454 Chewed Up and Spit Out a Burnt Rag!

[savatreatabvr]

On a previous post I described how I screwed up by making a major rookie mistake, here's the story plus an update! I pulled my Edelbrock 1407 off my truck to do some maintenance, I stuffed the intake manifold with pieces of a T-shirt so nothing could fall into the engine like dirt, washers, nuts whatever. A few hours later I pulled the rags out of the manifold, bolted on the newly rebuilt 1407 and fired up the ol 454. Well to my surprise the ol 454 started knocking, smoking and barely ran. I thought I dropped a washer or something down the intake because I've never seen an engine do the things this one was doing so I shut it off thinking I blew the engine and started calling around for a replacement 454. Then I started thinking if it was a washer bouncing around in the cylinder the plug would probably be damaged so I pulled all the plugs and they were fine so I fired it back up and all hell broke loose but this time it was knocking, smoking and now blowing fire out the 3" tail pipe, I thought the engine was toast so I figured it toast it's going out in a big way so I floored it about 5 times and BLAM, a smoldering piece of a cotton T-shirt shot out the tailpipe and landed about 6' feet from the truck! LOL, I'M NOT JOKING! As soon as it exited the tailpipe the 454 smoothed out and ran great! Is it obvious what happened now? I thought I pulled out all the pieces of T-shirt but I accidentally left one inside the intake and it got sucked into the cylinder, chewed up and spit out the tailpipe! Unfreakingbelievable! Here are the pics for your entertainment!





This piece is the same size as the above pic, a men's large T-shirt sleeve!


"UPDATE" I've put 15,000 miles on the ol 454 since my major rookie mistake with no ill effects, if anything it probably runs better than before, lol! Go figure!