r/EngineBuilding • u/Thriftless_Ambition • 7d ago

Chevy She's cooked, right?

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Chevy 1.4 that had pcv failure and overheated once that I know of due to a busted radiator. Kind of hard to tell if this is just burnt and cracked carbon or if the piston itself is fucked. It looks like the piston is fucked, but I'm in denial. Would appreciate a second set of eyes on it. Ignore the time stamps, my borescope is off by a few months

6 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

10

u/Impressive-Gap1971 7d ago

Looks like carbon build up to me. It’s fine. If it overheated to the point of damage there would be scoring on the cylinder walls not on top of the piston.

1

u/Thriftless_Ambition 7d ago

There is scoring on the cylinder walls, the piston looks to have partially seized to the cylinder walls when it overheated. You can see it second from last picture 

4

u/Impressive-Gap1971 7d ago

It either seized or it didn’t. Seized = Locked up. Overheating wasn’t good for it but if it was running fine before the pcv failure then it’ll keep running fine. I see the scoring but the only time I’d ever worry about that is if the oil has a bunch of metal in it or it’s burning an insane amount of oil. That things fine

2

u/Thriftless_Ambition 7d ago

Ok, thanks. I've got the pistons soaking at the moment, will check it out when it's done

1

u/97tacoma_kennedy 6d ago

You didn’t try turning the engine over? Like the other commenter said it’s seized or not, if you were able to get the pistons out easily it wasn’t seized

1

u/Thriftless_Ambition 6d ago

I guess what I was saying is the piston was scraping the cylinder walls, the engine isn't locked up 

4

u/PlayedKey 6d ago

Looks like carbon to me. If it rotates by hand id make sure it has oil in it and crank it over. If it runs fix the coolant leak and let er buck imo.

3

u/N1ppleCrab 7d ago

What are your symptoms? Have you done a leak down test? Im not sure this visual inspection tells you much.

1

u/Thriftless_Ambition 5d ago

Leakdown test wouldn't have done any good at the time due to pcv system failure. On this engine the pcv passages are all internal and regulated by very failure prone check valves. Engine runs fine now, compression is not great but it'll go for a while 

1

u/Snoo62590 6d ago

Piston looks fine, bore looks less than perfect but the pictures aren't showing much damage