I had one Heck of a past two weeks working on my truck and I wanted to share what happened and what I learned in case anyone else has any of the same problems. Lessons learned are: #1 DO NOT CRANK THE ENGINE WHEN WATER MIGHT BE IN THE CYLINDARS. Water does not compress like air and you could break a piston rod or any other number of bad things. Remove all the plugs and crank the engine first to clear out the cylinders. # 2 DO NOT GET THE DISTRIBUTER OR COIL WET WHEN CLEANING YOUR ENGINE. Everyone had told me this and I did it anyway thinking awww Ill be careful. #3 FUEL, SPARK AND TIMING, THAT’S WAT MAKES THE ENGINE WORLD GO AROUND. Below is a bulleted list of my experience.

• Cleaned engine and found oil leaks at the valley pan, oil filter and oil pan.
• Removed intake and valley pan, put clean rags in the heads intake ports and proceeded to clean with gunk and water.
• Painted and reassembled.
• When I cranked the engine it acted like it seized. So I hand rotated the engine and heard water trickling down.
• Engine still would not start, I figured I got water in the cylinders and fowled my plugs. So, I bought new plugs, condenser, points, rotor, dist cap.
• Engine still wouldn’t start, I had spark and gas at the cylinder. So, I checked timing and compression. Compression was OK but the timing was off even though I had never removed the distributor.
• Adjusted the timing and the truck turned over immediately. I drove around the block and it stalled.
• Checked timing again and it was now off. Made sure the distributor was tight and repeated the test drive/ re-timing thing a few times and deduced my distributor was bad.
• Replaced the distributor. Truck ran great for about 3 blocks and then the spark started to drop off intermittently ( verified this with my timing light). Truck stalled, I waited a few minutes restarted and it ran fine for another 3 blocks then repeated the bad performance.
• I guessed that it might be the coil. So I replaced it and now the truck runs beautifully and does not leak oil. Halleluiah!!

 

Not me in the photo, but that is my car. There's a story behind it that is too long to tell, as well as a sign that reads "Travel at your own risk" right before this. So, do I win the dummy award?

The connecting rod is hanging on the wall of my garage as a reminder.

 

Live and learn, Yah I have a $900 ashtray (454 popup piston with valve hickeys all over it).

 

I have a 302 piston that is half melted away.

Should realy have payed homig to that compression test that was low between two cilinders on the brand new motor

 

That picture looks familiar i have a story that goes with it, luckily with it not being my car and it not being me behind the wheel. I was in the passenger's seat of a friend's 4 cylinder acura and it had just stopped raining. Anyway, he's drivng down a major street doing about 45 and sees this puddle and decides he's going to drive through it, see what happens. I tried to advise him otherwise but he wouldn't hear it, so he nails it and I proceeded to put on my seatbelt (if you knew me this would be a HUGE red flag) since i knew this puddle got pretty deep every now and then. Right as we're about to go into the puddle, he galances over at me, sees me in a seat belt getting comfortable and bracing myself and a look of absolute terror flew across his face (it was absolutely priceless, it was the only enjoyable thign about the whole experience ) He looked back at the road and hit the brakes but we were just about to hit the water anyway. Talk about going 50 to zero in a heart beat. He has two rods hanging on the wall and a broke nose to show for that, i just had a bit of belt burn across my right shoulder . Oh well, you live, you learn and you spend $3500. . . .