Blew a headgasket, need some advice (kinda long)

kid vishus

Registered User
Hey folks, I need some advice. I spent a couple of hours pouring over old threads gathering as much info as I can, but am still stumped on a few things. Let me start off saying, I am not a novice, but definitely not a pro mechanic either. I am 40 yrs old and have been shade tree wrenching for 20+ yrs now and have built more than one drag car that has run low 10s-high 9's with an NA smallblock. I also worked for a couple of years in a GM shop that specialized in hi performace late model cars. So I have a decent idea of how things work, but good lord there is a lot of ~stuff~ crammed into this engine bay.
Anyways, enough background....

A month ago or so on the way home from work cruising at a blistering 53 mph, the car started running rough, the temp gauge shot to ~H~, and the heater started blowing cold air. When I pulled over the exhaust had that well known sickly sweet smell to it along with massive amounts of steam. Given the car (all stock '93 SC, auto trans) has 180+K miles on it and is all original, I'm not terribly surprised a head gasket let go. I had it towed home, and after it sat for a few days, I fired it up (missed a little but started and ran better than expected) and pulled it under I do not have a garage so I have to wait for nice (non raining or excessively windy days) to work on the car, so I havent gotten very far so far. I normally would have paid someone to do this job, but I am betting it wouldnt be cheap, and quite honestly I just cant afford that kind of expense right now so I have decided to tackle it on my own. That may have been a mistake. :(

First, does the PS pulley HAVE to come off? I dont have a puller and hate walking in the door of our local autozone as they never fail to disappoint me no matter how low I have set my expectations. I got the nut off the stud that was partially hidden behind it, and have removed all the other bolts I can see, but the bracket still will not budge even the least amount.

So far I have removed the air box, the radiator overflow tank, the AC bracket, alternator, IC, upper tube that goes to the IC, the lower is loose except for the small bolt from the bottom, belts are off, tensioners are off, both radiator hoses, most electrical plug-ins are disconnected, battery out, etc. Needless to say, I have A LOT of work to do yet.

I have more questions, but those can wait till later.

Thanks in advance.
 
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Hopefully you drained teh oil and well s spraying some wd40 or something into the spark plug holes..Any water in thier can screw things up a bit. And you do ned a puller//Autozone generally has it!up t
 
i got mine off with out removing the pulley, I used a good snap on wobbly socket and some creative extensions and I got the nut off the stud back there and the other bolt also.

after that the front just comes right off. then you can remove the power steering lines and set that chunk of motor off to the side.
 
Once you get the front brackets off and the super charger off you're in the home stretch. The puller tool is a good one to keep in the tool drawer and I beleive is about 20-30 bucks at Advanced Auto or you could just do the loaner tool to remove and reinstall.

I'd say you're next big hurdle will be removing the exhaust manifold bolts on the collectors. Thats always a fun one the first time.

You're in the right place to ask questions on the job though, most of us on here have tackled the job multiple times.

Best of luck.

-Tim
 
I managed to get the super charger off today. Tomorrow I should be able to at a minimum get the intake off and the exhaust manifolds and start to take the valve train apart. If things go smoothly (LMAO), I'll get the heads off. I was surprised at how little oil was in the inlet tubes. They had a slight coating, but there wasnt any 'pooling" of oil at the bottom bend. There was actually more oil by the throttle body than in the inlet tubes.

Here are my plans for after it's apart; I want to take my die grinder to the manifolds and try to improve them at least little bit, since I have it apart I am going to replace my AC compressor since it stopped working this past summer, I want to replace the SC pulley with a 5% OD pulley, and if I get ambitious I will pull the valves out of the heads and do a little grinding on them before taking them to the shop for a freshening.
And that brings me to my next question; since I still have manifolds, will the 5% OD pulley hurt anything?
 
And that brings me to my next question; since I still have manifolds, will the 5% OD pulley hurt anything?

It’s not so much the manifolds as the piping, cats, muffler & resonators that are restrictive but porting cant hurt
Get some ARP studs (you can’t re-use the old head bolts anyway)
Unless your going to get the heads resurfaced (And the block decked for that matter) just use Fel-pro head gaskets not the MLS type (be careful cleaning them up aluminum is soft).
Wile you have the heads off you may want to do a little porting on the intake side
What are your plans for the car?
5% OD will add more heat into the aircharge consider getting a intercooler fan.
 
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There was actually more oil by the throttle body than in the inlet tubes.

This could be a sign of excessive blow-by or it may be as simple as a new PVC valve (Make sure you get the SC specific PVC valve). It may shine some light to give a compression test just to see where your at. You will see some low readings on the cylinders where the head gaskets blew but if everything is low with 180K its probably time for at least a top end rebuild or slap it together and try (HA HA) to keep your foot out of it.
 
all good stuff posted here

also besides the bolts holding the bracketry on the head, their is also the support plate that's fastened to the water pump studs with nuts.

be sure you get the heads resurfaced and make sure the shop that does it gets rid of all electrolysis, that's a known problem with aluminum heads and iron blocks that plaques our cars.

as far as surfacing the deck of the block, that's always a good idea when using MLS gaskets but if its not feasible it may not be necessary, fel-pro has a coating they put on their new MLS gaskets, that couples with some copper spray should do the job. I've put MLS gaskets on all my supercoupes and never touched the deck on any of them, never had a problem.

also the head studs for the Chevy 2.8 is almost identical to ours if you want to save a few bucks

and another thing, when the head gaskets let loose, its always a good idea to let the engine cool and drain the water, the next day or so go back out and crank her up for a minute or two to get any water out of the combustion chamber, water sitting in there will almost instantly corrode the cylinder walls, seriously you can almost sit and watch it start oxidizing.
 
its always a good idea to let the engine cool and drain the water, the next day or so go back out and crank her up for a minute or two to get any water out of the combustion chamber, water sitting in there will almost instantly corrode the cylinder walls, seriously you can almost sit and watch it start oxidizing.

It's never.....ever a good idea to run the motor with no coolant. :confused:
 
What are your plans for the car?

The car is my daily driver (50 miles roundtrip for work every day.) It gets waaaaayyyy better mile-age and is more comfortable to drive than my '93 Lightning. I'm not trying to make a racer out of it, but I was thinking since I have it down this far it might be nice to give it a little more 'pep' when I put it back together. Maybe I should ditch the idea of the 5% pulley and limit it to just doing a little grinding on the manifolds and maybe the heads instead.

I forgot to add I am also going to get some new tensioner pulleys for it. One of them is already fairly noisy, and if I'm going to replace one, I'm going to replace them all.
I'm also going to replace the PVC valve. The car had 112k on it when I bought it and I know it hasnt had a new one in that amount of time so it's probably due. The car doesnt use any oil, but it does leak a little when I park it 'nose up'. I havent crawled under there to see where it's coming from, but my guess would be the rear main seal.

Thanks guys.


It's not the best pic of the car, but it was the first one I found this morning and I am too lazy to look for a better one. :p

misc026.jpg
 
I thought I was going to get the heads off today, but with 2 bolts left on the first head, my cheap 15mm 1/2" drive socket decided it had enough and broke.
 
I thought I was going to get the heads off today, but with 2 bolts left on the first head, my cheap 15mm 1/2" drive socket decided it had enough and broke.

It's those darn bolts in the middle of the head isn't it?

Get a good 6 point socket.

Good looking car. Glad to see you tackling this. You will learn that it is a puzzle going back together too.
 
Buy a good breaker bar or borrow one if you know someone who could lend it out. Having the right tools will save you a lot of time.

Did you happen to pic that SC up off Eric Zeh in the Richmond VA area? Looks just like his old SC w/ Black Leather interior.

-Tim
 
Yep, it was the two in the middle on the bottom. I had a 6 pt socket, but it was a cheap chinese socket and it didnt take kindly to the amount of torque I was putting on the breaker bar trying to get them loose (my air hose wont reach clear out to where I am working on it so everything is being done the old fashioned way.) I'll see if I can find an impact socket tomorrow and buy one of those instead. It should hold up better the strain.
I dont have 'diddly' for metric tools, and what I do have is generally crap.

Thanks for the compliment. I bought the car from a member here a little over 5 yrs ago. Its been a good car over all, but has had a few issues thru the years, but none like this.

Putting it back together actually concerns me more than taking it apart. :eek:
 
You sir have a very clean SC then - can't fool my trained SC eye. ;):p:D

-Tim

Thank you. It was really nice when we bought it and that was one of the reasons why we got this car. However, 50k miles later, it's probably not as clean as you remember. I had to do some thinking, and have concluded the car probably has somewhere around 165K miles on it now and not the 180K I originally stated. See, the odometer quit working at 133K a little over 2 yrs ago, and I average around 14k miles a year.

Still, the interior is really clean, and the body is still straight. I did have one little incident with a deer, but the body shop I took it too straightened the factory fender instead of putting a replacement on it.

They are calling for rain/snow on tuesday, so hopefully I can get the heads off tomorrow after work and purchasing a much better 15mm socket. :)
 
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