Well y'all, you asked for it, you got it. I took it apart. No trace of any of the dirt in the cylider head, though it was heavily covered in oil, and the plug was very fouled. The cylinder is scored heavily, but not nearly as bad as I expected. In fact, that seems to be the theme for the entire dissassembly process. The piston is scored VERY badly- it is very rough, you will be able to see in the pics below. When at TDC the piston is "tilted" slightly to one side, and the ends of the strokes were very difficult to turn the crankshaft any more. After some finnageling, I managed to unscrew the big end from the crankshaft. Unbelievably, the bearing surface itself isn't too bad. Sure, it is definitely scored, running your finger over it feels like drawing over fine sandpaper. The knock was indeed in the big end bearing, there was a good .5-1.0 mm of play in the bearing. But infact, the most damaged component was the camshaft. The lobes are, well... Worn. Very very worn, very rough surface, scoured and simply awful. The pointed ends of the lobes were sheared and worn flat. The camshaft bearing surfaces were worn, but not as bad as they could be. Piston rings intact. All in all, it survived pretty dang well for what it went through, and I have no doubt if I reassembled it (not likely) it would run, and run well enough, (except for the heavy smoking, knocking etc) Pictures are pretty big in size, so it will be about 20 minutes before they are uploaded. Stay tuned! Oh and looking down at the crankpin, you can see clumps of dirt in oil. (I cleaned it out best I could with a liberal spraying of dish soap and the hose)
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