Stopped by the shop for a bit to get an update and see the damage myself. What can I say, that motor is torn up.
Almost certainly it was the rods, but Aaron is still looking at everything. Three rods were completely destroyed (just small pieces left), and two more are noticably bent. However, on the three remaining rods we can see:
- Bearings look perfect
- Bolts held
- Wristpins held
- Pistons took a hell of a beating but didn't crack (even the ring lands)
- No signs of blow by
- No signs of pitting, spotting or discoloration from knock/ping
- Plugs are perfect; no signs of knock
- Heads are undamaged, although some valves took a wack or two
- Refractor plate bent and scored the crank (plus a few scratches from flying parts), but other than that it looks like new.
- Rings held and don't look like they butted at all. They look like we just put them in there.
All in all, it appears to be just the rods that couldn't handle it. So, we are getting some billet steels ones made. The shop doing the work still has to make sure they can do them due to the odd journal size (large like a big block) for such a short length. We are also going to change the pistons a little to try and lose some of the weight we added. This will require a change to the wrist pins, but it will be a more common size so we shouldn't have much trouble finding some just as strong as what we had.
Rhino sent me some more pics I'll try to upload this weekend.