A few pictures for your information, and just to give you some idea what you can get away with regarding Piston Damage. My timing chain did not actually break it jumped a few teeth and bent all 8 Inlet Valves all of the Exhausts Valves were ok?
However there was more damage caused to the Pistons / Rings by the Vauxhall Main Dealer leaving the Bores full of water! after they removed the Cylinder Head :evil: Whilst we argued about who was going to pay for it for 8 weeks! Eventually Vauxhall offered me a 50% contribution to the cost of fitting a new engine (As the Dealers had said that mine was completely beyond repair) £1761.00 plus VAT which was obviously totally unacceptable. We subsequently towed the car out of the dealership with all the parts in the boot, (well most of them anyway) as I had decided to repair it myself but I managed to get Vauxhall to pay for the costs of stripping to diagnose the problem.
After reading most of the info in the forums regarding Valve & Piston Damage etc; I thought it sensible to remove the Pistons (As Vauxhall had also said they were all Knackered) to make sure that the Top Ring had not been trapped by the Valve to Piston contact impact. Suffice to say that nearly all the Piston Rings were seized in their grooves, but this had not been caused by the Valve impact, it was down to the water being left in the Bores by the dealer. After soaking them in Petrol for several hours I managed to free off all of the Piston Rings and remove them from the Pistons, clean out the ring grooves properly then refit them. A lot cheaper than £300.00 plus for a set of Pistons. Although all the Piston Crowns showed clear signs of Valve contact fortunately all the top rings rotated quite freely in their grooves after I had cleaned all the crap out.
So cutting a very long story short after a couple of days work (I am definitely getting Too Old for this Now!! but you never forget how to do it) and about £400.00 total cost in parts my dear little Vectra SRi 150 lives again sounding as sweet as a nut and using no oil 😃 . On close inspection I think I actually found why the chain had jumped teeth (albeit it did have the old style small oil jet) the Inlet Camshaft guide rail top bolt had sheared off in the Cylinder Head and obviously allowed the chain to flop about. All in all a pretty poor show at 51,300 miles and a full service history.
I hope this might be of help to any one in a similar situation, but it is well worth dropping the sump down and pushing the Pistons out to double check, just to be on the safe side.
Regards Bob C cheers..