This came off an engine while the car was on our lift
Any thoughts?
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Is it a 4 cylinder with an air pump? there is a rubber piece I have seen that attaches to the fan hub

like this
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Thanks for playing.

Who's next?
I'll add a hint. It's definitely aftermarket.

Obviously belongs in a museum of modern art. Some people pay big money for those!

It's part of a weather seal

It was a seal of a sort.

Home Depot foam in a can to fill a hole?

Looks like it may be a piece of the factory goo at the mitered corners of the engine tin perimeter rubber gasket at the tin-engine shelf. AKA "bituminous rope caulk"

engine booger.

Was it visible/accessible only when on the lift ?

We were looking in the engine compartment.
It was even hard to see with the car on the lift. We couldn't tell what it was until it fell out.
It's harder than any rubber or caulk.

A protective cap on a live wire ? Like the ones you see on modern cars protecting/hiding the battery + side where wire meets terminal ?
(But then of course melted turning it into carbonlike hardness)

I saw this on TV on the infomercial with that guy Phil who cuts the boat in half then tapes it back together. It's a new product to improve compression and stop leaks on old engines. You can put it on the outside of the engine where there's a leak of any type.

Or you can put it in the intake to get sucked into the combustion chamber to seal rings. Once in the cylinder, it rummages around inside like a person chewing dentyne gum to clean your teeth. Putting it in the intake may take longer to get into the combustion chamber so the quick way is to remove a spark plug and insert it directly into the combustion chamber with a chopstick.

That's exactly what I did, worked great!

Where does it go?

In the trash.


I guess the bigger questions are: where did it come from and what was it supposed to do?

Yes, you are absolutely correct.
Although Spoke's answer was very close. The Dapo may have gotten the idea from watching an infomercial.

This is where we first saw it.
The purpose was even more nefarious than we first guessed.
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The camshaft thrust bearing is right behind this pocket
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To 'repair' a crack (and oil leak !) in the block due to a overtightened sump plate.

That's not the center stud. More likely the case was bolted up with the cam bearing out of position, but even that's hard to believe.
The visible crack is horizontal, oil comes out at a steady rate, along the center of the bearing saddle.
I measured another case. The saddle is 3/8" thick there.

Now the $5000 question. Can it be repaired satisfactorily without a full teardown?
Or should I just tell the new owner the engine is junk?

Just ask the owner if he has more of that magic black glue and move on...

Not really. The flange bearing is a tight fit into the camshaft and if the crank turns slightly while assembling the case halves it can cause the two cam bearings to overlap. I'm extremely diligent about this when I put case halves together and I've caught it trying to do this multiple times.

But if that's what happened, the case is trash. No cost effective fix. And nothing you can do without disassembly that would be reliable in the long run. Plus if it was the cam bearings, then those bearings are TOAST as well. Nothing about that says salvageable.

I've seen it all but that's a new one even to me.

I had a guy come in with a leaking bug engine , leaking right from the top of the case. Chipped out the devcon and yep... great big fork'in hole.
A PO had thrown a rod, fixed the case with devcon and put her back together.

What I meant is that it's hard to believe someone torqued down the case to the point of breakage in that location, not that the bearing could move and become overlapped.

I've already found another crankcase to work with.

Teardown is done.
Here's the crack from the inside.
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JB Weld





-Harry

It's yours for the cost of shipping if you feel like trying, Harry.

Cheap fix for a neglected engine kinda like exercise pants for a married woman.