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My car tried to eat a bolt

To: triumphs@autox.team.net
Subject: My car tried to eat a bolt
From: SDOliner@aol.com
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 10:15:55 EST
I have Longflo air cleaners on my TR 4A., which are held on to the SU with 
two nuts and bolts, the bolt head being inside the air cleaner. The nut shook 
off one of the bolts and the intake sucked up the bolt.
Take it form me, a 5/16" x 1" bolt, is not a good thing to be rattling around 
in the combustion chamber.
Bent valve stem, chunk out the head and shattered piston.
When I say shattered, the piston came out in two pieces, the part above the 
wrist pin and the part below. A lot of other pieces being held together by 
the rings.
Luckily no scores on the cylinder.
There was a fourth ring below the wrist pin which I guess kept the lower end 
of the piston aligned.

So for now I am replacing the pistons rings and wrist pins, using the old 
rods, had the head repaired and magnafluxed, and replacing the rod bearings, 
just for the heck of it. I didn't plastigague for clearance, and I suspect 
that this would OK, since the car ran at 40 to 50 PSI. Still I think at this 
point not much sense to put in old bearings.
This was a TRF rebuilt short block, put in about 10 years ago. Car ran great 
until now, but the funny thing that I noticed when I removed all of the 
pistons, was that the rod in #1 cylinder was stamped #2 and #2 was stamped 
#1. The back two were OK.
I guess it doesn't make much difference on a complete rebuilt, but kind of 
sloppy, don't you think?
I think I am going to put the rods back in the way they came out of the 
engine.

I haven't pulled the main bearing caps (yet), but if needed is it possible to 
replace the main bearings without dropping the crankcase? I know you can do 
this on a spridget.

Thanks

David Oliner
60 Bugeye
67 TR 4A

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