Broken piston, or hole in piston, #3.

When you first diassembled, did you do anything with the lifters? Did you tighten down the rockers at TDC? Look at the rocker bridges to see if they are twisted.

Don't know much pertaining to this. But if he tore it down and did not rotate the crank wouldn't the lifters and rocker arms be in the same position still?

Yes but when you remove the head, all kinds of coolant gets down into the lifter valley and will cause them to stick. When I replaced my head, I took my lifters apart, cleaned them out and dunked them in oil before assembly. They were super springy and very quiet now.

I also noticed when tightening the rockers, that the bridges were twisting due to the cam holding the lifters uneven and thus the valves. When I put the cylinder at TDC compression, the rockers tightened down evenly with no twist.

Gotcha, yeah when I did mine I just used a shop vac as I didn't want to score the cylinders incase gunk was stuck to the rings from falling down once I pulled the head. I wish I would have pulled the lifters and cleaned em. I did clean the push rods...never noticed my rockers twisting but after 3k miles all I have is noisy aftermarket new injectors that tick.

+ 1 on this thought. Did a leak down test last night .

Air was coming out of spark plug hole on cylinder 1 and 5 , but not the oil dip stick. At this point I realize that I have the worst luck in the world lol. Have had all my jeeps over 220k plus no issue, and the one at 130k I thought was a gem was not so much .


Thanks for all the help from everyone on here, appreciate it. Ordering a Titan stroker kit for the bottom end (doing the small one) since it needs rebuilt anyways, might as well make sure I do it right since I am in there. Friend owns a machine shop so labor for the bottom end is free atleast .

No I did not do anything with the lifters

Yes I tightened them down at TDC and nothing is twisted.

Like I said each cylinder had 150 psi after the gasket was on, and the only time I lost compression was on the test drive after it idled for an half hour to hour. With 0 psi and the results I got from my leak down and its pretty safe to say something went boom with the lower end.

As far as people asking about the cylinder walls. I cleaned/soaked up any coolant that was in the cylinder, and then lubed the walls with oil before putting the head back on. Even cranked it a few times with ignition and fuel disconnected to make sure everything got pressure