Jonathon: 1 Piston: 0

I finally get the freaking piston out.

I've tried the following: Marvel Mystery Oil from the top and then exhaust and intake sides.  Nothing.  Soaked in PB Blaster.  Nada.  Naval Jelly.  No love.  Heat.  Nope.  Poured freon on the cylinder (Hey, what's that over there EPA?).  Still nothing.

Finally talked to Brad over at George's Imports here in KC.  He's been working on 96s since, well, they were the newest Saab.  He said after all of that, there was no way I was going to get it out with chemicals so I was just going to have to drill it.

Drilling aluminum is no big deal, I only needed to be careful not to score the walls of the cylinder. 

So, hole #1:

Then, holes around the circumference.  Note that none of them are anywhere near the cylinder walls.

Then, a solid whack with a hammer and the middle portion collapsed.

I spent the next hour chipping off pieces of piston through the intake and exhaust sides trying to get the piston to collapse.  I really got an appreciation for what it takes to destroy a piston during use.  You can see the pieces I chipped out from the intake.

I finally got a pretty good sized chunk of the piston itself out but the rings were NO joke.  Incredibly tough.  It took a fair amount of finesse to get that cut with screwing up with cylinder.

I used an old extension with a 21mm socket on it and began to really wail on the piston.  I smelled it before I saw it... that almost indescribable smell that metal dragging across rust makes.  I have to admit that I got pretty excited when I saw that it had started to move.  That little ring of brown around the edge of the cylinder is where the piston had frozen.

So, I started hammering the hell out of my makeshift punch.  I swung.  I hit.  I wailed.  I smacked my hand (probably not broken, but it's sore!).  I swung the hammer until I had had almost enough.  I looked and the piston had cleared both intake and exhaust.  Here's what it looked like from the bottom, almost ready to come out.  You can see how much of the piston I had to crack off.

Finally, with a pop the crankcase popped out.  If it weren't 11AM I would have had a beer.  Instead, I drank more coffee.  Here are shots of the inside of cylinder.  You can see how serious the rust was.

Here's some comparison.  That's #1 cylinder.  Pretty nice.

#2 piston has some minor scuffing.  I'm going to have the cylinders honed or resleeved as well as larger pistons but it's interesting to see where the wear patterns are.

Finally, here's all the horror and muck stuck to #3.

And a money shot of what is actually left of the piston.

The crank itself is in surprisingly good shape.  No rust whatsoever.  Three of the four bearings spin freely if not a little slowly.  The one between #1 and #2 is very gravelly and won't do a full revolution.  I'll be getting ready for freight soon and send it off for a rebuild.

I am glad to be done with that.  I was beginning to think that it may not be coming out and that I'd be looking for a new engine.  Still, I'm going to have to get the block to a machine shop and see if overboring will fix it or if I will have to have it resleeved.