Our nightmare trip/blown Jasper Engine

cricco wrote:
I heard a distinct “Pop”, followed by a puff of white smoke, and grinding metal, like someone tossed a handful of washers into a cylinder. The engine will no longer turn over. I’m certain it’s a catastrophic failure.

That is not the sound of a spun bearing. It would start with knocking and would run that way for quite a while. Eventually it would become a death screech - very loud sound when the bearing material has worn away and you've got metal on metal. If you continue to ignore that, it will eventually seize. All of this could or would be accompanied by loss of power, potential loss of oil and possibly overheating. If none of that happened it sounds like a sudden, catastrophic failure of a piston. That could be for a number of reasons - a foreign object got into the cylinder, valve dropped down, wristpin gave out. My original engine failed this way. It was tough to do a post mortem on the pile of remains but it appears as if the piston had split and come apart - probably from overheating. I found when I put the new engine in that the original radiator was plugged with sediment.

Anyway you're looking at a new engine. It's not likely that one can be rebuilt if it failed in such a manner. If you can't hold Jasper's feet to the fire then your best bet cost-wise might be to find a small, independent shop to install a used engine.