Piston height to deck

[JRS]

Ok, here's another question. Working on the twin cam '96 engine. Suspected I had a blown head gasket, turns out a bad piston #2. Anyways regarding the timing, 1 and 4 and 2 and 3 appear to move in synch with each other. However, at TDC #1 and # 2 piston top is maybe a sixteenth or an eighth inch from deck height. Turned engine over to see if they would come all the way up, they didn't. Pistons all have same markings, thinking it's possible someone rebuilt it with incorrect rods, or what else could explain this ?? Is this normal ? On those 2 pistons, at some time the exhaust valves contacted them, perhaps explaining why #2 had a small piece of piston missing .....

[tenspeed]

That is strange that pistons don't come up and yet hit the exhaust valves. Almost like there was some slop in the crankshaft bearings, wrist pins or mains.

That would have made one hell of a rod knock.

[flash_81]

tearing my 93 vin a 2.3 apart sounded like upper end noise but then i noticed how shinny number 2 piston is around edges so i tried to wiggle it for loosness and the whole piston fell down the hole about an eight inch when i pushed on it!! must be very bad wrist pin or rod bearing ill have to pull bottom end and see. can i get bottom end apart without pulling from car or is it best to pull out? i'm sure crank will need to be removed.

[flash_81]

you might want to turn over engine again and when two pared pistons get to tdc watch very closely to see if they both start going down at the same time. on mine, bad numer 2 didn't come all the way up but when number three started falling and number two didn't i stopped turning crank and pushed down with my hand on 2 and it fell about and eight inch, not good. maybe urs the same???