took a picture of her before I tore into it, really hoping it's just this piston and I don't have to trash the engine. The oil pan looks fine and I can't see anything obvious wrong with the bearings. I am pulling the head tomorrow and will have a lot more info to give you guys

 

It is a nice car I hope all will be well

 

I am in the process of pulling the head, this is the oil pans' condition as I took it out before any cleaning. Little bit of sludge on the sides but overall very clean

 

so, as it is now, everything is still okay with the engine?

let's hope it's something simple in the head and you can just enjoy this car.

 

yes - so far so good, everything is normal, bottom end as far as i can see is in functioning order no metal flakes anywhere or anything out of the ordinary. Tore it down to where the cams are out, haven't gotten any farther today. Should have it off and. The Pistons pulled soon.

 

What's that crap floating in the oil pan? Looks metallic, which is likely bearing material.

You shouldn't see ANYTHING in the pan, remember the oil is continually filtered. I would cut open your oil filter and take a look for more metal in there.

 

it was a leaf, I think it came off my hand when I was taking it out. Definitely not metal though, I think it's fine.

 

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the head is off. Here are a few brief pictures I took while working on it. They aren't great, just all I have for the moment. Haven't seen anything out of the ordinary yet. The coolant in and around the engine was spilled during tear down, it was not mixed like that already.

I am a little worried that the extent of the rebuild was pretty lazy. I'm no expert but it doesn't look like they rebuilt the head, the pictures will speak better than my words.

 

I tried to pull the connecting rods and found they seem to be torqued in excess of 100 ft lbs and they ended up stripping out both of the special sockets I bought for the job. Not sure what's wrong but that is where I am stopped up at the moment

 

This is cylinder 4. None of the cylinders show any major scoring and feel very smooth to touch, but this wear line on cylinder 4 looks like it could possibly be part of what was causing that noise.