Whats your engine internals look like - shocked or not ?

I recently tore my 1941 Buick special 248ci straight eight down for a rebuild . I have owned this car since 2000 and added lead to the gas and drove it . I put ruffly 6,000 miles on it over this time . A complete blast to drive a hour and 1/2 to car shows in the dark or take to work on my 45 min drive in the morning at 4 am . Now the motor finally ran out of compression and I have babbit bearings that are gone too along with valves that look like dune caves ceilings .My engine was clean otherwise I changed the oil every couple months here in Michigan the car gets parked before November not out till end of March . I am wondering if you were shocked when you tore your engine down to be rebuilt .

Looks pretty normal to me, for an engine built before 1980 and run on leaded gas. I have seen a lot worse.

It is the rod bearing that bothers me!

Definitely time for rebuild.

I found the following when I tore down my 1941 Century engine. No idea what happened or when, or when it was repaired, but there was a big old hole in the block. There is some speculation that it might even have been done at the factory because the block was porous.

When they went to hone the cylinders, they noted that it was already .030 oversize (fortunately, these blocks can handle up to .125 overbore), so it was obviously rebuilt once before. But it was pretty gnarly, so someone must have neglected it for quite a while. Then there were the rings:

Nothing inside your engine looks out of the ordinary for something that's been on the road for 75 years. Buick engineers never once thought that someone would be driving it regularly in 2014...

Why guess whether you need a rebuild or not, when the rod is sticking thru the block you know for sure it is the right time.

Very strange, the block looks like it was hit from the outside and the hole does not line up with the connecting rod.

If I had to guess, I would say the repair was done during WW2 or 1948 at the latest. During this period of time new cars were in short supply and even parts were hard to get. A late model car would definitely be repaired if at all possible. After 1948 the resale value of a 1941 Buick would be so low, it is doubtful anyone would spend that kind of money. And used engines would be available cheap.

As to how it got damaged I am as puzzled as you are. But the factory would not have repaired the block, they would have scrapped it and used a new one. Likewise if a defective block failed during the warranty period, the dealer would have installed a new engine supplied by the factory.

My mind would wounder about MATTs block maybe at pearl harbor during the attack (bullet hole ) , find some info on the car and its past locations . Maybe it can be traced to a base mechanical repair . If nothing else it is a good story ....

Speculating on Matt's block, it may have been a defective original engine that was replaced under warranty. Many companies had a "factory man" with a sledge hammer to make that sort of thing un-usable after determination. Moving into the war years a block like that could have been repairable due to shortages and ended up out of the dealer's junk pile and into another car repaired.

That makes a plausible story and it is only a four hour drive for me to run down there and swear to it.

Bernie

I pulled the head off a 48 Chevy back in the 70's (before unleaded gas) and it had a similar level of carboning. The bottom end had seized because all the crud on top of the pistons had held moisture and stuck to the cylinder walls. I ground the valves, cleaned it up and drove it after. Never did get plates on it, but it ran well.

While "matching numbers" in the usual sense didn't exist in 1941, the engine stamping number does decode as a correct 1941 Century block, so I'm inclined to believe it's the car's original engine. The engine number is not a hand-stamping, either, but factory. Rusty is right, it was not caused by a wayward rod letting go, it's in the wrong place and the damage isn't, well, spectacular enough. Just a hole. I've always wondered about it and my engine builder (the same guy who does the engines for the top 1940-41 Buick restorer, Doug Seybold) was the one who suggested that it was probably repaired at the factory. It is a fascinating wrinkle in the car's history, though, that's for sure, but I've been speculating on it for years and don't have any good answers.

I'm sure a defective block would have been thrown in the scrap pile, melted down and reused. It's not as if the factory had any shortage of engine block castings.

The weld is on the inside and the block has been rebored, suggesting the repair was done at the same time as the engine was rebuilt.

Is it possible the engine was removed from the car for rebuilding and someone dropped it?