one thing: that bullet has finally been spent. It’s almost worse than punching a hole in the block in my viewpoint. At least when you window a block, it’s done, you know what you’ve done. The block is dead, the rotating mass is well injured, all of it is done. But as you’re shaking and shuddering your way to the nearest safe spot to stop, you’re mentally trying to figure out what’s wrong. None of it is easy, all of it is expensive and time-consuming.
For today’s question of the day, we want to know the worst dead-engine story you have in your street car or daily. The race car doesn’t count, we know you went about 500 RPM past the shift light like usual and it added up over time. For today, we want the story of the daily and how it finally let you down. I’ve only killed one engine in a street car, and that was the Mirada’s original 318. When I bought the car, it ran well enough…it had all of the Lean Burn crap on it, but it worked. Getting the horrible three-catalytic system off and putting headers on the engine should have eased the 318’s burden some, but days before I was supposed to move from Washington State to Arizona, the Mirada left a milkshake of oil and transmission fluid in it’s parking space and ran like fresh hot dog doo-doo. I had to rope a friend into following the nearly-dead Dodge up to my stepdad’s house, which included a 500-foot elevation change up one nice, long hill that I wound up doing locked in second gear, praying my heart out that the engine would live through. If the bottom end puked out on this hill, I was well and truly screwed. Happily, the car lived long enough to park in the driveway, but it was maybe pushing twenty-five horses at the crank and was on a timer. It was a dead duck, that’s for sure.
Happily, the two-car system has been in effect in my world for years, so the Mirada got parked and the Monte Carlo got loaded up onto the trailer behind the moving truck. But it still sucked to not bring my fun, bash-around beater with me to the desert, where it could’ve been put to the test over and over again!
Had a 400 Ford that popped a head off of an exhaust valve and tore up all kinds of stuff. Got water in a cylinder on a 355 Chevy, bent the con rod…. The engine would run, but sounded like it had a rod bearing out. When I tore it down, the rod had a twist in it. The hydro-lock had shortened the rod to the point that the bottom of the piston pin boss was hitting the crankshaft counterweight at BDC.
Had a cheap buick regal with a 3.8 that was pushing air thru the intake gasket. Drove it a hour to my parents on a saturday to change them out. Spent most of the day doing it, got it all back together. Had supper with my folks and left for home after. 10 minutes down the road car had no heat. Checked oil and saw a milk shake. Drove it back to my parents, borrowed dads truck and headed for home, got headgaskets and back up in the morning to tear it all apart agian. Turned out the back head gasket went, took about 12 hours to do both and get it all running again and head for home
When I was in high school I was at a friend’s house one day when his dad came home. His ride at the time was a 76 Gutless Supreme with a 350 2bbl that he drove an hour and a half a day over two mountains to get to work. It was smoking like a James Bond car. As he walked past us he chucked my friend the keys and said “I got a project for you guys. Go finish that thing off but don’t drive further away than you wanna walk back!”. Challenge excepted!
We spent the next hour hammering the car around town mostly in 1st gear and doing countless burnouts but after a half a tank of gas and a pair of new tires it was still going. We eventually just gave up and took it back to his house. By then his dad had finished eating and said “I’ll just do it myself”. He proceeded to get a brick from the garage and stuck it on the gas pedal.
It took awhile but eventually it started making the most horrible noises and smoked so bad we could barely see the yard anymore. After it finally seized his dad said he was about to get rid of the car anyway. As an experiment we all took it apart a few days later. Nothing ever officially “left” the block but the carnage inside was quite impressive. Bent everything…rods, push rods, etc, and the worst burnt oil smell ever. I had never seen that many metal shavings in an oil pan up to that point. The next day he went and bought a new Buick I think. Don’t know what ever happened to that car.