I'll be pulling my intake soon. I haven't had the same milky goo in the valve covers....but I'm almost certain I have the same alignment issues that you had....we shall see. Glad you got some good news (bearings are ok)
I dropped my Champion intake off at Rich's shop this morning. He's going to weld in some of the pitting around the water jackets and plane it a hair.
He also made me some block off plates so I can check the head gaskets for leaks at the water ports. I doubt I'll find anything there but might as well do it right. Going to run a hose from bypass to water pump and seal it there and use the plug Rich made to seal the upper radiator hose. I'll start at 15psi and work up to 20 psi. The plates are pretty slick!
Matt which is Rich's son who built my motor came over last night and put the main bearing back in and then I finished last night getting the oil pan ready to put back in. I used a cometic oil pan gasket a couple weeks ago to fix a oil pan leak I had and also a tiny bit of "the right stuff" because I had to mate the gasket to the motor so I had clearance to get the pan past the flywheel. Earl was right it's good sh&t until you try and get it off. Geeeeeezus, I worked for almost 2 hours trying to get the gasket off the pan. It's a pain but I'll be doing it the exact same way this time because it didn't leak.
I'm going to flush the motor first in hopes of finding any coolant that I can't see or get at.
I ordered the felpro intake gasket and I like it. Seems like a nice piece.
Should have it all back together for a Sunday cruise.
Picked up my intake this morning. Rich welded up all the pitting at the water ports and planed it. Gave it a test fit with no gasket and it's nice. Should have a nice tight fit with a gasket for a good seal.
Rich said it was a hair warped in the center. I watched him finish machining it this morning and you could see more material coming off the ends than the center. Nice to have access to people like this and he always does my work right away to get me going again.
Update, installed the intake and seemed to fit great. Bolts lined up. Used the felpro gasket with sealant around the water ports and TQ'd it down. Put a pressure test to it today after sitting over night and it still leaks. I didn't fill the system up with coolant or water, I just put air pressure in at 17 psi.
I instantly heard air leaking out the PCV grommet and valve cover breather grommets. Getting air in the block.
I pulled the intake tonight and noticed a darker color on the blue felpro material around the water ports. Looked like I had good contact at the intake from gasket markings. The sealant seems to have made a good contact patch as well. I used yamabond 4 there.
I decided to do a test and see why the blue coating was a darker shade where I figured the intake was leaking. I did drain the block but there is still a little coolant in the system floating around under pressure so it would have found it's way to a source of the leak.
I first used just plain water and rubbed it on the blue coating on the felpro gasket and it evaporated back to normal. Then I rubbed 50/50 coolant on the gasket at it stayed dark. Then I tried the soapy water and it evaporated back to normal as well. I sprayed soapy water under pressure looking for air bubbles.
This tells me I had coolant leaking at the water ports from air in the system pushing it out. I sat the intake on the heads and checked for clearance issues the best I could. The alternator and turbo are in the way for a good view. From what I can see it seems to sit real nice.
With the block being decked twice and the heads once that I know of I may have an issue here. Plus the intake had 15 thousands taken off to make it true. I had no choice there, it needed done. I may just be too short on the intake at this point? I find that hard to swallow based on how good it fit and the gasket match but what else could be preventing me from sealing this thing up?
I'll post some pics tomorrow when I get to the shop. Maybe someone will see something I'm missing?
I could not get them to seal with a gasket but felt I had enough pressure to expose a head gasket failure. Ports are close to the valley so figured a leak would present itself. I should have stopped there and got them to seal. My mistake. When I pulled the intake last night I tried them again on the new felpro gasket and they still wouldn't seal so I used some Anaerobic Gasket Maker with no intake gasket before I went home. I wanted to let it set up over night. Haven't tried pressure yet.
Here is a few pics of the intake gasket after I removed it. Clearly it was leaking. The dark spots are coolant based on the test a stated earlier.
I'll pressure up the head gaskets today and report back. At this point nothing will surprise me but the new gasket sure looks like it was leaking air/coolant to me.
Head gaskets out on the drivers side. I had a feeling it was because the first time I pulled the intake I saw some coolant laying up on the block where it meets the head at the back of the motor. That's why I wanted the plates to begin with. Just didn't make sense for it to be there but since the motor is tilted back toward the firewall I thought maybe it ran down the ridge and sat there from an intake leak.
Well I'm down for the count this year. Winter is coming and I'm out of energy to work on this car. Motor needs to come out now. I know the gaskets can be installed in the car but I need to find out why this gasket blew. I broke this motor in by the book. Either I got a faulty gasket or something else is not right. I kept the boost at 10 psi for the first 500 miles and just short bursts at that to seat rings. Then bumped it to 15 psi for short bursts and a few at 18/19 after a 1000 miles ish. Only 3rd gear pulls watching the WB and I logged a few runs all was good.
You have no idea how bummed I am at this point but this kind of thing happens in this hobby. I have owned many hot rods in my day and have NEVER had this much trouble with all of them put together. I'm about to the point where I'm scared of the car now. I built a motor to go easy 10's and it seems the car has other plans for me.
This is one of my favorite cars of all time and I'm bummed because I can't enjoy it anymore this year. I'll probably just button it up and put it under the car cover for a while and come back with a fresh attitude and take another run at it.
Many of us have similar stories.
If it makes you feel any better . . . Many do this stuff on the ground, on their back.
Don't stop believing . . . . The payback is priceless.
I remember reading a post last year stating these cars are pretty durable until you take them apart. That's when the problems begin.
Seems to work fine on any other engine I've had built over the years so for some reason the laws of physics don't apply to TB Buicks.
Had I been running the sh&t out of this thing leaning it out for every last HP, cranking boost chasing the number I wouldn't have a problem dealing with the consequences. I just had plain old bad luck this go around.
Set your head back in place and make sure the dowel pins aren't bottoming out in the head. A long as the gap is considerably smaller than the HG thickness, you're fine. What head gaskets were you using on this build?
The more I read of this story,it makes me want to cry. Do you think now the intake is sitting to low? Taking .015 off? If so, I have a un-touch, clean as a pin lower intake of a 11k car, I will give to you if you think that will help.
I don't really know at this point? Pressurizing the coolant system netted me a leak and air inside the block. Can't say it was the intake this time because I know for a fact the head gasket is leaking. I think I hurt the head gasket somehow along the way, how I have no clue but I'll find out more when I pull the head. I never put more than 18/19 boost in the motor with no KR at WOT only tip in and it was minimal.
Never had any signs of a typical head gasket failure. This should not have happened on a 9.1 compression engine at 18/19 boost with good AFR.
