Can"t remember who, but someone I know had a souvenir on his desk of the exact same thing -- broken valve driven right through a piston. Made a nice conversation piece.
Around 1962 we had a '54 Oldsmobile come into the shop with a skip. We easily located the dead cylinder and ran a compression test. Zero. when we pulled the valve cover we could see that it had dropped a valve, likely due to the broken valve spring halves that were floating around inside the cover. We pulled the cylinder head and found the valve head embedded in the piston. There was no other cylinder damage except a couple of marks on the head. The owner of the car knew a little bit about engines and asked if we could put a valve in it and leave the rest of the engine alone. He said that he would sell thge car (which was actually a very clean 2-dr ht). We said that there would be no guarantee, even if it didn't make it out of the shop; he agreed and we put a valve and spring in the head and reassembled the engine. It ran beautifully, and the guy was still driving it a couple of years later - he was a regular gas and service customer, so we know that the impaled valve head was still in the engine.
less than a week old? isn't that a lot of carbon deposits and dirt around the cyl. head gasket for something so new, I mean with todays clean fuels and better oils and in less than a week it looks like that? Wow.
Two months ago I'm cruising along in my big rig through central Minnesota when I noticed a rattling sound from the 13 litre engine while going up slight hills. There was some power loss, but I had a light load. Then I noticed white smoke when the engine was rattling. Took the next exit and white smoke was venting from the driver side. Engine still ran, but I shut it off to further investigate. My first thought was fuel gelling, even though it wasn't that cold. Added some anti gel, and started engine up. White smoke began pouring from exhaust. Immediately shut engine down and called our head office shop. Long story shortened was number two cylinder liner had cracked filling crankcase with antifreeze. Engine had almost exactly 100,000 miles on it. On big rig engines, that's barely broken in. Repairs were 100% covered under warranty. Shop that did the work had never experienced such a failure before. Just one of those things.
That is referred to as explosion welding. The discovered it back in the war when a bronze piece welded its self to steel after an explosion.
Back in the early 60’s my dad worked in a Chevy dealership. Guy comes in with a Dual quad 409 impala says it’s knocking. Pull the head off to find a dime sitting on top of the piston. When they inform the owner his response was “so that’s what happened to the dime I was adjusting the carbs with”.
