Finally pulled the motor on my 89.

89SCK@t

Registered User
After 3 months with the tranny and rear end out, I pulled the motor. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had the charger off, and the assemblies off. took a total of 1 hr to disconnect hoses and misc connections.

Two pry bars and a cherry picker later, I had the motor sitting on a tire in front of my tool box. An impact gun with a 10mm, 13mm, and a 15mm later I pull the heads off.

There is coolant in 3 of the cylinders, but no visible path from where the coolant went into the combustion cambers...I am sending out the heads tomorrow to get checked.

Question is:

Am I looking at having some hairline cracks in the heads?



Kinda off topic here but, I noticed that one of the bolts from the crank pulley is, uhh, gone...as in, there are only three holding the pulley on to the harmonic balancer. good thing I caught it sooner:rolleyes:...

thanks,

Stephen
 
Look again. 99.9% says that the gaskets were leaking. Lots of people don't know what to look for.
 
I cant really be too upset about the headgaskets. 257K miles on the originals. I'll take a look tomorrow.
 
Don't get me wrong, heads can crack, but most often the resulting leaks are very small and don't show up as coolant in the cylinders. If they crack it's usually under the seats or else on the outside of the heads.
 
look carwfully at the passenger side rear 2 cylinders, thats where they usually fail. The gasket area is small between the cylinder and the water passage. Thats where it got me.
 
worst suspicion confirmed...the passenger head cracked, and the driver head warped.

post pics tonight.

anyone have a set of heads for me??:D
 
I actually have a set laying around here, let me know if you want them.

Im sure we can work something out.

Mike
 
In first pic you can faintly see the crack in the passenger head.

The second pic is of the driver head, mid cylinder (4?) valves are not seated evenly...I'm leaning toward it being warped...I could be wrong.

Third pic is of the missing bolt I was talking about in the crank...where did it go? I have no friggin clue..
 

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I heard that not removing head bolts in reverse sequence to installing and not loosening in steps can cause head warp or crackage as well.... and using an impact gun only makes it worse.

Frit
 
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