BlueBead
07-21-2004, 11:19 PM
Alright, here is the story;
Last week (thursday) I noticed a little bit of steam coming from under my hood, so I thought I'd check it when I got home.
So I'm coming up this hill on the highway near my house and I see a crap load of steam coming out from under the car :help: ; I pull over and the car stalls before it stops rolling. So I pop the hood and the oil deposits around my plugs are on fire! :burn: So I grab a jug of water from the back of the car and put out the flames at least, then I sit there and wait for it to cool down. After 30 min or so the damn thing still wont turn over, so I walk home (25 min in the hot sun in my work clothes=dressy) I go back ~4 hours later with a big thing of water and put it in. The car turns over but runs like a bag of shit, :dunno: so I get it home asap and park it in my driveway. At this point there is a huge cloud of steam coming out from under the hood. :mad:
The next day I go out and start it up and its still running like shit and I notice one of the coolant hoses is cracked (heater hose from cylinder head) right after the hose clamp. On closer inspection it turns out that the damn thing its degraded on the inside and should have been junked long ago. I cut it back and stick it on for now and start up the car. The next thing I hear is a bubbling burping noise from the rad and the coolant is pissing out the overflow bottle. I'm like oh crap and shut it down.
When I crack the rad cap open, the coolant is milky brown and oily;
HEAD GASKET!!! :burn:
So now I'm really pissed off at myself for not doing my maintenence properly, but those hoses looked ok from the outside.
Next thing is to get the car up, which takes me a little while to find the right shaped blocks for the rear tires since my driveway slopes down in. I drain the oil and coolant and settle in for the long haul. I took the valve cover off at this time, but it was a bit of a struggle because I had melted the gasket a bit and sealed it to both the head and the cover. It finally came off the head surface.
At this point I haven't done more than think about anything more complicated than doing my brakes and checking my valve clearances, so a head gasket is going to be a slow process while I think everything thru to prevent screwups.
Meanwhile I'm working at my day job, so I have to walk down to the bus (10-15 min walk) to get to work, which I really don't want to do, I want to be working on my car. I order my parts in, but then have to wait an extra day because I have to work the whole time the place is open (grrrr -weekends!).
So I decide to do a quick and dirty and leave as many hoses and lines attached as I can, which actually works quite well; I got the whole carb/intake manifold/ vacuum line assembly off the head without too much trouble other than those two damned nuts under the center of the manifold that go on the studs from the head. The exhaust was really easy except for the damned air suction tube, which I had to buy a pipe wrench to be able to get loose. I took top piece that the air suction tube threads into off as a unit by undoing four bolts, and this made things simpler.
I'm using a Haynes manual for this whole process, so I basically follow what it says and got everything apart until I got stuck on the crankshaft bolt. I had to wait most of a day (6hours wasted) for my roomate to get home from work to hold a screwdriver in against the ring gear teeth so I could break it loose. I tried it by myself and had no luck at all. This time was not completely wasted, since I used it to paint my valve cover with duplicolour metalcast in blue.
So once I got the crankshaft bolt off, things went pretty smooth. The drivebelts and timing belt were all straightforward and easy, and I finally got down to the cylinder head.
The cylinder head bolts were weird: some of them had tons of crap on them, and some were clean; I think that it depended on where the head gasket was crapped out. I ended up spending over an hour with a wirebrush and some WD-40 cleaning the threads. The book says to use a tap and die set, but I don't have one in metric (yet!). Once I got those off I spent a few minutes getting the head loosened up. When I first cracked it, I got a water/oil mix coming out thru the crack. I let this drain a bit and lifted off the head. The old head gasket was destroyed and there was more of this gunk mixed in the oil and water chambers. Since the diz and water outake were still on the end of the head, i put a peice of 2x8 board down on top of the block, turned the head over, and did my head cleaning there.
I used a mix of sandpaper, razorblades, and acetone to clean the head and block mating surfaces, which combined really well with lots of elbow grease. I even had my ex gf over and put her to work on getting the head cleaned up ...lmao :owned:
The old intake gasket was literally baked onto the cylinder head and took over an hour alone to clean off (mostly razor blades) The new gasket is a different type, and hopefully I won't have to do that again ( the old one was like a plastic) :dunno:
The exhaust gasket was nice and loose and I simply pulled it off when I removed the exhaust manifold.
Looking in the open cylinders (2&3) I check for scratches, which I had been worried about: Nada - I'm safe. This is really good news; I was hoping the bottom end would be looking good.
I checked the head for warpage with my feeler guages, and it was barely over spec, so I decided to let it ride. I think the alot of times the head is machined a little too soon, but then if I was charging by the hour I'd want to machine the head too....lmao :werd:
After cleaning all of the dust and stuff from the mating surfaces I installed the head gasket and put the head in place. Using my handy-dandy torque wrench I put the bolts in to specs and in sequence.
Now I just had to put it all back together- Easier said than done!
The manifolds went back on with new gaskets and without any problems except for those two damned nuts on the underside of the intake manifold (under inlets for cyls 2 &3). I was beginning to hate those two. :mad:
Now for the timing belt, which I fought with for over an hour long after dark before calling it a night. When daylight came it was a simple matter to put it on. Then all the other belts went back on and I got everything else connected. The valve cover looks like it belongs and gives my engine bay less of a bone stock impression.
Truth time: I start it up and it fires up smooth! :rockon:
A bunch of smoke from the exhaust, but I expected that after having to sop dirty oil/water mix out of the cylinders. I take my roomate and my buddy down to mcdicks for dinner since they both helped me out a bit, and apart from a few airbubbles from in the cooling system that needed to be worked out and the oil that was still burning off of the exhaust manifold (the valve cover gasket didn't seat properly first go.....) everything was golden. Now I'm going to run it a bit and then do a backyard rad flush and oil flush and go with synthetic oil. At this point I'm running completely water in the cooling system, so I want to get it out and get some coolant and Bars-leak in as soon as I can. Right after the coolant flush I'm putting on all new coolant hoses so I don't have any more problems. The heater hoses are supposed to be changed every two years, but these look like they are original.... damn- No wonder I got my ass stuck on the side of the road.
Last week (thursday) I noticed a little bit of steam coming from under my hood, so I thought I'd check it when I got home.
So I'm coming up this hill on the highway near my house and I see a crap load of steam coming out from under the car :help: ; I pull over and the car stalls before it stops rolling. So I pop the hood and the oil deposits around my plugs are on fire! :burn: So I grab a jug of water from the back of the car and put out the flames at least, then I sit there and wait for it to cool down. After 30 min or so the damn thing still wont turn over, so I walk home (25 min in the hot sun in my work clothes=dressy) I go back ~4 hours later with a big thing of water and put it in. The car turns over but runs like a bag of shit, :dunno: so I get it home asap and park it in my driveway. At this point there is a huge cloud of steam coming out from under the hood. :mad:
The next day I go out and start it up and its still running like shit and I notice one of the coolant hoses is cracked (heater hose from cylinder head) right after the hose clamp. On closer inspection it turns out that the damn thing its degraded on the inside and should have been junked long ago. I cut it back and stick it on for now and start up the car. The next thing I hear is a bubbling burping noise from the rad and the coolant is pissing out the overflow bottle. I'm like oh crap and shut it down.
When I crack the rad cap open, the coolant is milky brown and oily;
HEAD GASKET!!! :burn:
So now I'm really pissed off at myself for not doing my maintenence properly, but those hoses looked ok from the outside.
Next thing is to get the car up, which takes me a little while to find the right shaped blocks for the rear tires since my driveway slopes down in. I drain the oil and coolant and settle in for the long haul. I took the valve cover off at this time, but it was a bit of a struggle because I had melted the gasket a bit and sealed it to both the head and the cover. It finally came off the head surface.
At this point I haven't done more than think about anything more complicated than doing my brakes and checking my valve clearances, so a head gasket is going to be a slow process while I think everything thru to prevent screwups.
Meanwhile I'm working at my day job, so I have to walk down to the bus (10-15 min walk) to get to work, which I really don't want to do, I want to be working on my car. I order my parts in, but then have to wait an extra day because I have to work the whole time the place is open (grrrr -weekends!).
So I decide to do a quick and dirty and leave as many hoses and lines attached as I can, which actually works quite well; I got the whole carb/intake manifold/ vacuum line assembly off the head without too much trouble other than those two damned nuts under the center of the manifold that go on the studs from the head. The exhaust was really easy except for the damned air suction tube, which I had to buy a pipe wrench to be able to get loose. I took top piece that the air suction tube threads into off as a unit by undoing four bolts, and this made things simpler.
I'm using a Haynes manual for this whole process, so I basically follow what it says and got everything apart until I got stuck on the crankshaft bolt. I had to wait most of a day (6hours wasted) for my roomate to get home from work to hold a screwdriver in against the ring gear teeth so I could break it loose. I tried it by myself and had no luck at all. This time was not completely wasted, since I used it to paint my valve cover with duplicolour metalcast in blue.
So once I got the crankshaft bolt off, things went pretty smooth. The drivebelts and timing belt were all straightforward and easy, and I finally got down to the cylinder head.
The cylinder head bolts were weird: some of them had tons of crap on them, and some were clean; I think that it depended on where the head gasket was crapped out. I ended up spending over an hour with a wirebrush and some WD-40 cleaning the threads. The book says to use a tap and die set, but I don't have one in metric (yet!). Once I got those off I spent a few minutes getting the head loosened up. When I first cracked it, I got a water/oil mix coming out thru the crack. I let this drain a bit and lifted off the head. The old head gasket was destroyed and there was more of this gunk mixed in the oil and water chambers. Since the diz and water outake were still on the end of the head, i put a peice of 2x8 board down on top of the block, turned the head over, and did my head cleaning there.
I used a mix of sandpaper, razorblades, and acetone to clean the head and block mating surfaces, which combined really well with lots of elbow grease. I even had my ex gf over and put her to work on getting the head cleaned up ...lmao :owned:
The old intake gasket was literally baked onto the cylinder head and took over an hour alone to clean off (mostly razor blades) The new gasket is a different type, and hopefully I won't have to do that again ( the old one was like a plastic) :dunno:
The exhaust gasket was nice and loose and I simply pulled it off when I removed the exhaust manifold.
Looking in the open cylinders (2&3) I check for scratches, which I had been worried about: Nada - I'm safe. This is really good news; I was hoping the bottom end would be looking good.
I checked the head for warpage with my feeler guages, and it was barely over spec, so I decided to let it ride. I think the alot of times the head is machined a little too soon, but then if I was charging by the hour I'd want to machine the head too....lmao :werd:
After cleaning all of the dust and stuff from the mating surfaces I installed the head gasket and put the head in place. Using my handy-dandy torque wrench I put the bolts in to specs and in sequence.
Now I just had to put it all back together- Easier said than done!
The manifolds went back on with new gaskets and without any problems except for those two damned nuts on the underside of the intake manifold (under inlets for cyls 2 &3). I was beginning to hate those two. :mad:
Now for the timing belt, which I fought with for over an hour long after dark before calling it a night. When daylight came it was a simple matter to put it on. Then all the other belts went back on and I got everything else connected. The valve cover looks like it belongs and gives my engine bay less of a bone stock impression.
Truth time: I start it up and it fires up smooth! :rockon:
A bunch of smoke from the exhaust, but I expected that after having to sop dirty oil/water mix out of the cylinders. I take my roomate and my buddy down to mcdicks for dinner since they both helped me out a bit, and apart from a few airbubbles from in the cooling system that needed to be worked out and the oil that was still burning off of the exhaust manifold (the valve cover gasket didn't seat properly first go.....) everything was golden. Now I'm going to run it a bit and then do a backyard rad flush and oil flush and go with synthetic oil. At this point I'm running completely water in the cooling system, so I want to get it out and get some coolant and Bars-leak in as soon as I can. Right after the coolant flush I'm putting on all new coolant hoses so I don't have any more problems. The heater hoses are supposed to be changed every two years, but these look like they are original.... damn- No wonder I got my ass stuck on the side of the road.