ok guys i had my motor built by a GN guy not to long ago. i got 2500 miles on the car and the HG's starting leaking. turns out he said the HG's had a problem and that he would fix the motor out of his pocket. he went away from the felpros and went with original GM gaskets. now the motor has been back for a little bit and has about 1500 miles on it since the HG's were done. the other day im under the hood and notice soem milky stuff on the radiator cap. i look at the oil and see that it is sorta milky. to make a long story short im leaking coolant into the oil but the car runs fine and its looking like HG's in the one of the areas. so i call the builder and ask him what the deal is i run 15psi with no knock and the car seems to be seeping a HG again. he tells me that i must be lifting the head. he also says that the HG's were torqued to 75 which sounded low to me and he never re torques either. he told me to re torque them and drive around normal until he can think of what hte problem is. im done with dealing with this person as i have had nothing but probs since i had the motor redone. im just gonna rip the top of the engine apart and put a set of ported heads and new gaskets installed the right way. what do you think about how he is handling this, he basically said ill let you know how to fix it, which to me seems f'd up since i dont drive the car much and it keeps breaking. sorry had to vent
If you or him don't know where the problem is you shouldn't be driving it. Anti-freeze in your oil will take out your bearings .... and it will not take a long time! Sounds like composite gaskets which shouldn't need a retorque. The 75 Ft. Lbs. isn't far off and may actually be right. It is hard to tell what is causing. If you must drive it put some GM seal tabs crushed up in the radiator and see what that does for you. Short of a compression test or pulling the plugs to see if you are getting water in the cylinders or pressurizing the coolant system I don't know. Good luck!
yeah same guy i had listed in the Sig. a while back. as for all that has been going on i posted a thread onm it the nxt page over or so. the compression test came out fine it wa the coolant pressure test that was not good, i lost 2psi in les then 3 minutes. i have 2 cars so i dont have to worry aboput driving it. the car has been sitting since i noticed it. i tried the GM seal tabs they didnt seem to help. i did have the car running right before i noticed the prob and the car ran good and pulled hard with no coolant or oil pressure probs. i was thinking maybe a intake gasket but not really sure. last time this happend the car made all kindso f noises the oil was instant milk, and the boost guage was bouncing all over hte place with the car missing at idle. this time around if it wasnt for me noticed the fill tube you would have never known anything was wrong. just frustrating that i shelled out decent money to get my car back and running and its way worse now
Originally posted by Buicksx2 >>> No Chuck the guy who built it was a partner of your buddy (since divorced) who was chatty Kathy with you at BG this past year.
Hope the little guys doing well Chuck. Talk to you soon.
i dont know the car is fine for a whle and then it just comes up. the block and heads and everything were all magnafluxed and hot tanked and the whole nine so i coudlnt see why that would be the prob. when i do the hg's im gonna do a new set of ported heads anyway so i guess well see. im just pissed that this person built what seems to be a sh*tty motor for me. next time around im just gonna get someone to do the machine work on a block and then assemble it myself. still wish i could figure out what went wrong, hope to find out soon
lol i hear ya nick. at least this time around with you helping out i know the HG's will be done right. geez i shold have just taken the whole car to you the first time i bet none of this would be happening. well make a game plan on what im gonna do and go from there after the holidays, thanks nick
What kinda head bolts or studs does the car have. Stock GM head gaskets dont need to be re-torqued. 75 ft lbs sounds about right for torque but im not positive. If it has studs they could be leaking.
Use head studs vs. bolts, prep the areas and double/triple check the mating surfaces and slap the stockers in there.
You said that the heads where fluxed. But, was it by the same goob that built it???
If so then u could very well have cracked head...heck, even the torque pattern was wrong.
I would have some concern on the bearings due to the fact that for sure the sump has evidence of coolant/oil mix.
It freaking scores the bearings bad and quick and it may not knock either but damage has occured.
Had the same happen on a circle track motor. The guy had blown a head gasket and gotten milky oil and slapped another gasket on and continued running with no noise. But end of season when it was tore down the bearings looked scored...bad.
FWIW, I blew 3 holes (1, 3, 6) before my truck ever got registered for (legal) driving. 'Root cause' was uneven deck surfaces. That's how my freshly machined block came back from the much respected Houston, TX builder. Local machinist here decked the block and head surfaces (just enough to cleanup) using some new-fangled belt grinder type surfacer. That bumped CR up to 8.5:1. Have since run as much as 23# accidentally, of course!
thats what im starting to wonder maybe the surface is uneven. if it is im gonna be pissed and find a way to legally do something about it since the WHOLE block was suppiled by him and the machine work done by him. hmmm anyway i can see if the deck is uneven when i have the heads off the car??
To check the deck surfaces you need to get a short strait ede and some feeler guages. The naked eye cannot see distortion in the deck if there are any.
Stock GM gaskets for what? GM doesnt sell head gaskets for ours. The only gasket to use is the Felpro 9441's
If he, seems to be really bright telling you to drive with contaminated oil, used the NA gaskets.. you'll have the root of your problems pretty much nixed. Let alone never has been there a mention of what bolts where put back in.
Do they say ARP on the bolt heads..its pretty clear they do, once you look at them. I bet he reused the stock TTYL and slapped everything back together using some 20 dollar a pair HG's..
Let's clarify a few points so some readers do not get confused.
GM does sell head gaskets for 87 turbo regals. They have a steel inner core with graphite paper material surrounding the fire rings. These gaskets work great for all but the most extreme cases. You do not apply any type of sealer with these gaskets. The graphite seals the water passages and allows some lubricity between the block and heads for the slight movement that occurs between them. The down side to these is if your heads ever do lift, this graphite material goes everywhere.
GM also makes a steel shim style gasket (the gaskets we use in our bulletproof head gasket kits). These were found in the 84-85 hot air turbo regals. They work great in even the most extreme cases with no contamination of the oil if the head happens to lift. Another thing nice about these gaskets is you can stack them for adjustments in compression. Each gasket is worth aprox .5 on compression ratio. The downside to these is if the proper silicone or "gasket prep" is not performed you sometimes have coolant leaks.
Felpro makes several gaskets that work fine in most applications. We have tried all of these. The one thing we do not like about the 1007 gaskets is #1 the machined grooves in the head that are required to run these gaskets overlap between cylinders. This means that the fire ring is supported all the way around the cylinder except there. #2 the groove machining is very critical and must be done right in order for everything to work right.
It is not the gaskets that determine whether or not you need to retorque it is the head bolts. Stock TTY head bolts do not require a retorque because of their design, all other bolts do. Let me explain why they recommend retorqueing head bolts. When installing the heads you torque everything down at room temperature. By doing so you actually crush the gaskets. During normal engine operation the engine heats up. Thermal expansion occurs in the head and actually crushes the gaskets even more. Then when the motor cools the head bolts do not have the same clamping force as when initially torqued even though they have not moved or backed off. This is not as noticeable with iron heads as it is with aluminum as the thermal expansion rate for aluminum is much higher yielding more crush on the gasket during the thermal cycles.
There are more areas than the heads that will allow coolant in with the oil. Namely the intake manifold. When disassembling the engine you need to look at all of these areas carefully.
Check the deck of the block and the heads for flatness, check also to make sure the dowel pins are not too long holding the head up. You can do this by installing the heads without the gasket. If the pins don't hold the head up without the gasket, it will be plenty with the gasket installed.
When removing the heads look for combustion leakage traces they will look like erosion from the fire ring outward in the gasket. This will tell you whether or not you are actually lifting the head.
.... and it will not take a long time! Sounds like composite gaskets which shouldn't need a retorque. The 75 Ft. Lbs. isn't far off and may actually be right. It is hard to tell what is causing. If you must drive it put some GM seal tabs crushed up in the radiator and see what that does for you. Short of a compression test or pulling the plugs to see if you are getting water in the cylinders or pressurizing the coolant system I don't know. Good luck!
