Lucky Guy(i think)

I’m sure there are plenty of those experiences around. I for one had an IH 345 drop a valve and pretty much destroy the engine. I found a different one and rebuilt it but (for some reason I don’t remember why now) decided to use the manifold from the destroyed one. I fired the engine up and it had a knock in it. Finally it started to miss, so I pulled the spark plug out and the electrodes were bent shut. Off came the head. On top of the piston was a chunk of aluminum which had finally imbedded itself next to the cylinder wall and later I found it to have crushed a ring land. Off came the pan and a new piston went in to replace the damaged one. Fired it up again, and it ran fine for about 15 minutes and it started to knock again then miss. Pulled the spark plug out (this time one the other side) and another spark plug was bent shut. Off came that head and the same deal, only this time the piece was still floating but again the pan came off and another new piston went in as it was dinged up pretty badly. The intake also came off and got cooked, baked, high pressure washed and anything else I could think of to make sure that was the LAST piece of crap in it!

Diagnosis was that there was junk in the intake manifold from the piston breaking up when the valve went on the original engine. I had cleaned the intake and was sure there was nothing in it…well captain obvious tells me that it wasn’t clean, and the schooling cost me two pistons and a lot of labor.