98 Sable - Overheating - Solution Found

I posted a while back about my overheating '98 Sable -- the engine would operate at a normal temperature on the highway for about 20 or 25 miles, then the temperature would suddenly climb. It did this with a new water pump, new radiator, new thermostat, several flushes, replacement of the reservoir cap, pulling of the freeze plugs to check for sludge buildup, etc...

It had passed the compression test on the head gaskets, but since the problem obviously was nowhere else, they went ahead and pulled the heads. One head was warped by 7/1000. The other was warped by 9/1000.

They sent them to a machine shop to be redressed.

$838 later, my overheating problem is fixed, I have better engine performance (more power), it runs even better than it had before when it was running normally, which I thought was great, and that nagging clattering problem I'd had for 50,000 miles is also fixed. It had been clattering a little even burning premium. It sounded absolutely horrible when burning regular. Now I'm burning regular gasoline and there is absolutely no clattering at all.

So I'm very pleased and with the amount of gas I burn (about 230 gallons a month) I'll now be saving about $69 a month on gas. :-D

Reply to
Damaeus
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So, what your saying is that the head gaskets were really leaking due to the heads being out of parallel?

Did they find any cracks in the heads? Did they straighten them or just deck them?

Bob

Reply to
Bob Urz

In news:alt.autos.ford, Bob Urz posted on Sat, 31 Jul

2004 00:33:55 -0500:

I'm saying the heads were warped -- one by 7/1000 and the other by 9/1000. If that's the same thing as what you're describing, then yes.

No.

He used a term, but I forgot what he said. I think my dad called it "redressing" when he owned a garage in the 70's and early 80's, but this mechanic used a different term which meant basically the same thing. Whatever happened to them took place at a machine shop.

Reply to
Damaeus

surface

Reply to
Scott M

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