i bought my ek with a knock pulled the pan assuming it was rod or main noise, they all look brand new, i pulled the head and found this, it looks to me that there was a bolt hitting in cylinder 3 the head looks just the same and this is just one side of the piston the other side looks the same also. i it even possible for a bolt to get into the combustion chamber....

 

its a dropped valve, not a bolt.

 

and its not a dropped valve the valves are perfectly fine its got all four and the valve bowl looks just the same.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by EJ1_Sleeper &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">its a dropped valve, not a bolt.</TD></TR></TABLE>
Not quite sure about this one, if you look closely, you can see a bolt pattern in the piston where it was hitting. Usually when you drop a valve, you have big gashes and the entire piston is F***** up.
The bolt could have hit enough times to break it into little pieces and exit the engine via exhaust.
To the OP, when you took off the head, how did the combustion camber look like? Can you post pictures of the underside of the head?
*EDIT* to the OP, yes you can drop a small bolt into the combustion chamber if someone was changing out the spark plugs and happen to have dropped a bolt into the hole.

 

the head looks exactly the same with the bolt pattern and the small pits, it looks like something a bolt in my opinion bounced around smashed on the compression stroke hit the head and piston making th erod knock/raddle sound and then it went out the exhaust, oh and the plug looks fine.... the previous owner changed them...

 

bump wtf is it haha

 

HALP!?!?!?!

 

That is most likely an adaptor for a 1 way valve used to do compression tests... they break pretty easily since they are thin aluminum pieces, i've seen it before, not on a honda though, and i've also accidentally done that myself on a CAT diesel engine...

 

bump any other ideas

 

could it have been the spark plug?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by crxhoutx &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">could it have been the spark plug?</TD></TR></TABLE>

best thing i could think of. how the eff would a bolt get in there unless youve had it apart recently.

 

Like i said before, some one most likely tried to do a compression test and stripped the 1 way valve, making it drop into the cyllinder, that would explain the threaded imprints on the cylinder, also notice the straight edged notches, most likely from after it flattened the edge part of it hit....

 

souns like a good assumption i dont think its too likely for a bolt to just get in the but some shadetree mechanic could have definately messed up a compression test.