Engine not playing nicely!

[PaRaDoX]

hey guys....

discovered a blown headgasket the other day (lotsa oil in the coolant)

had plans to do it asap... got the my car to go to tafe today... thought it felt a bit weird...

got half way there and it had stalled 4-5 times.. it was operating temp aswell not overheating or anything.. so i turned around and went home... stalled about another 15 times on the way home.. it stalls on idle, even when the cars moving, u start it up... starts fine... then gets real rough like its missing a cyclinder then the revs drop from 800 to 500 after about 10 seconds.. then it starts to knock and the revs go crazy up and down till it stalls...

brakes feel funny aswell... exhust sounds like a cyclinder isnt igniting properly
or more than one...

could it be that water is getting into the cyclinders????

should i rip the heads off and have a look as i was going to do the headgaskets anyway???

or should i say **** it... go out and buy a s2 engine from the wreckers (i need new engine mounts anyway and a new flex plate(got the flex plate) soo eyah)

coil packs were done 1 year ago with a brand new one
spark plugs were done a week ago and till today it was fine

its undrivable atm as it stalls more times than a L player driving a manual for his first time!

[stocky]

its undrivable atm as it stalls more times than a L player driving a manual for his first time!

you just love making those references about kids dont you?

[PaRaDoX]

yep hahghaahahhahaah

[bradcad]

might be way off track, but just for the sake of trying something wthout doing the heads, as mine was stalling badly with oil in the water-

10mm spanner & socket, try tightening all the intake manifold bolts. Fixed my problem, so hopefully does the same for you...


Good luck

[PaRaDoX]

inlet manifold bolts??? u mean headbolts???

[xcop5l]

yeah sounds like youve blown an intake gasket

[PaRaDoX]

:P xcop the would the block still be worth keeping and would i be best keeping it in the garage till i can work on it???

up untill this gasket it ran fine

its settled then, car goes into the garage tommorrow and i rip the bastard apart to find out what a blew!

[greenfoam]

I was going to mention to you one of these days that the manifold is 100 times more likely to leak on the V6 than anything else, it's verrrrrrrry unusual to break a headgasket on a motor that has just three cylinders per head but the manifold gaskets on these V6s leak after a certain age plus the bolts loosen up etc

[xcop5l]

i would only worry about the bottom end if its had coolant/water in there or you fill it with bits of gasket and other sh1t when you clean it up or pull it apart
like greenfoam said, the inlet is more likley to leak than any thing else, for example ive done about 30 or so intake gaskets on the v6 and ive only done 3 head gaskets, 2 from being over heated

[PaRaDoX]

cheers, but oil dosnt enter the inlet manifold???... i wanna get these new heads on anyway...

cars in the garage now.. tools out! ready to rip it apart tommorrow .. im very lucky because my mums on holidays which means she dosnt need her car so i still have a car for another 2-3 weeks!!!!

[xcop5l]

ist always sweet to have a spair car
as your probably aware commies are verry comon to get oil in the coolin system, im not sure y but i think its got some thing to do with the gaskets. also when you do your heads get your radator checked cos the auto cooler in it could have died and you could have an auto full of coolant or a cooling system full of auto fluid

[greenfoam]

Well in theory there shouldn't be hardly any oil in the combustion chamber or near the gasket either:P, who says this sludge of yours is oil anyways I need photographic proof

[xcop5l]

the oil galaries in the heads run beside the coolant galaries and they both use the head gasket to seal the galaries form each other.

[Boonz]

inspector foams on the case lol, dont suppose you did a compression test or cooling system pressure test before hand???

[PaRaDoX]

i did a compression test recently, but not in the last 2 months,

there was another layer on the coolant that was also multicoloured kinda like a perly tint to it like purple/blue/green u know!!!

anyway the reason i say i think its a head gasket is because the cooling system has been pressuring recently and now, hasnt been doing it at all just loosing coolant at a alarming rate....

the radiator isnt blocked, flows very freely..

how can tranny fluid get into the coolant?? where do the lines run near to each other.. obviously theres gotta be something suppling the pressure to move the tranny fluid through the transmission

[xcop5l]

the tranny has a cooler in the radator they run of the pump on the auto,
if you go out and have a look you will see 2 small hoses that go into the pasinger side of the radator. these are for the cooler

[PaRaDoX]

yeah man i was aware of that, i thought there was 2 radiators??? 1 for tranny and 1 for engine... ??

anything i should be aware of / precautions when removing anything the heads like order of removing the head bolts....

[fitzy2005]

yea theres a certain order, when i get home tonite ill copy the order out of my car manual for you, but start by pulling shit off thats in the way.. (mines vr but will be the same) and you will need a torque wrench and ill post the specs for that too when your upto putting back together.

wen i changed the heads and gaskets on my vr (expensive way to fix valve stem seals lol ported polished shaved heads cost 400 for the work + 120 for a pair of 2nd hand heads and i got a regrind gasket set for ~100), i had fun pulling everything apart, putting it back together gave me the shits, wasnt as easy as i wonted (mind u i was rushing it so i could get the car back on the road asap)

[bradcad]

...na I meant intake manifold bolts...there's about 10 or so of them, I found mine were fingertight. After tightening all, and flushing the radiator with mukowt and washing powder, a month or so later not a trace of oil in the water....

[PaRaDoX]

fair enough, ill check them first about to start work on it today

[PaRaDoX]

well they'res pretty much more oil than water now... i did a complete coolant flush around 3 days ago....somethings DEFINATLY BLOWN

and heres some random pics of it being ripped apart and my daily driver for the next 3 weeks... i couldnt get a good picture of the oil on the ground but that stream is FULL of oil (couldnt catch it all in a bucket)

[PaRaDoX]

inlet manifold removed, inlet gaskets appear to be fine and not broken
they'll be replaced anyway

inlet manifold bolts were tight

gotta go to work at 4 so i probbly wont get the heads removed today, probbly tommorrow


EDIT: i think we found the problem in picture 4 the port to the far left

[xcop5l]

that gasket looks a bit buggered.
also check your spark plugs. have a look to see if any of them look clean, usually when coolant gets into the cylinders it has a tendancy to "wash" the internals of the cylinder so instead of being all carbon colord some parts will look sort of new.

[PaRaDoX]

no use, changed them this week and only have 4 of the originals left as i threw some at my cuz he was setting random chemicals on fire in my garage... ps.... WD40 with the nozel (straw thing) is a flame thrower, the flame stays on the end so u only have to light it once...

but yeah... gaskets are buggered, the car felt like it was running with 5 cyclinders and when i pulled that cyclinder the performance didnt seem to change... soo theres 1 issue solved (water in cyclinders)

now the 2nd issue... petrol/oil in coolant... how could this happen and where??? ive been getting random petrol smells lately and my mate in his VP gets the same thing, ecconomy isnt bad (13-14L/100km if i drive sensibly)
just weird smells.. im willing to go 1 step further and rip the heads off to see if the gaskets are rooted may aswell do it all while ive got a spare car to drive and its already apart

[PaRaDoX]

some more pictures from todays efforts... waiting for my mate to get here with a bigger socket bar thingy to undo the headbolts.. (they're ready to come off)

then well see if ive blown a headgasket

oh well geuss its back into the belly of the beast