I suffered that type of failure on my 72 Vega. By the time I realized there was a problem, the block was already warping. The net effect was that the cyl walls went out of round. Pistons just can't go up and down when that happens. The engine just slowed to a halt, still trying to make power till it stalled.
Different scenario, somewhat. The Vega engine was amazingly badly engineered, with an aluminum block (
without liners -- the pistons ran directly on the aluminum!) and astonishingly a cast iron cylinder head. These engines were notorious for head gasket failures (no surprise there) and quite often the results were as you experienced, with severe engine block damage.
tanstaafl.
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