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Engine components that are not part of theads finally self destructed with my help. Apparantly, a hole burned through on the #4 piston , just on the side , next to the cylinder wall , then the exhaust gases burned and wore the ring groove thus causing rings to break under uneven groove, down below, cracks and pieces are left of the piston skirts. I guess I had #4 knocking two weeks ago when this happened , car was hot from Los Angeles and the last big hill to San Diego , I floored the car to 85 MPH all the way up the hill while using cheap regular ARCO gas, I did not notice anything until I got to a light and the engine felt shaky. At home I removed the plugs and and found #4 plug had the outer electrode knocked into the center conductor (note: , when removing plugs that seem to feel that they might strip after a turn or less , spray liquid wrench or WD-40 etc then wait , plugs will be easy to pull out). It seems that the debris or knocking hit the plug. I thought that was it, the miss went away as soon I replaced the plug , but I noticed alot of blow by, I thought it was sticky rings so I changed the oil and did the cleasing thing twice. The car ran and drove again as fast as I wanted but the blowby stayed and got worse and worse until last week when the first indication that something was seriuosly wrong, I could not see any cars behind me there was a mysterious fog together with alot of honking following me and I remembered absolutly no smoke out of my exhaust before . I looked behind a little closer and found that it was my car enveloping the freeway behind me , I guess I was James Bond for a few minutes till I got to my brother's house in San Diego, but I did lose those enemy honking cars, enviromentalists. The heads in my car are still good and that supports the cooling of well designed heads, the cylinders are clean with no scratches but the #4 piston seemed to have started to desolve. Car will be fixed this week , new cylinders, pistons, rings and maybe new bigger valve heads will be installed. Never found the advantage to TOTAL SEAL RINGS so I will not use them anymore. Was it the cheap gas and or the driving ???? any thoughts ? LEON MARTINEZ SAN DIEGO AND TIJUANA ------------------------------------------------------------------- List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list | mailto:gregm@vwtype3.org