83 Supra Beast !! 454 engine over heated, now ticking- Help!

Hi everyone!! Here's what I have going on.. I've owned my Supra Beast (454)for 14 years now, and have completely restored it twice.. Last fall my impeller failed and the engine got way to hot and now its 'ticking'.. Its definitely not knocking, so I'm hoping It can be delt with without pulling the engine.. Has anyone here delt with this problem before??I pulled the covers and the ticking seems to be coming only from #7.. Engine lost alot of power after the overheat. What am I to expect? Thanks for ANY information or experiences..
-Brian

Been there and done that unfortunately. When things heat up I found that I melted the valves (they stretched), warped and cracked the heads and ultimately destroyed the cylinder walls melting holes in the top of several pistons. The ticking is likely valve and lifter related. Start by checking the compression. Loss of power is probably due to the valves no longer seating. When you find the compression has failed you can pull the intake manifold and heads. Inspect the tops of the pistons and cylinder walls. if you are really lucky you can just service or replace the heads. I was able to salvage the block on mine but the heads and pistons were a lost cause. I have a closed cooling system and it took a while for me to find the cause of overheating and all the pieces of the water pump. One blade of the impeller had lodged in the heat exchanger and effectively blocked most of the tubes. I purchased a new much larger diameter heat exchanger so that an impeller blade could not block as many tubes if one came apart again. I was happy to do this as water temperatures are warm here in Arizona.

Thanks Foxstan! You're just the guy i was hoping to talk to. How many cylinders were damaged? was there any damage to your camshaft? and if so how did you know? did you send you head in for repair or did you have to replace?

I lost pretty much all the cylinders. The middle ones on each side took the brunt of the damage due to the exhaust valve placement adjacent to each other so it had the least jacket water cooling. Interesting is that the intake valves were the ones that failed. The mechanic describes them as sucking into the head. The ticking is probably lifter slap as the stretched valves no longer keep things in compression. The pistons were melting and the rings damaged the cylinder walls. The camshaft did not need replacing. It is in the core of the engine and does not get engine jacket cooling, just oil lubrication. The shop put it on V-Blocks and checked the lobes out. The heads on the second go around were not too bad. Valve seats were replaced, heads resurfaced as well as valve guides. The cylinders were bored oversize with new rings and pistons the engine was up and running. It was obvious after pulling the heads that the block had to come out.

Stan described a small block configuration...won't apply to a 454...his initial recommendation - a compression test - is your best "first step".

Not a lot of merit extrapolating from another overheat on specific damage that is likely...too many variables involved. if you are lucky, only one cylinder will have an issue needing attention. Until your get some compression numbers, no point in guessing...