Hey guys, been a little bit since I've been on here since I'm trying to get my motor apart to replace what I'm guessing is head gaskets. I was driving the car home from dropping my son off and the car lost drivability and dumped tons of steam out the exhuast. Got home and noticed on the floor of the garage that it had aparently already started to spray a bit of coolant out the pipes before I even left the house, although I'm not sure which one. I'm pretty far in disassembling the motor to replace them, so I thought I'd ask you guys for any suggestions of anything else to look for. I almost have the drivers side head off, just need to remove the head bolts. When I removed the valve cover I seen a lot of milky residue on the inside of the valve cover, but nothing in the head or rockers. When I pulled the #7 plug coolant drained from the hole, and #5 was pretty wet. I still have to remove the exhaust from the pass side, and valve cover, but everything else on the top of the motor is removed.
Can anyone tell me an "easy" way to see if this head is cracked? Or will I have to send it to the local shop to have them check it? I really hope that it is just a busted head gasket, but I wondered what you guys thought.
thanks

 

So far I've found both head gaskets damaged after this episode. When I pulled the passenger side head I finally went and bought myself a valve spring compressor so that I could take the heads apart and take a good look at everything. And I'm very glad that I did because I found that every single exhuast valve was pitted real bad and I was't sure if they would clean up. I debated on whether or not to have them reground and finally decided to do so. I had all that done today and started to put them back together. I started with the passenger side head and so far all the valves seated well in the head with the slap-check. The only one that was kind of iffy was the #6 exhuast but I think it'll be fine. Tomorrow when I go back home I'll work on putting the driver's side head back together and clean what I can off the block in preparation of putting the engine back together. I might take some scotch-brite to the #7 cylinder where there is some pitting and see how much I can clean up from the discoloration that is also in that cylinder.

Unless anyone tells me otherwise I'm going to use some engine flush on this motor to try to clean out the loose particles and any remnants of the coolant. Then I will change the oil again in a couple hundred miles to be sure that every bit of coolant is gone.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by mos68x

Can anyone tell me an "easy" way to see if this head is cracked?

You can Zyglo it.

It’s a UV fluorescing penetrate.

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