ZJ 4.0 COMPLETELY NUKED! (long, help...)

darjevon

NAXJA Forum User
Location
MemphisTN
Hey guys

I'm gonna upload pix later.

ZJ 4.0 AW4, 260k miles. Alright here's the story - The car used to misfire at idle, tested for low compression in one cylinder, used to throw a CEL for misfire in one cylinder, but it ran great like that for a damn long time. But when the waterpump span a bearing, the shaft fell out, and the drivebelt was lost, my brother attempted to drive the car to the nearest autozone. Needless to say the car severely overheated, and it was driven the the point an audible whack was heard, and the car stopped.

After this it would not start and compression was 30psi in all cylinders except the one that had low compression, which had 0. Upon cranking, bubbles appeared in the coolant tank. I tried starting fluid - this caused the oil dipstick to blow out of the car! I figured the piston rings were shot so I tore into the engine to replace them.

After finally pulling the oil pan, I found some metal shavings in the oil pan pickup screen. When I pulled the head, I found that there were six big cracks in it. Worse, one of the pistons was badly damaged, with a good amount of metal missing and unaccounted for. It looked almost like the damn thing had lost timing!

Now I don't know what do do as Ive put like 300 toward parts - bearings, rings, gaskets, etc... and I'm wondering whether to slap in a new engine or rebuild the one that's there. I'll need a new head and one new piston. I'm worried about rebuilding as the engine probably has little flakes of metal in all sorts of tricky spots.

Also, the car has not lost timing and the rod is fine. why the hell would this have happened? Prolonged detonation? I did notice that some of the valves had been replaced at some point (although they looked like the right part, they had the number 10 stamped into them, unlike the others.) Could they have dropped a metal part (nut, or the like) into a cylinder? Seems odd that it would have run so well for so long like this...

Any thoughts?
 
quote:
"why the hell would this have happened"?
"But when the waterpump span a bearing, the shaft fell out, and the drivebelt was lost, my brother attempted to drive the car to the nearest autozone. Needless to say the car severely overheated, and it was driven the the point an audible whack was heard, and the car stopped".
end quote:

There's your answer....
 
Ha ha. I meant why would the piston be damaged? The head cracks are explained by the overheating - but the piston is shot to hell and I was hoping you guys might have an explanation. Maybe when you see the pic you'll see what I mean - but i'm gonna wait till morning.
 
If you overheat and engine that badly, and number of things can happen (most of which involve dramatic structural failure of materials.)

Let's see, there was the Cat 3208 that I had to replace - it was run so low on oil and coolant, that when I got to the truck (an hour later!) pouring in engine oil hardened the block webs...

There was my son's Camaro - that he overheated so badly (I told him to replace that temp gage sensor!) that he welded the rings to the bores...

I've seen pistons "pushed through" when they got hot enough (the wrist pin broke through the piston crown, and then pulled the piston down into the bore.) I've seen heads and blocks both cracked (sometimes the heads were salvageable, sometimes not. Blocks were always ruined...) I've seen hoses blown out from steam voiding, and any number of other "dramatic failure modes."

Flash temperatures in the combustion chamber are up around 1500-1600*F - so that's hot enough to cause all sorts of Hell (it won't melt metal, but it sure as Hell can soften it...)
 
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