I suppose it's time to come clean about my recent engine
issues.Here's the short version:
After getting the heads rebuilt, ported, and decked, then
cleaned, balanced, bored and honed the block with new
pistons and bearings, I had a bunch of issues. 1000 miles... The most baffling is a reoccurring problem I've been having
with water mixing into the oil pan. It started when I had the
heads rebuilt. I had all new valve, seals, it was decked and
ported. When reassembling, I used a stock headgasket. Due to
a few other problems, I decided to pull it apart again. When I took it apart, I noticed that some of the head bolts
weren't as tight as the others, despite definitely using a
torque wrench and following the procedure. I also found a
milky residue near the oil pump area in the pan and noticed
that the oil was watery. So I had the block redone with new pistons. I stupidly did not
have them mangnaflux the block to check for cracks. After
getting everything back together with a kometic head gasket,
I ended up having to take it apart again due to an issue with
the valves not sealing properly. Upon disassembly, there again
was water in the oil and a milky residue again. Bummer. All the
head bolts were tight this time around. I took the heads back and had them pressure tested,
apparently they checked out ok. I just checked the block with
a straight edge and feeler gauges and it checks within spec,
less than .004 variation. Provided that the head is also
straight, this only leaves with me three possible causes. 1) The block is cracked
2) The head is cracked as the place that did the pressure
testing screwed up
3) For whatever reason, both stock and a kometic head
gasket failed. My question for the community is, what are my options for
nailing down what the problem is? I'm considering building a rig that I can use to pressure test
the coolant channels in the block without heads on it. A large
metal plate to serve as the heads, and some rubber hose and
adapters to pressure the rest. Has anyone tried something like
this before?
Alex ![]() SRC="http://www.photodump.org/stored18/sig_pic_spyhuntert
tnj.jpg">
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