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Head Gasket in a bottle, Part deux

Here we go again. This one's probably going to be more tricky.

Some of you may remember I did the HG in a bottle trick on an '89 GL coupe. Five thousand miles and it still appears to be holding. This one's going to be a little trickier...

The victim this time is a '97 Legacy L wagon, 335,000 on the body and ~125,000 on the engine and transmission. The problem this time is the leak is on the exhaust side of things, letting exhaust gas into the cooling system.

When I called 'Tech Support' at Bar's last time, she told me to look for orange deposits on the spark plugs. About the nearest I got to that was what looked like rust on both plugs on the passenger's side cylinders. Not really sure, I removed plug #1, then plug #3, then plug #2, then plug #4, letting the car 'idle' (if you can call it that with a plug missing) for

5~7 minutes according to the instructions on the bottle. Since I pulled the contact off one of the plug wires trying to remove it (Hey, I grabbed the boot!), and since the car has to cool before the next step, off to AutoZone for some NGKs and a set of Duracrap wires.

Fresh plugs and wires installed, step 2: get the car up to operating temp and run for 15 minutes. Car ran nice and smooth for a while, then stumbled a bit. Hey! The air filter from an '89 GL 1.8 fits the airbox! Running nice and smooth again, I just shut the motor down, and now have to wait for it to cool before the final step, which is running the engine at 1,500 RiPpeMs for another 15 minutes. (If nothing else, this 'repair' is costing me in gasoline!)

We'll see what happens...if I can get 5~10,000 miles out of this, I'll be a happy puppy!

Actually, I'm half hoping it DOESN'T work, since the days are getting warmer and longer, and if I'm going to do headgaskets, I want to get them done before September!

Reply to
hachiroku
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I love this saga.

Reply to
user

LOL! This is good! As I often title some of my more 'adventurous' posts, "I try things so you don't have to"!

Reply to
hachiroku

I like your style. I once had water coming out the tail pipe of an old mazda pickup and it wasn't condensate coming out. Dumped in the sealer and drove it nice and got a lots of miles out it. I had so much sealer in it the radiator shop couldn't get the tubes cleared and gave it back to me as unfixable, so I got the water hose running and used the steel from some windshield wiper blades held with vice grips and got the tubes cleared and soldered it back up myself. The good old days, I enjoyed doing that stuff. I used to buy those pickups with blown head gaskets and fix that and do the radiator and drive it till I found another, sell the one I was driving and do it again. I shaved the soft aluminum heads with couple of big files and used a straight edge and got pretty good at it, never had one fail after I'd fixed it. Oh yeah, next time use pliers to twist the boot on the spark plug and break it free then pull it off.

Reply to
Moe

I guess that'll be the next trick. The motor only has 120,000 miles on it, and I'm reluctant to use one of those 'seals all' products. This is some new stuff; you have to completely drain and flush the cooling system, run this stuff, and then flush and refill.

Filing the heads with a file?!?! Whooo-hooo. You must be a patient man!

Reply to
Hachiroku $B%O%A%m%/(B

Yep, used big files, a course one till I got all the pits out and then the smoother file, it didn't take all that long, I'd say a six pack or two. The heads were soft and the results were a nice smooth flat enough surface. Putting the head back on the block was the hard part, the head bolts held the cam saddle and rocker arms with spacers and springs, and everything had to go on all at once and you couldn't let the timing chain get slack all the while or the tensioner would ratchet out. I'd buy those old pickups for 100 bucks maybe 200 depending on the condition of the rest of the pickup drag it home and get to work, I usually had two or three in the back yard for parts, sigh the good old days, I could drive miles and miles on a dollar.

Reply to
Moe

Definitely has mini series potential.

Reply to
user

;) See new topic...

Reply to
hachiroku

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