well i think i have figured out how water is getting in my oil.........

i figure since there is no oil passages in the heads except for the returns that dump oil under the manifold the only way coolant is or can get though is the combustion chamer.... and it's not burning coolant so it has to be a craked block, or head correct??.... oh well time to pull the motor again i suppose.....

 

...or a leaking intake gasket, or leaking head gasket, or a leaking oil cooler, or a cracked intake, or a cracked TPI throttle body, or poor sealant on head bolts, etc.

A cylinder leakage test would probably be faster than tearing down the engine, and could reveal more. A pressure test of the cooling system may also be benficial.

 

i can eliminate the tb because i have the tb bypassed.....

the head gasket would leak into the combustion chambers and burn, so i know it's not getting through there.... intake is a pssiblility but i used a good anount of rtv at the ends and spray sealant on the intake gaskets themselves.....

and i'm pretty sure the head bolts sealed.......

i'm just going to pull the heads and i guess go from there....... i dont see how oil can mix with coolant when theres no oil passages in the heads....

 

The head gasket can easily leak water into the crankcase, yet seal combustion. There's no law that says that if they go bad they automatically exchange water and combustion.

I would also add to Vader's list, rocker studs; they go into water. On those, the intakes don't but the exhausts still do IIRC.

 

I beleive it is the intake gaskets. It wouldnt hurt to have used the beveled washers , on the 4 center bolts, Vander and I were talking about on another post. The way the stealth ram intake is made, I dont know if you are getting a good seal.

I would do some checking first, before you start tearing the heads off. Like I told you before, just pull the intake if you cant do the leak down or pressure test. You should be able to tell if the gaskets failed.

Let me know what you find out.

P.s. I still think it would have been a good idea to have the block sonic tested before you built it just for insurance.

 

Good point! Someone has to be alert here... I was asleep on that one.

As for the head gaskets, the coolant crossover passages at the ends can easily leak down into the oil drain holes. Same with the bottoms of the intake flanges - coolant can leak right down into the lifter valley, and is more prone to do that on milled heads. Were the deck/heads resurfaced without machining the intake?

 

the intake and heads are out of the box....

i'm going to pull the intake and computer stuff when it warms up to see whats going on.....

 

TB? I kow there're coolant passages in the TB, but how do they interact with oil?

 

did you hit water when you clearanced your block or thin it enough that it cracked? did you grout the lower 1" of the block to prevent this before you started?

 

nah...... i grinded it but not enough to cause problems....... some places only had .060 clearnce and thats with a rod that has cap screws for clearence, but again i will not rule it out........

i went out yesterday and felt where we seen an external coolant leak on the passenger head gasket.... i think this is where my problem is, but i just do not see how a leaky head gasket can get water into the crankcase without getting it into the combustion chamber, unless it's at the top of the block near where the intake seals....... this would show that the gasket was faulty all way around..........

its a gm composite too......

if the gasket was leaking it would have to go into the combutsion chamber... no two ways around it.....

what do you think ede??

 

What makes you think that? It's not true at all. If the stainless steel rings around the cylinders seal, then nothing will get in or out of them, no matter what happens to any of the composition parts. As I said above. Read them with an open mind, these 2 statements in your post contradict each other.

Sounds to me like you already know you have a head gasket issue, whereby it leaks coolant but does not exchange water & combustion. So it hardly matters what else about the gasket leaks, it leaks and needs to be repaired.

Pull the heads, use some quality head gaskets this time instead of stock ones, check stuff while it's apart of course. In particular, look closely at teh head bolts and the rocker studs for signs of leakage around them, and then look carefully at the block above the lifter bores, which is where they most often have cracks; look carefully at the head gaskets of course; if you don't find your leak there, look very closely at the places you did your clearance grinding.

 

i aint pulling this motor out just to check for cracks...... it is or it aint......... if it is then it comes out, if it's not then the new head gaskets will fix it........

after i get the new gaskets in and the oil changed i'm driving to a local repair shop and have a coolant system pressure check done... if it shows a leak then the motor comes out..........

as for the fire rings sealing if they did seal then how is oil going to get inside the block???? because if its leaking then the only place it can go is into the lifter valley up top.....

all the holes in the deck of a small block chevy are coolant...... if the fire rings sealed then logic tells ya its going to either go out the gasket or leak outside....... kinda like mine is...... i don't know if it's just me not wanting to admit my block might be cracked or not wanting it to be, but either way it's getting fixed or replaced because i'm doing some racing this summer in it......

 

You open the bottle and pour it in usually.

I didn't think your problem had anything to do with oil getting somewhere it didn't belong, I thought it was coolant getting into the crankcase. The fire rings have nothing to do with water leaking into the crankcase; all the water would have to do is seep past the gasket, and end up on the intake side of the block/head junction, which of course is the crankcase.

 

well trying to figure out the problem i went out and pulled a couple of spark plugs on the suspect side, and sure enough a few of them have coolant on them......... definite head gasket......