Turns out everyone was right. There was air in the coolant system because the head gasket is blown and so I was loosing coolant. I tried purging any air bubbles from the radiator, there definitely was air in it. While I was letting it idle I noticed a large amount of steam coming out of the tailpipe. I'm pretty sure it was steam, there were water drops on the ground behind the exhaust and it was white.
So now that I'm almost positive that it's the head gasket, where do I find information about replacing the head gasket. I am fairly technically inclined, but I don't have much more than hand tools and I don't have a garage. Where can I find info about the "slipped" method?
Sounds like pretty classic symptoms. If that steam had a sweet smell, it pretty much confirms it. Beware, however, that you might have a cracked cylinder head also. It might also be warped.
You need the factory shop manual for the car before taking something like this on yourself. You also need torque wrenches to make sure you put the fasteners back in at the correct torque. You should probably also take the opportunity to change the timing belt at minimum while you're at it.
I think you might be referring to something I've seen referred to as 'slip and slide'--the pros use this to save time on a routine head gasket change. Basically, they loosen the cylinder head -- leaving as many components still mounted as possible -- lift it up, remove the old gasket, slide the replacement in, and bolt it all back together.
I'm not a pro (although I have some training), and I've only got one head gasket change under my belt, but I'd be leery, if I were you, about trying to take a shortcut like this. As I understand it, slip and slide doesn't give you much opportunity to inspect the condition of the head, or of the cylinder block deck, for warpage. On a 2.2L, the heads are also sometimes prone to cracking, and you're not going to see that if you don't completely remove the cylinder head from the engine compartment and inspect it carefully.
You might get by with a slip and slide job, you might not. Feeling lucky?
To say nothing of other things like cleaning the head gasket mating surfaces. Plus there's a good chance that residual water in the cooling system can dump into a cylinder and if there's enough of it in there when you restart the car you will hydrolock the cylinder and bend the crank.
To me such a procedure sounds like the ultimate sleaze job. If you were doing it on your own vehicle and thus going to have to live with the results then fine. But otherwise, head gaskets with few exceptions don't just fail for no reason. If you replace the gasket without determining and correcting the original problem then the new head gasket is going to fail again.
Consider for a moment that you are just exchanging one set of problems for another.
What is the most common reason for auto head gaskets to fail? Cooling system failure followed by the driver not just stopping the engine right then, but instead continuing to drive it, thus overheating the engine. Or a leak that dumps most of the coolant which then causes an overheat condition. That is what burns gaskets and warps heads. Bypassing the gasket for oil and water will not stop this from happening. Your still going to get failed gaskets. But now, instead of the driver noticing a massive cooling leak which causes various temperature shenanigans that tip them off there's a problem, they notice nothing except perhaps a small decrease in engine power. So by the time that they notice that the head is leaking combustion gasses through the gasket, if there's an aluminum head on it, the region with the leak has almost certainly melted the head enough so that it has to be resurfaced.
Ansolutely not. The only thing this would help is once the leak starts, you don't get water in the oil so the main bearings don't get wrecked.
You don't need perfect conditions for this kind of a seal. Flanged gas lines seal metal-to-metal just as high pressures at far less surface area than this.
And do you explain this procedure to all your customers? And do you also tell them that since your not looking at the heads, just assuming that they are not cracked or warped and are strong enough for the problem to not recur, that if it does recur in the next 50K miles that your going to redo the job for free the right way? (except for the cost of milling or replacing the head, of course) plus replace any main bearings that got wrecked because the second time the owner let it go a lot longer?
If your customers are under the impression that your pulling the head ALL THE WAY OFF and looking closely at everything, but your doing a slip and slide, then your sleaze. Simple as that. If however you are carefully explaining the pros and cons of doing it either way - cheaper cost and the risk of a possible do-over vs more expensive cost but little to no risk of a do-over since you can inspect the head - that is one thing. But my experience is that mechanics that dream up these time savers rarely do this. Instead they charge full price and pocket the savings, and hope the customer sells the vehicle before whatever bandaid they put on comes off.
I don't have "customers". I just work on things for people I know and that's it. So does THAT make me SLEAZE?! If I do this as a $$$$ saver for friends/family you're calling ME a sleaze?! I think you need to get off your righteous high horse for just a moment here Ted before you sling mud at me. I haven't kicked the shovel out of your hands so don't kick it out of mine. When I do stuff like this kind of work it's because the people who come to me know 1. I'll do my best for them. 2. I'll save them alot of $$$$ they don't have in the first place MANY times doing the work for next to nothing.
Being as I was a flat rate line technician in a Chrysler Plymouth dealership during the hay-day of the 2.2 and 2.5 when head gaskets were a -many per day- event, this is news to me (published and documented). The only position Chrysler ever took WRT combustion chamber leaks was to state that minor cracking of the cylinder head in the area of the valve seats was considered normal and that cylinder head replacement was deemed to be not necessary just because some minor cracking was visible.
If you have a legitimate document or a reference number to a TSB from Chrysler regarding this slip and slide method as being an approved procedure, I'd love to see it.
AFAIK the slip and slide is merely a short cut method with very good risk of a come-back (failure).
On the other hand, I worked next to a tech for years who started wrenching in a C-P dealership in 1954 and knew every legitimate short-cut there was, and I never saw him do a slip and slide on a
2.2/2.5, I know this to be fact because I was the one who always helped him drop the cylinder head back into place when he did a head gasket and vice versa.
As I already posted and as is perfectly obvious to everyone else in the group, AS LONG AS whomever your doing the work for KNOWS WHAT YOUR DOING and knows the pros and cons of doing it this way vs doing it the right way, and approves of you doing it this way, then fine.
Yes, if you are NOT being open and honest that what you are doing is not the best way to do it. If you are telling your friends and family that there is no difference between doing this trick and doing it the right way, then yes that is being dishonest, and sleazy.
No. But doing work for anyone, even a friend who isn't paying you a lot, and not being honest about what you are doing it is what makes you a sleazeball.
I notice in your self-righteous indignation here that you are neatly sidestepping the question of whether you were honest with any of your friends about what you were doing. Why are you ignoring this point, it is the heart of the issue?
As I said, this is a sleazeJOB. There are sometimes times and places for sleazejobs. For example, you have a non-functional car that you want to use in a demolition derby. Or you have a non-functional car that your going to get running and hand over to your 16 year old son to learn to drive on. Doing a sleazy job in this kind of situation doesen't make you a sleazeball. I'm also quite sure also that the cars that we see smashed up in the movies are painted up in a pretty sleazy manner as well.
But, what makes you a sleazeball is IF you choose to use a sleazy method of fixing something, and you pass it off as the right way to do things. Espically to friends and family, that's really unbelievable. And on top of it, you KNOW that what your doing isn't kosher, you admitted it's a shortcut, and you don't even have the bad excuse that you didn't know the right way to do it.
Now, one other thing I'll mention too, you keep saying this procedure is documented. Well fine - despite that Neil already posted saying that he didn't think it was, I'll take your word for it. But - it's STILL A SLEAZEJOB.
I don't care if it's documented by the Pope hisself, the disadvantages of not doing an inspection on the mating surfaces and head itself are obvious to anyone. It wouldn't be the first time that a factory documented some sleazy method of fixing something. Seems to me I recall one of the automakers has such a piss-poor engine design that their documented way of "fixing" coolant leaks is to pour stop-leak into the radiator!!
Fine - next time you feel the need to post some sleazy shortcut then make darn sure that you are honest that it's a sleazy shortcut. Your original post on the slip and slide method completely ignored the downside that you aren't inspecting the head or gasket mating surfaces. Your in effect telling the OP that your procedure is as good as taking the head all the way off when in fact it isn't, and putting the responsibility on his shoulders for figuring out the pros and cons and making an informed decision. Yet, the OP obviously doesen't have the experience to make an informed decision or he wouldn't be posting here asking you for help!!
Not now, since he has the benefit of our discussion on this issue in the newsgroup, he can certainly make sure to have written on the work order that the shop MUST contact him once they have the head off so he can inspect the head himself. If the shop ignores this they risk a lawsuit in a small claims court. In any case, my guess is any reputable shop would be more than happy to have him come down and inspect the job once they have the engine apart, so if in the event the head is toasted they aren't having to try and convince him over the phone that they have to get a new head.
I think the reason they don't put the water lines going horizontal is the same reason they don't mill the entire block out of a single piece of metal eliminating the head component entirely, its just to expensive. I mean I'm no engineer or anything and I bet even if they did put the water lines horizontal they would still have a removable head simply for maintenance reasons.
There are many reasons engineers design things the way they do and I don't pretend to be able to do a better job. Factors like cost, practicality, and even office politics prevent engineers from building things the absolute best way they can. Everything is a compromise. On average, head gaskets do last quite a while, so I would say the engineers do a good job for the most part. Would you rather pay 100,000 for your car and not have it ever break or pay for a head gasket every 100k miles or so?
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.