Coolant seepage

"JAG" wrote

It's far more likely that you have an intake gasket leaking. I've rarely seen head gaskets leak on these engines, but tons of intake gaskets. Try and see if you can follow the leak further up. Often the intake leaks at the rear of the engine will appear to be coming from the head gasket, but are in fact coming from above the parting line.

Ian

Yeah, there's two main issues I've seen with home repair on these. Over torque, and putting goop of some sort on the gaskets. I've done 3 so far, 2 of them were fixing someone else's well-intentioned screw-ups. One had sucked enough water into the combustion chambers to blow the head gasket between 2 and 4.

I wanted to ask you if you do anything with the lifters if you don't remove the heads. I've been pulling them out and blowing them out with compressed air, then recharging them in a jig I made (translation: lumber with hole drilled in it to hold it upright, immersed in oil filled coffee can. I shove on it with an old pushrod).

"John Alt" wrote

If you are simply doing an intake gasket replacement, why would you be fooling around with the lifters. I'm not sure what you think is accomplished by doing what you describe above, but I would say...not much.

Ian

"John Alt" wrote

Yeah, I understand the running poorly part. But that usually does not happen on engines that you don't have to actually remove the pushrods on. Which is the case with the v-8 and v-6 90 degree engines. I'd attribute poor initial running on these engines (after doing an intake gasket replacement) on other causes....more likely what happened to fall into the intake ports, or whatever cleaner was used and happened to get sprayed into the ports.

It certainly isn't anywhere near as bad as the

Ian

Runs like all hell until that muddy oil works it's way out them. But that's what I was wondering, if it's worth the trouble.

he worded that well yeah like he said lol