I decided to to post pictures of the interior of the engine and components as I was curious to see the damage. This is the engine I replaced with a nearly identical LS1 in the '04 C5.

I removed the exterior sellable/tradable components and dug into the engine.

My guess is that standing water was scooped up by the intake, bypassed the filter through a faulty previous closure (looks like a cold air intake was removed and holes patched with duct tape at some point in the past) and went right into the intake plenum and back to the No. 7 chamber snapping the connecting rod.

The engine had 114,000 miles on it. These engines are amazing. After the tow truck delivered it from the auction the old girl fired right up and limped up the driveway into the garage on 7 cylinders and breathed her last. On this day of Thanksgiving I give thanks for her 114,000 miles of service and hope that she stands as a reminder.......don't drive into standing water and don't do crappy intake patches when you remove the cold air intake and go back to stock.




Milky oil and fragments



milky oil and fragments



closeup of oil condition



collector plate



closeup of collector plate battered by connector rod



pickup tube intake



Pistons 7-5-3-1



Pistons 8-6-4-2



Pistons, number 7 lower left



Battered pistons



Block at cylinders 7 and 8, broken cylinder at 7 on right



Cylinders 7 and 8, connecting rod from 7 went thru block adjacent to 8.. see daylight thru hole



cylinder 8 with hole above



The only damaged lifter I could find.



Battered camshaft



Camshaft



Battered lobe



battered end of camshaft, explains why the camshaft sensor was damaged



camshaft sensor



Head...chambers 7-5-3-1, 7 was scrapped clean by rotating loose piston



Chamber 7 and piston 7. Piston scrapped clean compare to other pistons



damaged crank and broken connecting rod



broken rod



View of block...fragments everywhere



Cylinder 7 with piston lodged



Empty block

 

Ton of info here. How about some pics of the head gaskets.

 

hmmm...may have been trashed already. I'll look. As I recall, they looked pretty good but may been marred around number 7.

 

What a nightmare that must have been. Thanks for posting up the pics - very informative.

 

That is a lot of damage. This is all that was wrong with mine.

 

I've never seen such damage in a non-racing engine. You'd expect to see something like that at 10,000 RPM's.

 

Nice! Was it running? Looks like someone tried to start it with water already in the cylinder.

 

I've seen this exact condition before on a Mazda 5 which has the Mazda 3 engine. Had a hole in the block and same internal damage. That one also started up and ran on 3 cylinders.

The hole in the block was what clued me to the LS1 condition when I inspected it. Tricky though, it was behind the starter, you just had to follow the sheet of oil.

 

I don't know what happened since I got it at auction. Maybe It just had a smaller sip of water than yours. There was no other damage and the cylinders didn't even need to be bored over (just honed). That is with 130K miles. I didn't trust the heads even though there was no damage. I haven't checked compression yet.

Drinking water is worse than racing. It doesn't compress and the weeniest part has to brake.

 

Great pics. I'll try to remember not to do that.

 

Too late, out with the trash and picked up.

 

My heads nor head gasket look's abnormal in my case. There was no loss of cylinder pressure. The rod was clearly the weakest point.

I'm glad It was. There is light striation on my piston but thanks to the skirt coating it did not damage the cylinder wall on mine.

My crank shaft was straight as an arrow with no signs of distress. I think that is pretty amassing for a ductile Iron crank. The crank was polished and reused.

 

I tried to move quick on the compression check on the replacement engine once the engine was warm. The worst part was plug 7 but easier with air pump hose detached and out of the way. The biggest help was a remote starter switch attached to center peg on starter and other leg on battery. Had to use articulating needle nose to attach on starter, couldn't get my hand in there. I pulled fuel pump relay but may not be needed. Compression hose attached fairly easily using a mirror.