With Michael’s help (well, actually he did most of the work), I got the heads off, the bottom end apart, and the pistons out.

First of all, the exhaust manifolds had to come off.

Here’s a peek through the exhaust port.

While I was at it, I pulled off the engine mounts, too. While not completely destroyed, the rubber in the mounts is so deteriorated that it can be compressed with a finger.

I also took a minute to remove the transmission mount from the tail end of the tranny. Here, you can see that one side was broken, with the loose piece only held in by the friction of the bolt head.

Because Michael is lightning fast with an impact wrench, and kept handing me pieces as they came off, I don’t have pictures of the heads being removed. But here’s what the block looked like once the dust cleared. The top photo is the driver’s side of the engine. Notice how much crap is in the #2 and #5 cylinders…

Here’s the heads.

The pistons and main bearing caps all laid out in a row. The pistons are in "upside down" order, with the #1 piston at upper right..

The driver and passenger sides of the block, sans pistons. Notice how dirty the crevice volume (the space between the top of the cylinder and the upper limit of the top ring’s travel) is. Also, although I didn’t notice it at the time, it looks like there’s some scoring apparent in the second photo.

Check out the thrust wear mark on this bearing shell.

This is the rear main bearing cap, with a nice big groove in the middle. Still not enough to make the engine go "clunk", though, but a justification for tearing it apart in the first place.

Michael inspects the pistons, trying to find out what was so noisy. A cursory look didn’t find any broken rings, lands, cracks, or loose wristpins.

Editor’s Note: Would you disassemble an engine while wearing that watch? Before he started helping me, he was working on fixing his tractor… I take off my crappy Casio before turning a wrench, but Michael’s a different breed of cat.

Two views of the #5 piston. This one is the worst-looking of the bunch. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions - please let me know what you think via e-mail or the comments section.

I’m very disappointed that we didn’t find an obvious cause for the noise that started this little adventure in the first place. The main bearing wear was enough to justify the rebuild, but not finding the source of the noise means that everything that will go back on to
the new motor is suspect and will have to be carefully inspected first. Like I’ve said before, Nothing is Ever Easy…