almost ready for hg's

89tird

89tird

Registered User
ok im taking the advice all you guys have been giving me about the problems my car has and i think im going to do the headgasket project drove today and got home , saw smoke from dipstick , oil is brand new from yesterday but under oil cap i saw milky residue , yesterday i saw some oil in the intake , and today alot of bubbles in the overflow and if i squeeze the upper rad hose , alot of bubbles in the overflow , the only thing im not seeing is smoke from the exhaust !!

ok im going to do the coolant pressure test tomorrow at a shop , cant do it at home dont have compressed air here, i just wanna make sure the hg's are done..

what i need is p/n's and links to where i could get my hg's from didnt see any on ebay , what tools do you normally need , i know torque wrench and stuff but anything special ?

and any advice from guys who have done the job ... thanks
 
just did the check , took rad cap off , ran car coolant started flowing left to right normally no foaming! ??
 
milky oil + bubbles almost certian a bad HG.

If you squeeze your pipe and you hear bubbling in your overflow, you have a bad rad cap.

Oil in the intake is normal. It comes up from the valve cover breather (unless you see ALOT of oil and i guess that would only happen if you tried putting 10qts in or something)

-dz
 
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Tools....

The problem areas I always run into are the bolts/nuts on the back of the heads and the exhaust manifold to cat nuts. Get a 1/2" drive 15mm and braker bar for the head bolts.
Danny
 
You will need a tool to pull the Power steering pulley of the pump.
If your a weekend mechanic, then I suggest the following. Get a stack of baggies and put your hardware in them.
Mark the baggies with a sharpie pen.
Get your digital camera and take pics is sequence.
Make notes as you go along
tag all connecrtors and hoses.
Get some PB Blaster to soak difficult exhaust hardware.
Put new motor mounts in while its apart.
This is a good time to put on new plug wires.
Get some teflon gaskets for your Intercooler tubes.
 
thanks for the replies guys ill get some baggies from work , the pwr steering tool can i rent it from somebody ?

i just took the car to a few shops to do the coolant pressure test and none of them have the equipment , also i cant find the pressure tester anywhere and none of my buddies have it, any other ways i could check it without the pressure tester , car was running great today.
 
dude just do your head gaskets. u have all the signs of them.

unless you'd like to see if u can ruin ur main bearings from running coolant in the oil. then u'll be rebuilding the whole engine ;)

U DO NOT NEED TO PULL THE POWER STEERING PULLEY OFF. just taKe the whole bracket off and disconnect the p/s line, hose and connector.
 
i know man !! but the heads were reman not too long ago , they look new !! i would think the guy did the hg's, my guess would be my intake manifold has a leak somewhere but i wanna make sure with the test , im not smoking from my exhaust !

im not scared of doing the job or anything and im a mechanic and i love doing all this kind of stuff its just time consuming and i dont want to work twice is pointless !!
 
It could be that the intake wasn't torqued properly.
If I remember correctly, some of the manuals had a light torque spec
which was incorrect. You can also get a intake leak if you don't put
RTV around the water ports on the gasket (both sides of gasket)

I have found that these gaskets like to be torqued, then let sit over night and go back and torque again at final torque setting(again)

If you do the head gaskets, do yourself a favor and put in ARP head bolts, and a set of solid motor mounts.

There are plenty of good threads, and other guys who have felt the joy of doing the HG's onn these motors---so jump in and join the HG experiance.
Once you do this job you can wear your shop rag in your back pocket with pride!
 
speedwagen said:
It could be that the intake wasn't torqued properly.
If I remember correctly, some of the manuals had a light torque spec
which was incorrect. You can also get a intake leak if you don't put
RTV around the water ports on the gasket (both sides of gasket)

I have found that these gaskets like to be torqued, then let sit over night and go back and torque again at final torque setting(again)

If you do the head gaskets, do yourself a favor and put in ARP head bolts, and a set of solid motor mounts.

There are plenty of good threads, and other guys who have felt the joy of doing the HG's onn these motors---so jump in and join the HG experiance.
Once you do this job you can wear your shop rag in your back pocket with pride!
Click to expand...

If the intake manifold is not torqued correctly I can see how you might get coolant leakage into the combustion chamber and maybe in the oil - but how would you get combustion gas bubbles in the coolant overflow tank? I would think the head gasket would need to be leaking to allow this to happen.
 
David Neibert said:
Easy way to determine if HGs are leaking is by doing a compression test and inspecting each of the spark plugs.

David
Click to expand...

If the engine is running smoothly at idle and under full power wouldn't this indicate that the compression is good and the plugs are not fouled? My 89 T-Bird runs strong but I'm getting internal coolant consumption and some gas bubbles in the coolant overflow tank. My guess is that I have a combusion gas leak into the coolant at the head gasket but it is probably not bad enough to impact the compression yet. Also, is there any way to tell if you are burning coolant by inspecting the plugs?
 
thats how my head gasket thing started ,the overflow tank would steam after the car had been warmed up good .no signs of water in the oil ,but i would have to add every few days.

the car never showed it was hot at least not with the stock temp gauge ,and the car ran pretty good.

but one day i jumped on it a bit getting on to the freeway and notice a slight power loss after a gear change -got off the throttle looked in the mirror and had that big white clould all of a sudden following me.

scanned the gauges temp / oil looked good ,pulled over right away and shut it off ,the magic cloud engulfed me ,and it's smell was anti-freeze ,i knew what had happen ,checked the oil -for water/anti-freeze ,there was none- that was kinda cool.

i had been in denial for about 3 mo. ,because i was'nt to thrilled about doing the HG's and it was winter ,very cold and i had no garage.

head gasket had blown on the rear cyl ,water jacket and had broke the the sealing ring in the head gasket

but now that it's back together and running even better ,im a happy camper

cheers
 
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