You can see part of the lifter roller bearing laying up top

The failed lifter

The block damage

A close up of the damage
I was driving my Z06 home from work 2 weeks ago and while driving along around 30 to 40 mph; the car made a big noise like a big exhaust leak. Long story short, i got the car home and did a little detective work and found a fouled plug in#6 followed by a lifter with tons of play. I pulled the intake and valley cover and found a roller bearing sitting in the valley. I knew then it was a probably a lifter so I pulled the motor last weekend. Thanks for the great forum info, I pulled it by myself. I pulled the motor apart and found a lifter failed and destroyed the camshaft. That wasn't a surprise; however as I was looking at the block I found that the lifter or pieces of it had impacted the inside of the block. My question is can this be fixed or is this terminal? I think it is dead but wanted to see before I started down the ls2 path. Appreciate the input.

Thanks for all the inputs. I finally got a chance to strip the block and the car had some 😮 I bought the car 4 years ago and it had afr mongoose heads, fast intake, headers and a cam. I thought the bottom end was untouched but clearly you can see in the pictures I was wrong. The camshaft was pretty ugly on number 6 but there was damage on other lobes as well. I can't id the make; any ideas? The lifter bore was damaged as you can see but it is still smooth and a lifter moves cleanly in it. I got a little better picture of the damage. The oil was clean with no coolant. I will clearly be visiting a machine shop here in Colorado Springs or Denver shortly and want to make sure I'm armed with info. Appreciate all the inputs!

 

Can you get more/better pics of the bottom of the lifter bore and its neighbor? I wonder if you damaged a non-critical part of the bore and can get away with blending it out.

 

Here are some additional photos.

This is #6 cylinder and you can see the damage behind the camshaft on #5.

 

I'm sorry, but I can't see enough to be sure of anything. Perhaps you could light up just the aluminum lifter bore in question. Have you tried a good lifter in the bore, to see if it will slide all the way down to the cam lobe, or base circle? Either those lifters are aftermarket, or their the very early style OEM lifters. The lifter wheel has been fully encapsulated/enclosed for many years. Was the engine modified? Was it overrevved? As long as there's no deep gouge in the lifter bore, and a there's not a big hunk of aluminum broken off the block, you're probably OK. Sorry I can't offer more help, but without better pics of the lifter bore, I can't judge whether it's good or not. Best of luck to you......

 

The damage is clearly on the bottom, that's where you need to focus your pic.

 

I would bet that it can be fixed, welded up. You do need to tear the motor down completely and at least hot tank the block. Have the machine shop take a look. If thats all the damage I'd say you got lucky. Don't trash it, I may be interested.

 

Like what was said above, I cant tell if the bore is damaged from those pics.
After you get the crank out it will be easier to inspect, I wouldn't expect any damage too the bore BUT it is possible so you want to make sure

Lifter Bores can be sleeved / Bushed you see this on racing engines often so is Block trash if its damaged ? No it can be repaired.
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Lifter Bushing
https://www.summitracing.com/parts/i...iABEgJJFPD_BwE

 

Is the damage in question common to the lifter bore or the cylinder bore? First photo appears to be damage common to cylinder.

 

Thanks for the inputs here are some additional photos.

 

It looks like it just dinged the bottom of that 1 lifter bore and nowhere near an oil passage. I'd personally be inclined to clean it up with a Dremel and send it. Those other dents are benign but I'd smooth them out with a Dremel too. I'm in the Springs myself.