So the other night I was driving home and all of a sudden there was smoke/steam coming from the tranny tunnel, and under the hood, i looked at the temp gauge and it was at 3 bars. the car instantly shut off, so i veered off and had it towed home. upon inspection, I noticed the bottom rad hose had a hole in it and the cooling system was bone dry. This puzzled me that the gauge didnt alert me to the over heating. So i prayed, I fixed the bottom rad hose, filled it back up and tried to start.. the motor triedto turn but couldnt catch, so I decided there was probably more damage, I did not attempt to crank again. I drained the oil and it was filled with what looked like bearing material. Now the head is off the engine, my question is there any chance the block could be salvaged from this type of abuse it handled? the crank still turns freely.

 

You probably need to pull apart the rods and inspect the crank. If it's not scored, and the bores are good, you can probably just get new main and rod bearings.

Then take the block and the head to a machine shop and check the deck and the head for warping, you might need to re-deck it. Then a new headgasket, troubleshoot the cooling system gauge, and you might be ok.

 

Oh sucky. Hope things work out.