I am glad to hear you are getting some resolution to the problem. Reading your experience helped me and I think others as well. As with all things, what any engine can do is unpredictable. Unless you know all the variables, which we never do, you can't really predict when/where you will have problems. Thanks for sharing your experience.
Do you have any history on the engine? Not the old "it was rebuilt 10K ago but no paperwork" garbage, but real paperwork that documents everything. Curious how long since an overhaul, miles, .....
So again, and not having any living experience with a Detroit. And equally and obviously we'll never know what caused the piston to break.... How common is it to have an injector come unglued and drop parts into a cylinder? While ether sounds plausible, running sweet for 500 miles and suddenly going Kaboom makes a guy think something more catastrophic happened.
There was definitely fuel in the oil. I don't care what they try to say. I watched it go from 2 quarts down to 2 quarts over in an hour. It blotted the rag like water and smelled like diesel.
Someone else can figure out how much went out the tailpipe.After doing all the calculations .25 gallons of fuel an hour was the smoke that was coming out the exhuast.