Story:

So I recently picked up an engine out a friends car. While removing his header about 10 hard mints fell out of the exhaust. The motor had not been run in a couple weeks so the placement of these was fairly recent. Anyways after pulling the motor I look into the exhaust ports to see more mints pilled up enough to clog the hole port. After removing those I took a flashlight and looked throught the ports into the housings. Each housing had about two or three more mints in them. At the time my bright idea was to turn over the motor and grab them as the rotor pushed them towards the ports. But of course the rotors dont sit on a straight shaft but a journal. This caused them to smash and spreadall over the faces of the rotor littering the housings with thousands of tiny chunks of mints. I believe I had managed to remove all of it from the faces of the rotor and vaccum some of it out, but am stuck with a fraction of the tiny pieces still scattered in the housings. I have used ATF and a bunch of wd40 to try and get it out of there.

Question:
Is all of this really worth it and no matter how much I can get out, when it runs the few bits will score the housings? The motors got 30k on it and I plan on pouring gasoline in it tommorow as my last effort to get this stuff out. The mints are pretty hard until smashed then it turns to gum but the bits of the shell that are left essentially feel like sand

 

I think we all just want to know HTF this happened??!?!?!?

 

get as much out as you can, don't worry about the rest.

the engine will eject them with about a minute of cranking. you may have to clean off the plugs a few times though.

will mints harm the engine? i'd hope not. a few redline runs will burn off anything that remained.

 

Sweet motor man!

Fire it up!

 

Is that a fresh engine?

 

In mint condition too!

 

+1. How did a handful of mints get inside the engine? Was the car trick-or-treatin on halloween?

 

LOL @ replies.

 

I guess a small rodent carried it up a big straight piped 3 inch exhaust to header.... and was storing it for the winter. but thanks guys I needed a laugh

 

Mice seems like a possibility. A while back my midpipe was full of dog food. lol

 

hey mouse has good taste. what can we say and no not for the mints

 

i bet the exhaust will have minty fresh breath

 

It seems that someone mentos to lock up your engine..

 

Mints... Lol

 

add COKE..the damn things should Shoot out of there!!..haha!

 

 

idea!
STEP 1: put shitty spark plugs in

STEP 2: push a couple mints onto each face of each rotor

STEP 3: FUEL WITH DIET COKE!!!

ok that was lame but all jokes aside it happened to me with dog food... I just turned it by hand like you did. As for whats left have you tried carb cleaner or brake cleaner... or would that be to dry.

 

lol that crack up

 

haha, wow either a rat did it, or someone pretty cleaver does not like your friend! hahaha, i am curious how it will smell when you get it running

 

LOL

I was going to post the first comment on this, but I wanted to be informative. Now that there are so many hilarious comments, that I totally expected. I just wanted to ask... How the **** and why the **** would a rodent do this? Seriously...?

(Funny diagnosis question...) Did your friend have any pissed off ex girlfriends??

 

You had a turbo you wouldn't have mints in the motor, just saying, lol

 

Fill the engine with something thall will dissolve the sugar. Let it sit for a while. It should blow out the delicious delicious candy without doing any damage.

 

get me their damn numbers so i can stay the **** away from them. haha.

 

we finally found a good use for a catalytic converter!

 

It looks kind of pinkish in his hand. I think it's fruit Mentos, which are still delicious. Maybe even more so than the mint kind.

And that is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen come out of an engine before.