Took the engine to a very well-known engine builder for a professional opinion. He has seen that specific wear on the skirts before and believes injector # 2 was firing intermittently / not fully plugged in or perhaps not flowing at the same rate as the others, causing that cylinder to run very lean. He also believes the piston to wall clearance was on the tighter end of the spectrum but not tight enough to hurt the piston the way it did. Lesson learned. The block will be honed and clearances measured. I will be replacing the # 2 piston, the ring set, all the rod bearings (just to be thorough) and have the injectors flow tested. Going to be monitoring my AFR a lot closer when we tune the car. I don’t believe I’ll make another engine building video as filming takes a lot of time and I want to really focus and enjoy the engine rebuild process. Appreciate you guys tuning in and supporting my dreams. This was my first engine build and certainly not my last!

That’s called a four corner seize. This is indicative of a lean mixture. When setting bore clearance for a typical piston you measure about .500” up from the longest part of the skirt straight across the piston. This will be the largest area. If you measure diagonally across the skirt of the piston, the area where the seizure occurred, you will find that the piston is much smaller in diameter at these points by design. The area that seized in the bore is likely to have .015-.020” clearance at those points. So the bore size of the cylinder is not the issue here. Excessive heat is. The connecting rod offset described is correct. Above all else, numbers on the rods, or any other outside visual references, the bearing offset machined into the connecting rod must be considered. You will be able to see a very clear offset of the bearing when it is installed to the rod. One side of the rod will have more overhang and hopefully a nice radius or chamfer relative to the bearings, the other side will have less. Also note that with those rods and bearings there will likely be a top and bottom bearing. Upper, lower to accommodate the crankshaft journal radius fillets. By the looks of those bearings you guys did a very clean assembly job and assembled the engine correctly. I would closely scrutinize the number 2 injector if not replace it and make sure you do not have a vacuum leak anywhere going into number 2 cylinder. Vacuum ports etc. I doubt there is a vacuum leak because of the consistency of the burn marks on top of each piston. Number 2 was firing. Evenly with the rest most of the time a vacuum leak will be more consistent. This is intermittent and should be closely monitored and scrutinized. This would be a case where I would pay a reputable engine dyno fee. This way they can hook their headers up with thermal couples on all 8 cylinders and dial them in. If there are any problems with fuel enrichment. The dyno operator will see it immediately and it can be repaired much safer and quicker. That or thermal couple all eight cylinders but I don’t believe that is cost effective. JMO based off of my profession.

The smartest thing you guys did was noticing something was wrong and not running anymore than you had too. I have had motors go bad too and you just need to learn from it. The cylinder might need to be board out, honing it might not remove all the scratches. You did a good job on it and you can fix it. Now let’s talk about putting a 455 Pontiac it there.

Glad to see it wasn't a total catastrophe. Keep up the good work, it's a learning experience.

Haha yeah why mess up your shop floor when you can wash down the ditch ! Thanks for taking us on this journey

I am glad you are sharing all of this because I am yet to built my first LS and though its a head scratcher its great to have caught it before it destroyed itself

Good response to adversity. That’s the difference between success and failure. Always positive!

Great video guys Thanks again for sharing with us 👍 from Alabama 🇺🇸 watching 👍

At 16:45 the reason why it looks that way is because pistons are not perfectly round and are tapered. This looks more and more like that piston belonged on the other side of the engine. It looks as though the minor thrust side was where the major thrust side should have been and the piston was slapping. Hold a piston by its rod as plumb as possible and the piston will fall to one side, thats the major thrust side. When viewing the engine from the front (non-traditional way) as the engine turns clockwise the major thrust side is to the left side of all cylinders. Now look what happens to a piston as you walk it around to the other side of the engine: the major thrust side is opposite and the piston will be weighted to the right. This will cause piston slap.

Good attitude! "Nobody puts Gnarly in the corner! "

Clean shop. Hope to see you do some more videos. It takes broad shoulders to show a teardown that could reveal mistakes. Most would not expose themselves like that

Dont feel bad. The first engine I rebuilt was for my '71 Fiat 124, 1.6 liter 4 banger. I failed to stagger the ring gaps, even though I was aware that it needed to be done. Just working in a hurry in my driveway with primitive tools. It sent out blue exhaust smoke like a 2 stroke. Had to take it all apart again. There are a lot of little details with engine assembly.

Sucks that that happened, but that's the way it goes sometimes. The good news is, it looks like it is fixable, and you don't have catastrophic damage to the block. I'm sure you guys will get it up and running soon. Great video.

Well hopefully you can fix it. Good luck you guys. I'll be watching.

I would be checking the piston to cylinder wall clearance most likely too tight , its always good build practice to double check and make sure all the clearances are in spec even if the machine shop is good some times things can get over looked . The last small block I built I had to send a rod and piston back to the machine shop because they pressed it on backwards , we can all have a bad day good luck with the new build 🤘🏁

How to get better, ………learn from experiences,good or bad! Life is one learning experience after another. You have this , you are both super intelligent,have great attention to detail! Can’t wait to find out the actual cause of the damage. Keep up the great videos👍

The spark plugs will tell you if it ran lean or rich. Dimples on the piston go towards the front of the engine no matter what side.

So sorry to hear about the engine! Good news on the trans warranty! I’m not an expert engine builder, but I used to build short blocks at Caterpillar in their engine plant 20 years ago. It was assembly line work. My 2 primary work stations was crank install and crank torque. Right after I torqued the crankshafts, the pistons were installed. We did about 200 6 cylinder diesel engines every 8 hours. 65 second cycle times. Later I operated CNC machines making ring gears for transmissions and differentials. But that aside, I wonder if the cylinder wall was out of round or the piston wasn’t in round. Seems you had a rub issue. It was nasty too! Hopefully you can rescue that one hole! Good luck!

To me it looks like it got really Hot. That is what I call a seized piston. Check the cooling holes in the block for that cylinder. The piston melted. You can remove melted aluminum from the cylinder walls with acid. I can't remember which...muriatic I think. It melts aluminum but not iron. The piston should be replaced with a new one and new rings. You can probably reuse the rings on all the other cylinders, just clean them up. Shoot anyhow this happened. You sure have a NICE shop to work in!!!!

My props go out to you girl.. I'm glad that you are willing to figure it out and keep moving forward with the build instead of shipping it out..

It took me years to restore my 64 Pontiac. I love your videos ❤

I just found your channel I watch the whole video. I love the two of you. How are you explain things and try to figure things out. It’s just my speed. I am now subscribing to you.

I remember my first engine rebuild i did myself it was a big block Mopar. I disassembled the engine and sent it to the machine shop and reassemble it myself after the machining. On first start up had no oil pressure. I talked with the machine shop about possible problems i disassembled it checking everything put it back together and still had no pressure. I finally found a small oil plug in the front of the motor that was missing put a plug in had oil pressure. Still to this day years later it bugs me that I missed a tiny plug. Good luck on your motor and don't let it get to you. Wishing you all well Take Care

I guess in the end you guys will be better engine builders, that sucks that happened after all that work. Great content. Thanks for sharing.

Also, @11:18 you can see cylinder 2 appears to have its rod cap on backwards. Cracked rods will not have a perceptible seam when clamped together and this one has a seam. (unless you disassembled it off camera)

Another great video, if I had to make a guess what happened, it's either piston to bore clearance, or a deformed piston or bore out of round, of course they're only guesses not being there, you'll find the trouble I'm sure, keep pushing on ❤❤

Welp…bad news, good news, huh. Not catastrophic, great call on bringing ‘er home. I’m sure y’all will get ‘er figured out n’ back on the road. Just consider it ‘bonding time’😉. I know we’ll be watching and rooting for you and Danny! Danny…stop with the “sell it!” 😊

To me that was caused by piston to cylinder wall clearance, when you go back together make sure all cylinders have good clearance.

i rebuilt and ls1 and had the bearnings wiped a week after building an engine is a learning experience and rarely goes right your first time good job on the car...

Keep your head up! Happens to the best of us!

The piston skirt was definitely touching the inside of the cylinder bore. You can tell because the score marks are the exact width of the piston skirts. I’d start by looking at the rings and ring installation. They should be able to move freely when you spin them. If not, they can cause the piston to snag on the cylinder walls. Also, lubrication. If there’s a problem with lubrication, the same thing can happen. The piston will snag on the cylinder wall and as the piston rocks on the rod axis, the skirt will touch the wall. Piston rod orientation is important but only if the design calls for it. If the manufacturer doesn’t specifically say there’s a bias, it’s usually not an issue.

That piston was really scratched up. Glad you shut it down and towed it back. Building a engine is a learning experience. It will be great the next time.

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly. Thank you for taking us on this journey.

actually really good to see a genuine "why did this happen" video, also really good to see a woman oon the tools, it doesn't happen too often and it should! FYI higher elevation is less dense air so fuel runs rich, but if it's already too lean, it'll run hot and expand things more. short piston means heat in the gudgeon pin and that'll have less than required clearance so will semi seize and flip flop. On Rover engines the conrod dots face each other so forward on rigth bank, rearward on left bank. As it's an old Buik lump, it would make sense that yours may be the same... but the other cylinders would verify this.

As others have said, you guys absolutely need to completely tear it down to the bare block, identify where the metal came from in the bottom of the oil pan and thoroughly clean and inspect everything. Especially all the oil galleries and passages in the block, oil pump and pickup tube. When you think it's clean, clean it some more. Good luck. Looking forward to seeing the Tempest back on the road.

To me it looks like the piston to cylinder clearance is not correct. You might also check the little port that oils that bore.

Planets on a 4l80 should never be noisy. Good catch getting it handled while still under warranty. Hope the replacement is perfect. Sucks to do it twice but better than paying twice.

Also make sure you oriented the pistons to all point forward. Because piston wrist pins aren’t exactly in the center, they are slightly off center, to reduce piston rock. Also since the rods were scribed you can’t even make a mistake with rod orientation unless you put them in a different cylinder, which somehow happened.

I'm glad you shut it down when you did I would check the slop in that wrist pin

You two work so well together and make a great team. I'm sure you'll figure it out and it will be okay the next go around. We'll be watching to see how it turns out.... peace

While waiting for the engine. Order one of the 25 buck injector cleaning kits that has transparent sleeves to hook a spray can to the injector top and it has a box to pulse the injector windings. Lets you compare spray patterns to see if the number 2 injector was not spraying as much.

If you look at the underside of the piston you can see the wear is aligned with the cross webbing. As the piston heats up and expands it is not uniform so a slow warm up is needed. We see this with high performance 2 stroke engines when first started and revved cold the pistons swell up faster than the cylinder expands and they bind. Since this only happened on cylinder #2 its possible you had a lean condition which ran that cylinder hot and then pushed the engine before it was fully warmed up or as others have said the piston to cylinder wall clearance was a bit to tight seeing the wear was 180 degrees apart. Good job and thanks for posting.

NO SUCH THING as FAILURE-- only DATA!!!! YOu have valuable experience, learning- and information that make your future MORE successful that had you not had it!!!!

A lot of good comments here, I think you should closely inspect the oil ring expander to see if the ends are overlapped. If so, as someone else said the oil rings will not work properly. I didn't see anyone mention oiling to that cylinder. Each cylinder is supplied oil thrown off by the crankshaft. For this to happen correctly there must be a minimum side clearance between the rods. Too little clearance gives too little oil. Even if the oil pressure is good tight rod side clearance could starve this cylinder of oil. It's also a good idea to run the oil pump for several minutes before you start the engine to fill all of the oil passages with oil before the engine starts. I also like the suggestion to break in the engine on a dyno to see all of the variables as the engine warms up. Good Luck with your rebuild!

You learn from everything, it isn't a "fail" if you learn from it. I'd personally send it to machine shop, at the very least for a thorough cleaning. Invest in some good dial calipers and bore guages. Double check your parts as well as your machine work. But it's no biggie, a good mechanic learns from each experience.

Will that's what it sounded like when you started having problems gauling and piston slap on one cylinder was typical sound produced by piston thrust over. Large chamfer on rods and bearing always go to radius on journals. You did good work liv.

Keep grinding. Hiccups happen. Youre learning and doing the work. See you guys in a few months!

grandfather, father and i all raced VWs back in the 90s, breaking is part of racing. spending time with family building your car, a win. just the fact you're in the game doing something, a win, the good always outweighs the bad. good luck. be safe but have fun.

it looks so clean! subbed as a fellow car guy :)

It aways hurts specially when it's your first, you will be back up and running again, better you guys got this

sucks this happend to your first build Liv, but iam sure youll get it fix and have the tempest back in no time!

Clearance... Clarence....😎

My first three engine rebuilds were the same engine. 😂. But in the end I learned a lot and it worked out. it’s been my sons daily driver for the last year now.

My first rebuild was a Triumph 650 Twin engine (motorcycle). When I had finished, I had a rather thick flat washer over. It vibrated before I rebuilt it, but after, it was much worse. Footrests fell off, bulbs didn't last, and it made my teeth ache. Took it to a pro. He told me that whoever had rebuilt it left out the crank spacer. I bet it looked like a thick washer. Since then I've rebuilt an MGB engine, one from a V6 Volvo and a Rover V8. No mistakes, so a cheap lesson.

Damn that blows goats…..glad you guys caught it when you did…..wierd it only happened in that one hole

I love the way she is still smiling, calm and cool as they were trying to diagnose what happened. I wouldn’t have handled it that well. Nice vid, thanks for taking the time make it.

glad you are having everything check. but i still dont believe that is the noise, take the heads apart check the valve springs, also check the cam and lifters, not sure is your heads have pressed in studs for the rockers like some chevys,just something else to check. sound like you have some great help, good luck ,brad

While it's not great to be tearing it down it's good that you caught it early, besides detention I don't know what could do that, I've seen what too tight ring's can do and it's not that, that piston was slapping around in the cylinder and none of the others were so I'm confident you'll be able to figure this out

You need to check the injector flow rates, I suspect that one will show low flow. This is the joy of aftermarket parts.

i use to work on high performance 2strokes with my father and yea ive seen this lots of times. one cyl would score and the other looked great. generally caused by one side of the motor getting hotter than the other just due to cooling issues. one cyl would just run hotter because of air flow over the fins, cooling port locations, the polaris 3 cyl's often had a different jet in the center cyl carb. it was quite often we would jet the carbs differently to compensate for how hot each cyl ran.

I use a pressure tank with oil in it to prime my engines before starting. Just hook it up where the oil pressure switch goes and it works great.

I'm a 70 yr old senior who built a 390 in 1969. About 15 yrs ago I built a small block Chevy .30 over, turned crank .10-.10. Pretty much started with a $200 Summit rebuild and added Edelbrock, Manley, Holly, etc. Engine building is like heart surgery, but an engine won't heal. CLEAN, LUBED, torqued, humility, and enjoyable. Sorry.

rod big end chamfer should go the crank side. the chamfer accepts the radius on the crank journal.Using numbers and dimples is risking that someone didnt mess up at the factory. always orient based on the rod characteristics. that piston was seizing. this was a bore size issue also a heads up, IF your piston skirts drop out the bottom of the bore make sure the bottom of the bore is chamfered/smoothed. if you drag your hand against the bottom edge of the bore and its sharp or rough, your piston is getting that too this only applies if your skirts drop out the bore bottoms (common on stroked engines)

My first build was done by machine shop one....multiple issues. Pulled it after 3000km. Three bores had score lines and slight wear on most piston skirts. Was told all was good and why did i strip it??? 2nd machine shop has been way more helpful, went foged Carrelo pistons and spool rods. 4000km now and still running, so hopefully all good. Expensive lesson. But we learn from it. The experience you gain will be invaluable in the future.

Bore sizing and ring gap is the answer. If ring gap is too tight, it will bind and cause the piston to put excessive force on the side walls as it forces up and down. You'll end up with both sides being wiped out due to the rod acting on either side of the piston.

The rings have pinched due to the heat which may be due to bore wash and the fuel washed the oil of the bore walls. Run the motor in on mineral oil as this will allow the moving parts like rings to contact each other and bed in and then switch to a semi-synthetic or fully synthetic to get the better metal to metal protection, as synthetic is too good and will not let the rings bed in and you will get blow by from the start. This issue was common when Mobil 1 first came out and an engine builder I know had a top spec rally engine come back two times after emptying its oil out during it first two events and when stripped down they could not find out why. Lucky for the builder this issue came to light and as the owner specified this oil he got paid for the rebuilds. Good luck with the rebuild.

As an engine builder for 50 years here in the UK..Rule of thumb ,the piston to cylinder wall clearance should be at least 10 thou of an inch that would make 5 thou when centre to centre when the piston is installed..Looking at the footage of the damaged piston ,it looks as if not enough clearance was had.

1. When you first started working on the motor, put a cloth in the carb to ensure nothing gets dropped in. Same after the intake manifold was removed. 2. When using a ratchet, always pull, don't push. That's how you break knuckles.

A couple of engines I built wound up failing in the strangest ways. Like the lower wiper oil ring being bent in the downward position toward the piston skirt. this was where the ring end is. I still to this day haven't flgured out how I even was able to manage to install it without having to actually beat it in with a hammer. It wore a groove so bad i had to junk it. yours is a real mystery though.

Great channel, very cool car and build, regarding this engine failure it appears that side of the engine and specifically that cylinder got very hot and the piston grew in size and scuffed the cylinder wall, one possibility is that the head gasket was installed facing the wrong direction blocking the coolant passages for only that cylinder. The fact that the valve cover gasket grew in size supports this theory. There also appears to be some unrelated bearing damage as evidenced by the flakes in the oil.

Make sure the rods aren't hitting the windage tray and throwing debris. Or, it could be ring end gap or scoring from not chamfering the ends of the ring enough after filing the gap. If the ring got hot enough and the gap wasn't correct - it could have expanded in the bore and scored it like you are seeing. Possibly the tune? But isn't Holley EFI self-tuning to an extent? Clean out your oil passages with soap and water and those extra long bottle brushes. Was hoping this was torque convertor bolts. So sorry to see this. Hugs!

Clearances need to be measured, checked and corrected during assembly. Had you measured everything as you went, you would've found these mistakes long before you fired the engine and found them through a blown engine. Measure, Check, Record and Correct where needed. You could always look back at the build measurements and rule that out. Looks like the rod was in backwards, the chamfer goes towards the crank, not the other rod. Rods installed backwards usually get bent from that. Check rod side clearance next time, then you'd know if they were installed wrong.

Gotta love your choice of background music, seems like Messer Chubs.

I’m sure you will learn a lot from this experience. That’s the biggest takeaway. The first thing I noticed was when you pushed out the piston it didn’t look like you placed the end gaps of the two top rings over the center of the skirt. They should be 180 degrees from each other and rotate the oil ring end gaps too to retain maximum compression. Finding where the gold material should be easy to spot since you should see where that colored material is in the motor. Are you using a bronze distributor Drive gear. I’m a mopar guy so we know that the bearing tabs go in the same side and the groove on the rod cap once installed faces the opposite cylinders for oiling. Either the clearance was wrong, the ring end gap was wrong ( which doesn’t make sense because the other pistons are rings were fine) or the bore was not the proper size. When you installed the pistons and rings did you lubricate them? Did you overheat the engine during break- in? Did you use the proper oil and break-in process? Something could’ve fallen into the cylinder via plug hole. The best way to rule out possible problems is to know all clearance specifications were checked before installing the crank, rods, bearings rings. The ring instructions should have told you what ring end gap. Even brand new cylinder heads have to be disassembled and checked before installing. Don’t trust anyone to do it right for you and check everything! The motor has to come out and cylinder bored over. That’s the time to measure and compare everything. It’s possible that the copper color is from something that got sucked into the intake and landed in that cylinder only to be chewed up. That could cause a problem for sure. It happens!! My friend had a problem on start up because the head overheated because the cooling passage was blocked by one cylinder. Check the head gasket and make sure you’re getting coolant and not overheating by that cylinder. Good luck and don’t give up!

Book. Chris Werner "How to rebuild LS engines. PAGE 113. Piston and connecting rod orientation RULES. Thats what you need.

I had the same issue with a 418 stroker making a bunch of racket when running but when i pulled it apart everything seemed fine. It turned out to be a worn wrist pin bushing had to much play in it.

That car deserves a great paint job! Is that the original color? matching numbers? Likely not.

I literally saw that he was unbolting the oil pan. I scream, "Incoming!!"

If you take a close look right around 16:55 it looks like the top ring ends are shiny .... thats a sure sign that ring end gap was too tight. Inspect it and if it is infact shiny or polished looking .... thats your problem.

Also, the whining noise in the transmission; make certain that transmission is not overfilled, even by a little. The 4L60E planetary can churn up fluid and it can make a moaning or humming sound. It didn't look air bound when you drained it but i don't know how long the cold soak was.

First thing that came to mind was - when the cylinders were bored, was the torque plate properly installed? Other than that, good thing you shut it down when you did.

As a 45 year experienced trans tech and shop owner, I can tell you it's almost never a planetary set that is making noise. You can pretty much bet it's a Torrington style thrust bearing.

The rod issue is a great example of their being engine builders and engine assemblers. Builders check everything and never trust anyone else’s “scribe marks” and just throw it together. Even machine shops make mistakes. Triple check everything

I use to be a transmission builder and the 4L80 is a little louder by design as the low planetary gears aren't cut as hard of an angle due to being a heavier-duty application so some whining is completely normal.

Piston to wall clearance, proper ring gap, fueling system health, tune, cooling system properly bled. Your rod bearings like great, I like to orient the LS factory rods dots towards the flexplate, but your problem is not the rod orientation. Block at least needs a touch up on the bad cylinder, otherwise clean everything best you can and check heads and block are still true. Wishing you the best of luck on round #2, take it slow and double check all the machine shop measurements / work.

As a previous commenter has suggested, too tight of piston to bore clearances.

Well # 6 in number 2 bore is a problem, Rods in wrong place makes pistons in wrong place as they are usually matched to the bore numbered so an assy issue is what i see as reason for failure.

This is a prime example of always check your pistons with a micrometer and have the bore gauged at the top middle and bottom of travel.

Hi, hope this is okay I think the engine pistons nipped up due not enough piston to bore clearance. Best way forward is to have the bores honed to see if the scoring can be removed and what the finial bored diameter is then see if replacement pistons to suit are available.

Piston skirt damage like that is typically caused from improper bore size

Did you ever figure out what was chewed up in the oil pan? Might be important…

Compare one of the other pistons to that one. Also, check the bore to the diameter of the piston. Check the ring gap and the amount of ring pressure against the cylinder walls. If there's not enough pressure, the piston could flop around. I've built a few engines, and I have never seen that.

I built a ford 289 engine with a HiVolume Mellings oil pump, I used push in oil galley plugs. I revved my motor past 6000 RPM doing a burnout, and later realized that my oil pressure dropped and I had Hydraulic lifter noise, I should have pulled over and had the car towed home, but I was only about 5 miles from home and like an idiot I drove it home. I ended up throwing a rod, damaging the piston, and cylinder bore and breaking the camshaft. After tearing down the engine I found the oil galley plug in the oil pan, and realized that was the cause of my low oil pressure. The next engine 302 engine I built I tapped the oil galleys for screw in plugs.

LOOK AT ALL THE SHINY NEW UNDERCARRIAGE STUFF ....NICE!

I saw a bumper sticker once which said, "Oh no, not another learning experience!"

Did you guys check the ring end gaps before assembly, usually you have to open them up a bit so they do not bind after warmed up

Heat deformation. heat makes the edges move outward. I had that happen on several Porsche powered desert racers. But our damage was always on the middle cylinder.

Dumb question. I see you have forged Carillo pistons for a .005 over bore. Did you have the bore enlarged by .005 inch? and if so, was the suggested bore clearance within what Carillo specified ?

Did you use a stress plate when setting up the bores ?? Did you keep a build sheet containing all measured clearances vs target clearances.. coolant flow ??