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I had an issue 2 months ago on the dyno, ending up chipping a chunk of piston #7 into pieces as well as coolant in the oil.
Fast forward to today, I installed a new GM piston and rings, all GM gaskets, and I started the car, it ran and idled fine, I let it run about 10 minutes in my driveway to fully warm up. I turned it off, went out into town and a baseball game for a few hours. When I got home, I started the car to put it back in the garage and within seconds white smoke was coming out the drivers exhaust pipe. Also, Coolant is again in the new oil.
What failed? Did the new headgasket fail when the car warmed up the first time? The head was cleaned and surfaced at a local shop, the block was cleaned with brakeclean, microfiber cloth and a lot of scrubbing and lastly, I used new ARP bolts.
I will begin pulling that drivers side head again on monday. What can I do different this time? I have another GM head gasket (MLS) and I have those white Roloc discs on order to clean with this time as well.
Anything else it could be that would be consuming coolant into the combustion as well as the oil (dipstick)?
You can pretty much bet its coming from your #7 cylinder that you broke a piston. If it was me, I would just go ahead and pull the head off and look at the head gasket, but also start looking for cracks. If you don't see any, then get some crack detecting dye. Sometimes they are hard to see with the naked eye. You spray a red dye penetrate over the surface then a white powdery spray. Any cracks will bleed the red thru the white.
The cylinder walls are pretty thin on these motors.
When I replaced the piston, I noticed no issues with the cylinder wall at all. I will go back and double check of course.
What is weird is that when I originally broke the motor, I drove it home 20 miles thinking it was a valvetrain tick and had no coolant burn in the motor. It only started after the head gasket job, so in a way that makes me feel a little relieved that hopefully its just a headgasket, cleanliness issue, not a cracked cylinder. I will check regardless.
That was my very first thought (Cracked cylinder wall)
You can remove all the plugs, pressurize the cooling system and see what cylinder pukes out coolant. OR put a boar-scope in the cylinder and look for coolant.
Good luck my friend.
I had a Patriot Performance head spring a leak where they ported it. They hit a casting flaw and it finally leaked after a year.
Had to pressurize the coolant system to get it to leak and be able to see it.
If it's a cracked cylinder, and if the crack is near the bottom of the bore, it will be tough to diagnose with a leakdown test unless you put the piston at BDC.
Often times you will see evidence on the plug. It could have an issue on the other side of the engine?
I agree with the posts above about diagnosing your coolant loss.
"I think I am going for a stock rebuild and have the tune looked over. My tuner said the afr was perfect. The timing showed no detonation but the max retard was moved from -10 to -3 degrees.
He also mentioned that it appears my duty cycle was at 100% and my MAF was maxed as well."
I hope you don't have to replace the block. A lot of time and money already. I'm very concerned about the quote above from your previous thread. What injectors are you using? Do not repair it and run the same setup and tune or it will happen again. From the info you provided, the engine leaned out under boost, detonated and failed. Check out Rocco's thread "my supercharger install". He had to switch to speed density.
500+ rwhp would need at least 42lb injectors to support it. Make sure you have the fuel volume and pressure as well.
my engine is all stock with the vortec supercharger kit, including the included vortech injectors and all else. it dynoed 470rwhp with just the vortech kit and vortech base tune. I do have plans that once the engine was running to have the tune checked again.
That was before I encountered this coolant issue.
I got the head removed today, took a little over 2 hours this time, much faster.
Nothing looks out of the ordinary, #7 had coolant on the plug. The other plugs 1,3,5 looks like it may have had coolant on it as well. I saw spots of wetness. Anyways, I removed the head and nothing looks odd, the cylinders look fine. I included pictures as well. Only last thing I can think of is in the last pic, is a pic of the block, did I not clean it well enough? The last picture is what it looked like after I took off my new headgasket.
Just food for thought.
Did you blow out the head bolt holes with air before you put it together ? I typically tape a straw to the nozzle and put it in the hole. If there was water in a hole it won't torque right as I am sure you know. That would sure make the head gasket go out right away.
Just food for thought.
Did you blow out the head bolt holes with air before you put it together ? I typically tape a straw to the nozzle and put it in the hole. If there was water in a hole it won't torque right as I am sure you know. That would sure make the head gasket go out right away.
I did take that precaution, I blew out the old bolt holes, in fact, they sat for about 2 weeks as well before I got around to putting the head back on. Also, I dremeled a cut into the side of an old head bolt and threaded it in and out to get all the junk out. They were definitely cleaned out well.
I feel for you, I went thru that on a 383 Stroker with about 4000 miles on it. Pulled the head 3 times before I found the crack in the cylinder. I hope that's not your problem. Was that a Fel Pro head gasket?
Every gasket is GM. and like I said, I found what seemed every plug had evidence of coolant on it so the chance of a cracked cylinder is unlikely. Also keep in mind when I first damaged the engine, I drove home with no coolant consumption issues, only after I put it back together. I will lower each cylinder and take a look anyways and post back results!
2nd bolt from the right, bottom row looks to have remnants from the old gasket around it? Were the original gaskets graphite or MLS?
MLS don't leave much mess.
All that coolant in #7 surely got there when you removed the head.
Did you pull plugs before removing the head?
To clean the decks, I use a very sharp wood chisel very carefully. Or a razor blade scraper. Followed by a scotchbrite pad and brake clean. Hopefully you didn't use any sort of spinning tool on a drill etc. You can actually remove alum that way.
Got a photo of the head surface? And also one of the exh ports? I'd expect the cyl burning coolant to either be dark or clean.
Old gasket was MLS, still could be old remnant but it was smooth to the touch around every orifice. All the coolant in the pics was from removing the heads. I did remove the plugs before removing the head, and they all had spots of coolant on them, so did the bottoms of the valves on the head. I can take a photo of the head but it doesnt look washed from the coolant, after all the engine only idled for 10 minutes. cylinder #7 looks very clean on the head side as well but thats more from the engine shop doing the valve seat repair.
08-17-2014, 05:36 AM
new headgasket, still eating coolant.
