Headgasket Finally Went

[Dirk37]

For a while I've been having issues with coolant blasting out of the overflow container after doing a pull in boost. I had a bad radiator and several other coolant leaks so I just thought it was overheating and spitting the coolant out, but it still happened after I fixed everything. I did a compression test today, and surprise, one cylinder had 70 psi of compression. The spark plug was also much harder to remove from that cylinder. There was a bit of oil in the coolant, and I noticed oil seeping from the gasket on the back of the block. The exhaust is absolutely covered in nastyness from it.

New gaskets are one the way from Shosource so hopefully I can get this done soon and go back to boosting.

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[SHOdded]

Best of luck! How do you plan to decontaminate the system? Do you think there is a weak spot developing on bank 2 also?

 

[Dirk37]

Thanks! I'm not sure how I'm going to clean everything out yet. It doesn't look like there's very much oil in it, so I'm probably just going to give it a good rinsing. I'm not sure if Bank 2 is on the verge of going, but I'm going to do both gaskets while its apart. One of my good friends works at a Ford dealership and says everyone who just does one gasket regrets it a few months later when the second one blows.

 

[Toolman]

Stay boosted my friends!

 

[yamahaSHO]

What's the tune like? There is really no way you should be blowing a head gasket at 8 PSI.

 

[Dirk37]

Tunes fine, running 11.5:1 AFR and pulled a few degrees of timing. The knock sensor doesn't pull anything at all while driving.

I suspect its because I was ******** and ran water in the car for around 2 years, which ruined the water pump and heater core. It was only a matter of time before something important failed. Also since I had a bunch of leaks its overheated at least once. Basically I just completely ****** up the cooling system being ******** which is probably why it blew.

 

[Dirk37]

It smokes pretty good haha

 

[Dirk37]

So I got it apart today and there was no obvious holes in the headgasket. The cylinder with 70 psi is the closest one in first picture, and far right in second picture. There was a lot of gunk but that was it. Also checked the heads with a straight edge and they were perfectly flat. Any tips on inspecting for cracks?

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[SHOdded]

Maybe you need ARP studs for the heads to help hold boost? It helps on the Gen 4, might be the solution here as well, if no other flaws are found.

 

[Dirk37]

Heads got done today, no cracks! Me and some of the techs at my work took a better look at the gaskets today and saw where it was leaking. There were a couple pretty clear lines from the cylinder to the coolant passages. I'll get pictures tomorrow when I'm putting it all back together.

I don't think I need ARP studs since I'm only running about 7 psi. Many others have run that much boost or more with stock engines. I'm pretty confident my problem was running water in the cooling system for a long time and having it get hot a couple times. Not to mention the car has almost 170k miles of hard driving on it.

 

[sperold]

My guess would be that "getting hot a few times" is the cause of the issue.
I am no authority, but in hot water heating systems, the water is years old, but looses its corrosion ability and becomes "dank". This may not be exactly the same, but I think there is some similarity.

 

[Dirk37]

Went to pick up my heads from the machine shop today and they mixed them up with another customer's heads... Apparently they thought they were Honda heads since because of the cams in them. The customer is bringing them back tomorrow so I should finally be able to get them and get this thing back together.

 

[SHOdded]

Honda heads? SMH.

 

[Dirk37]

Finally got the heads and got them installed! Also found my crank sensor was missing a screw lol. Got a second screw installed and loctited both of them so I hopefully won't lose them again.

 

[SHOdded]

Can't wait for pics of the newly installed heads, hint hint

 

[Dirk37]

Here's the freshly clean heads! And below is the point where the gasket failed

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[SHOdded]

Wow, shiny! Whoops, Tom might claim them, hide!

 

[Dirk37]

Got it all back together and have been driving it around. Blew off an intake pipe because I forgot to tighten a clamp but got that fixed this morning. Runs better than ever now! Might be time for a top speed run finally

 

[broke1]

I can't believe you guys would do all the work and not use at least ARP head bolts.....

I understand $$$ but ARP's are fairly cheap....another thing I've noticed in years of working on cars,Allen head head bolts=the cheapest bolts the manufacturer could find. Not anything I'd trust with boost.

Stud clamping force>bolt clamping force

 

[Dirk37]

They don't have ARP's for these engines. I was on a time crunch since I was using borrowed shop space so I didn't have time to wait for them to make them either. The stock ones will be fine at the power level I'm running.

Also the clamping force is the same between bolts and studs, only difference with studs is the torquing force is more accurate since only the nut on the top is being twisted instead of the entire bolt.

Another downside to studs is they would make the rear head very difficult or impossible to remove with the engine in the car. The rear head is very close to the firewall and would probably hit it with studs there.