you wonder sometimes...you get somebody elses project, and as you go threw it, you just find some of the craziest stuff.

last night i finally got down to bare block. i felt lucky, i only have to drill two drain plugs and the ground bolt out. for those who know, i lost oil pressure in my 396, and was looking to rebuild a budget engine, but as i get farther and farther into this engine, i'm finding odd stuff.

i've already told about the grenaded lifter, and the piece of strapping floating in the #5 piston. well last night as i finally pulled the crank and cam, i keep hearing this noise, my soon to be s-i-l is standing there with a perplexed look on his face, we hear it again, everytime i bump the engine stand we hear it. i have news papers under the engine stand to catch any risidual oil i come across. well we start looking for the noise, it looks to be sand, i thought at first it was metal shavings come from the block, but it's brown and very fine. so i'm not sure if it's sand, or if at some point, some bonehead was media blasting something on the car, the engine came from without properly covering the engine, but there was several handfulls of it.

i'm really going to have to make sure this block is extra clean before i start the rebuild....

may have come from the water jackets. not unusual to find some in factory engines, but if it's still there after a rebuild it doesn't say much for the builder.