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HOW dead is my engine?

Thunder said:
Black Crud??? Hmmm. Does not sound very good. How long do you go between oil changes?
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No idea:D. Tranny died a week after I bought it before I could do any upkeep. Stealer replaced the tranny, brought it home for a thorough workover & discovered the entire brake system needed to be replaced. Truck sat for the next several months while I slowly got that dealt with. Drove it for about a hundred miles checking the new brakes out & would have been changing the oil & the rest of the fluids this weekend had it not gone south again.
 
Dammit, stupid forum ate my post again. Anyways, another paraphrase:

Drained about half a quart of black crud from the pan. Put a gallon of used oil back in figuring it's better than NO oil. Pulled serpentine belt. Tried turning engine clockwise, nothing. Just tightened crank bolt. Tried turning counterclockwise and the engine turned just fine. Went not even 1/4 turn ccw, then turned it back the other way and it seems to be turning just fine. I don't know how much force it should take but it seems right for a big V8 (more force than my samurai but i'm not straining at all with an 18" bar).

Tried starting it and just got clicks. Dash gauge said battery was low, pulled battery, battery fine (12+ volts). Put it on charger for the night anyway.

Could this just be some electrical gremlin? Is there somehow a starter can fail that makes a ticking noise?
 
starter could be stuck out, then when you turned backwards it coulda went back in or fallen off, might want to pull the torque converter cover and look at the nose on the starter.
 
UPDATE: Been down for a couple weeks with a bum foot, finally had a chance to poke around under the truck & here's what I found. First off, a Samurai WILL push a Suburban a short distance up a slight hill:haha:

Seriously, when I pulled the torque converter cover it looks like the flywheel or maybe something attached to it has been grinding on the cover as the pic shows. Not sure what if any bearing this has on the situation.

As to the engine, it doesn't seem seized so much as stuck. I can turn it backwards easily but it won't turn forwards past a certain point and I'm afraid of turning it backwards too far.

What's my next step here? If I turn it backwards maybe 1/8th of a turn then try the starter, it will move the engine but only as far as that stick point.

DSC01175.JPG
 
could be a converter bolt backed out.that is about the right spot for it to rub.start turning it backwards and check all the bolts on the converter-3-.that would give you the ticking knocking noise you heard.
 
That loose bolt idea doesn't sound too far off actually. I found two of the TC cover bolts ready to fall off back before the truck died, wouldn't surprise me if the fools who did the tranny left more loose bolts. I'll check that on my next day off, I was concerned about turning the engine backwards too much.

On another note, is it possible to eliminate those annoying struts between the TC cover & engine mounts?
 
keep them.they reinfoce the tranny.i have broken 2 cases since i didnt have them n.1st just didnt put them on 2nd they wouldnt fit with the new engine and headers.
 
Well it's definately not the TC bolts. Each one is seated with no signs of wear. It looks like there's a little but of wear on the front of the flexplate ring gear but it's hard to tell, and still doesn't match the pattern on the TC cover. In wiggling the engine back & forth I heard something rattling around, then it sounded like it fell down. Unfortunatly, it sounded like it fell down into the oil pan:yikes:. So now I'm off to pull the pan. The engine does seem to be turning freely now but I'm afraid to try starting it of there's something down in the pan.
 
Slapperbar said:
Broken rod, or pieces of a piston. Odds are rod.
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Sigh...:frown1: Little of both actually. Big end of #7 rod came apart, dented the oil pan & did God knows what else. Bits I could find are in the pic. Is it even worth considering replacing the one fubar'd piston as opposed to a complete rebuild?

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Ouch...

I'd tear the whole thing down and inspect everything if it were me. Might as well rebuild it right if you're going to do it at all.
 
When you end up tearing this all apart, check the flex plate real good for cracks, it's not uncommon, and if the bolts ran loose for awhile it's even more likely. That could cause the edge of the flexplate to rub the cover, too. With that rod broken, I'd be expecting block damage and obviously trashed crank. Ouch.
 
There's no obvious block damage (ie, big gaping holes) but that don't mean much. I'm still leaning towards a 383 if it's rebuildable so the crank doesn't matter much. I may just end up putting in a junkyard engine & hoping for the best too, depends on how much more I can dump into this rig I'm still making payments on:deal:
 
I rebuilt mine on a 750lb engine stand. Total costs for complete rebuild including machine work $684

Hardest part was installing all the damn accesory brackets on the front of the motor.
 
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