Hi guys,

I was hoping for some help here. I'm getting a coolant leak off cylinder #2. I have headman headers, I'm not sure if it's the gasket or the bolt? Don't want to think it's the head gasket, the car is not overheating, compression is at 145 which is good. What could it be? Do I just seal the bolt and maybe put some new header gaskets?

Thanks

 

I'm going to guess you have a hole in a coolant line/hose/ cracked diverter valve above the headers and its dripping down or spraying the area around the header.
Could also be any number of things leaking down on the area. May need a psi tester to find it fast and easy.

 

Thanks

It's not coming from the diverter valve or the heater core hoses. It's coming from the headers. I found something related to the bolts that came with the headers being an inch long compared to the stock ones 3/4 of an inch. I may have puncture the head causing a leak. They suggest using sealant silicone on the bolts. I really hope that's what it is..

 

The header bolt holes are plenty deep enough to handle the 1" bolt. I use 1" to 1" 1/4 long header bolts on all my engines. However, there could be some coreshift or something in the head and it did blow out or rust through the hole.
I'd pull your bolt out, measure the depth of the hole you have and see if coolant runs out of the hole.

 

Thanks, yeah I'll do that. The first leak happened after the first run in the fwy, car has been sitting for years. It leaked a lot so I thought it was the head gasket, but the engine never overheated. I waited a bit and drove the car home and it didn't leak again, tdy I drove it again around the block and it leaked some coming from cylinder 2...headers and gaskets are still new, I bought some seal-4-good gaskets, hopefully that helps.

 

I wouldn't bother with measure or any of that. Not even look at it. Sounds too much like work to me.

Just pull the bolts, one at a time, put some high-temp RTV on the threads, and put em back in. Stop when you find the one that leeeeeks. If none do, well, it's not the header bolts.

Could be one of the outer head bolts. In fact I'd suspect that's more likely anyway. EVERY ONE of the head bolts goes into coolant; and if whoever built the motor didn't put sealer on their threads, or worse, used RTV on them, you need to pull EVERY ONE back out, all 34, one at a time, and put some kind of APPROPRIATE sealer on those. Which would be, the Loctite/Permatex (same company, different printing on the package) "high temp automotive thread sealer with Teflon".

 

Thanks,

This is great information, I'll do that.