Learned first hand not to suspect the head gaskets first..

jamesgangel

Registered User
I had recently purchased a 1992 SC auto and the day i got it it was puffing white steam out of the exhaust. My first thought was " oh the head gaskets " but the seller had them redone.. So i maybe thought they were installed wrong.. So i went upon tearing the engine down and noticed the intake manifold bolts were not very tight, further investigatiing showed the intake manifold gaskets were leaking from the coolant ports straight to the intake ports. So i took and chance and said " what the hell, lets replace these gaskets and see what happens. I bought the intake gasket set from felpro, all new hoses, belts, plugs, wires, thermostat, oil, antifreeze, etc. All cost me about $200. Everything was purchased at NAPA, not autozone or some other wholesale, which all parts are made in China, at NAPA everything is made right here in the USA. Got it toghether today, bled the coolant system of air ( one messy job :) ). And fired her up. Fired up on first crank, and pulled 20 hg of vacuum which i think is better than the 10-15 it had before. Let it warm up till the fan kicked on and not a puff of smoke or anything.

I wrote this just to show that do not always suspect the worse when diagnosing problems, ( like i used to :) ) go for the least expensive first. I was actually planning on rebuilding the engine, but let me tell ya i had a heck of a hard time just getting the intake, supercharger, intercooler, intercooler tubes, vacuum lines, all that put back on correctly. This car is very complex but well worth the time if you do it correctly. I also want to show that steam out the exhaust could be the intake gaskets not always the head gaskets. Well good luck all SC guys and I hope to get plenty of miles out of my recent fix.

Also if anyone has and questions or need advise just send me an email, i would be glad to help out..

James Gangel

jamesgangel@neo.rr.com
 
Thats really good news. I am glad you got it running right without having to pull the heads off it.

Now you did change the oil right? be sure to use one of those NAPA gold filters too. Made by WIX.
 
I just had that EXACT problem on my son's LX last week.

When I changed the head gaskets last year (which were, in fact, blown) I neglected to RETORQUE the intake bolts per the repair manual.

Tomorrow's first job is to yank the intake plenum and retorque them. ...and this is the LX. If I need to do my SC, that'll be a royal pain in the... well, you you know.

What are other builders/repairers doing? Are you retorquing?

Keith
 
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