weirdest stuff found in your motor

M

MotorNut123

New Member
im not sure if there is a thread like this already but what is the weirdest thing youve ever found in your motor? i personally havent taken my motor apart but ive heard of some mysterious stuff.
 
On my scooter, the previous owner had replaced a metal spacer by a cardboard one in the transmission. Of course when reassembling a month later after a crankshaft, top end, new tranny, etc I had no clue I had a part missing. I ended up ordering the new part from Yamaha..
 
vachon644 said:
On my scooter, the previous owner had replaced a metal spacer by a cardboard one in the transmission. Of course when reassembling a month later after a crankshaft, top end, new tranny, etc I had no clue I had a part missing. I ended up ordering the new part from Yamaha..
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wow im surprised the thing even ran! i guess u never know what is to come when taking these apart. its like a cereal box, theres a surprise in every one!
 
My buddy, Paul (no relation to any other Paul on here) was a certified motorcycle mechanic. He said he was once asked to work on a bike that had recently been rebuilt and still sometimes made a strange noise afterward. He said he tore it down and found a 5/8 inch socket rolling around in the crankcase. He said he couldn't tell if it was the guy's before him, or the guy's before the other's. I asked him, being a Honda, shouldn't it have been metric? He said it read 5/8 on it, go figure.
 
I'm a jet engine mechanic for the Navy. I can tell stories about the weird stuff found in our engines...
Ha, man, it makes me laugh. I just don't know what I'm able to say, or what's "classified", lol...
 
I'm bumping this old thread cause I found something weird today.

I have a new NT carburetor that I polished and a new manifold I was going to install. When I looked down the throat of the manifold prior to grinding and polishing the inside I found a hunk of metal, probably from when the tubing was cut and was left in after the parts were welded at the factory.
I was able to just wiggle it and it broke off. No big deal because I always clean and smooth the intake runner prior to installing it but imagine a newbie sticking this thing on an engine and it breaking off and getting sucked in. Could have done some serious damage.
 

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I found piston's in a few of my motors. I thought it was a bit weird as I thought the motors were rotary like the Mazda's.

dnut
 
I pulled the head off of a 350 Chevy one time and found a flat, partially embedded into the top of the piston 5/16" nut...
 
Found a bb one time when i took my spark plug out. The engine didn't work to good after that..lol..little brothers what are ya gonna do ya know..
 
I opened up a 1000cc sportster engine to find a valve spring keeper that had travelled down an oil passage that feeds the piston skirt. It lodged there and cut the piston skirt all the way through. Not sure how long it was in there, but it had to have been fron the factory, since the engine had never been opened up previously. I can just here what the guy at the factory was thinking..."OOOPS dropped that keeper....wonder where it went? I'll just grab another, it's almost quittin' time.
 
I bought a forklift for my business for $300 once. It had the distributor cap off and the dist. was full of rusty water from being out in the weather for 6 months.
I could turn the engine with the fan, so I assumed this was the only problem and would be an easy fix.

After I got it home and put a battery in it, I found that there was no compression on one cylinder.
Thought prolly was a stuck valve so I pulled the rocker cover to manualy depress the valves to check them.
I was real suprised when I found no valve stem where #4 exhaust was supposed to be.

When I drained the oil before pulling the engine, something was obscuring the drain hole. I fished it out, and it was the exhaust valve stem! In the oil pan?

The head of the valve was still in the top of the piston, and the piston was cracked verticaly into 3 pieces, and the rings were the only thing holding the pieces in place.

The previous owner had run it like this for quite a while, until the igniton problem made it quit entirely.
It was 19 years old, and he said the oil had never been changed LOL.
It is a 240 cid. industrial Hercules, 4 inch bore. Kinda powerful for a 3000lb fork truck so it was well worth the rebuild.
 
I was ferrying an airplane from Andrews TX to Guymon OK. It had a 215 cu. in. Buick v8. I lost oil pressure and landed in Pampa. Pulled the oil pan off and the oil pickup tube was laying in the bottom of the oil pan...
 
Ilikeabikea said:
I was ferrying an airplane from Andrews TX to Guymon OK. It had a 215 cu. in. Buick v8. I lost oil pressure and landed in Pampa. Pulled the oil pan off and the oil pickup tube was laying in the bottom of the oil pan...
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Exactly why I never flew Buick powered aircraft...:(

We always brazed the pickup tube in on race car engines for that reason.

Tom
 
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