Hi Bruce ,
Swapped to my laptop and the pics are much sharper .
From the pics and what your related , i can`t see anything that is saying the block is cracked .
Although there is no set way of things ..... the norm would be to find the piston tops and combustion chambers clean alloy looking .
When coolant enters it seems to leave a redish tinge on mostly the exhaust valves but also discolours the inlet .
Once in the air a few days they will begin to show rust on valves and gasket metal .
The norm would also be that it has been loosing coolant at an increasing rate over an extended time and at the end it would be letting excessive liquid out the exhaust on first start up after having cooled to cold .
At this stage is when the excessive pressurising of the coolant system occurs .
The head gasket itself shows signs of failure but there would normally be tells on the block deck and or the cylinder head face .
There is a possibilty that the reason they are not found is because you found it before it was able to mark either surface .
All this sounds i hope reasonable but my problem is that as i said i`m looking at pictures that don`t always tell the truth .
I`d suggest you rotate the engine by hand till the faulty piston with the bits off is as low in the cylinder as you can get it have a good look and feel of the bore ............. if you can see or feel any scallops marks voids ECT cause by broken rings or the like then the engine will need to come out and the repair will be major .
If you find the bore to be good then i`d suggest you take the gaskets to someone that knows what they`re doing and ask their thoughs on the gaskets , without saying anything about cracked blocks .
If the gaskets are as they seem from the pics the answer should be they are no good .
The single piston can be replaced .
The other thing against a cracked block is the kilometers it done the norm seems to be between 70 and 120 though there are always exceptions .
Sorry i can`t be of more specific help and using so many words .
Cheers

