So we had big rain last Tuesday and instead of taking my usual route home,I was going a different way to help a pal with a project . Well the road had lots of water on it, but seemed perfectly passable, with other cars in front of me. Well I guess the road dropped a little, I pushed a big wake of water above the hood, then the engine started missing etc etc,along with much swearing. Luckily my friend came to pull me out. I let it dry for a couple of hours, then tried to fire it up. It started ,missing real bad with lots of blue, white smoke and black oil coming out of the exhaust [ at least my intercooler is now clean]. Pulled the head yesterday; 2 bent rods and one damaged piston. It even took a chunk out of the bottom of the cylinder with the worse rod. On the other hand I was pleased to see how little wear on an engine with 450,000 kms. valve guides well in spec., negligable piston wear, zero cylinder wear,only rod bearings showing some , but would have been fine for another 100,000 at least.I know the history of the engine [ I transplanted it into 97 GLX body after the first body rotted out] and was hoping to see long many kms I could go on an engine that has never been opened before .
I feel sad for you. I having the precup drop on my 1.6 feel your pain. Hope it works out and you can resurrect it.
Already ordered a set of new rods, and I'll be installing new pistons even though they aren't too bad . I'm really hoping to get more than 700,000 out of this engine.
The first thing I thought of while this was all happening, was it never would have happened if I still had my Transporter. The intake snorkel is 5 feet from ground level