Head gasket repaired....so i thought

Giro

Registered User
so i finally get my tbird put back together, fire her up after double and triple checking everything according to the ford service manual and everything seems fine. i give her a little bit of throttle after idling for 10 minutes, and bring her up to 2000 RPMs, i hear a couple of soft pops, like its misfiring/backfiring, and here comes an onslaught of white smoke out the tailpipes again. when i got on the throttle, it didnt drop right away like it should have, it stayed at 2000 RPMS until i shut her off. any ideas or thoughts, or questions on what might have happened, im at my wits end right now, after spending all that time and money on her. thanks.
 
That sucks. Could one of the cylinder heads be cracked? Was it one side or both sides that popped?
 
I took the heads to a machine shop to deck and check them, they got resurfaced, and was told there were no cracks. Both sides were smoking. Initially, both sides were blown, now seems that both are again.
 
At first it did...it blew off some white smoke while i had it idling, after 5 minutes, it stopped, i shut her off, drained the oil, and did another oil change (to flush out residual coolant), fill her up with more oil, started her, idled fine for 5 more minutes, and thats when i gave her a little throttle. Rpms went up to 2000 and stayed there, and i could hear popping sounds indicating a misfire.

Also, i heard a high pitched whistle coming from the passenger side, near throttle body, and also, i just now noticed on the coil pack, #2 "hole" has some corrosion, and so does the spark plug wire that connects into said "hole".
 
where

in the bay area, and yes, i got the chevy kit from ARP.


in the bay area .....;)

a lot of smoke it happen to me when i did my 89 too and it took more then 15 min of run to get ride of all the stuff that was in the pipes ....;)
 
I suspect the intake gasket because one of the hardest things to do is lift the intake up and set it on the top of the engine without disturbing any of the gaskets.....
 
Ok update...i started her up again, no more smoke, but it still has a slight misfire at idle, and gets worse with throttle. I put new motorcraft spark plugs, didnt change the wires. Tomorrow im going to doube check and make sure the wires are fully pressed into the plugs.
 
I'm hoping its not the intake gaskets, I used a couple drops of rtv to hold them in place while I set down the intake manifold...tomorrow I will check and see if she stopped burning the white smoke for good, clean off the corrosion on the coil and plug wire, and make sure the wires are properly inserted into the spark plugs. Hopefully that fixes the misfire.

Becerrassc, I noticed you live in san lorenzo, I actually grew up there, and now live in dublin.
 
The intake manifold usually needs re-torqued after a few warm-up cycles. I bet all the smoke was from coolant in the exhaust system. It takes awhile for the exhaust to warm up enough to boil the coolant off.

It's nerve racking...just keep your cool. :cool:
 
Yeh mine blew white smoke for 15 minutes after the head gasket replacement. Nerve racking. Also You might think of changing the 02 sensors as the anti freeze might have messed them up. Another reason the car might not be running smooth yet.

Ken
 
Also You might think of changing the 02 sensors as the anti freeze might have messed them up.

Good point. All three times I've had to do headgaskets on SC's, the O2's needed replaced either immediately or very shortly thereafter. The steam/water hitting them will ruin them.
 
Check your plug wires against this chart. Some of the repair manuals have the wrong plug wire location shown on the coil pack. This chart has the correct plug wire to coil pack order.

PlugandWireLayout.jpg


David
 
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