adollarwodbnice
10+ Year Contributor
- 37
- 0
- Mar 9, 2010
-
Mays Landing,
New Jersey
Basically I got this car in a trade for my street bike to be a fun project car and it blew a head gasket the 2nd day of being in my hands.
Makes me feel kinda stupid but I can't really blame myself for what happened... since I have pulled the head I have found soooo many things that were not done right or done very shitty.
I'll start by making a list of the things that i've been making right on this car that I was lied to about or I just want to do right.
First i'll start with all the issues I found once I starting digging in with the head out.
Clearly the HG had blown, it was a felpro paper HG. Basically the upper rad hose slit open a good 5-6 inches and just exploded coolant all over the engine bay. I ripped what I could out and cleaned everything with electric cleaner, cleaned the MAF with MAF cleaner, then degreased the whole engine bay the best I could.
After pulling wires to clean them I found that the fuel injector for the cylinder where the HG blew had a wire completely disconnected... it was soldered crappily and came apart which may have had a bit to do with my fuel issue prior to the blowing of my HG. I soldered it back up nicely and checked the connections to the other 3 fuel injectors and then taped everything back up nicely.
I then removed the thermostat housing to polish it since I was having a problem getting one out of the 8 ARP head studs to go into it's hole in the block.
I had already planned to revamp my whole cooling system so before this I had ordered tons of gaskets a new thermostat and all the sensors for the thermostat housing just to play it safe... they were cheap so mehh...
The wire to one of the sender probes was also a shitty cable that popped apart so again I had to do some minor soldering and checked all the connections for the others to make sure they were nice. When I opened up the thermostat housing I was kinda suprised to see there wasn't a thermostat in there at all...
This was also the time I noticed my radiator was rotting away on the fan side so i'm getting a new one as well.
Since alot of things were out of the engine bay I decided to continue with the wire tuck that I had started before blowing the head gasket. I started doing really well and decided to fix up the engine bay's paint while I was at it... it was completely faded and gone in most sections. I need to redo the passenger side but it all came out really well for a quick job.
FAST FORWARD to where I am now... I found out my head is not the 6 bolt head it's supposed to be so after taking forever to get the stupid ARP head stud in, it's too big for my head (which is apparently for a 7 bolt)
Now I need to get the head machined... AGAIN... so it can allow for the head studs to slide through.
I have tons of pictures to update everything but they're huge and I can't resize them right now
.
thanks for reading if you did... otherwise here's cliff notes...
Cliffs: Head gasket blows, I take a month to get the last head stud in, when the head stud is in I find out my head is not the correct head for the block therefore the studs are too large for the head so now it needs to be drilled out.... sigh.
-Robb
Makes me feel kinda stupid but I can't really blame myself for what happened... since I have pulled the head I have found soooo many things that were not done right or done very shitty.
I'll start by making a list of the things that i've been making right on this car that I was lied to about or I just want to do right.
First i'll start with all the issues I found once I starting digging in with the head out.
Clearly the HG had blown, it was a felpro paper HG. Basically the upper rad hose slit open a good 5-6 inches and just exploded coolant all over the engine bay. I ripped what I could out and cleaned everything with electric cleaner, cleaned the MAF with MAF cleaner, then degreased the whole engine bay the best I could.
After pulling wires to clean them I found that the fuel injector for the cylinder where the HG blew had a wire completely disconnected... it was soldered crappily and came apart which may have had a bit to do with my fuel issue prior to the blowing of my HG. I soldered it back up nicely and checked the connections to the other 3 fuel injectors and then taped everything back up nicely.
I then removed the thermostat housing to polish it since I was having a problem getting one out of the 8 ARP head studs to go into it's hole in the block.
I had already planned to revamp my whole cooling system so before this I had ordered tons of gaskets a new thermostat and all the sensors for the thermostat housing just to play it safe... they were cheap so mehh...
The wire to one of the sender probes was also a shitty cable that popped apart so again I had to do some minor soldering and checked all the connections for the others to make sure they were nice. When I opened up the thermostat housing I was kinda suprised to see there wasn't a thermostat in there at all...
This was also the time I noticed my radiator was rotting away on the fan side so i'm getting a new one as well.
Since alot of things were out of the engine bay I decided to continue with the wire tuck that I had started before blowing the head gasket. I started doing really well and decided to fix up the engine bay's paint while I was at it... it was completely faded and gone in most sections. I need to redo the passenger side but it all came out really well for a quick job.
FAST FORWARD to where I am now... I found out my head is not the 6 bolt head it's supposed to be so after taking forever to get the stupid ARP head stud in, it's too big for my head (which is apparently for a 7 bolt)
Now I need to get the head machined... AGAIN... so it can allow for the head studs to slide through.
I have tons of pictures to update everything but they're huge and I can't resize them right now
.thanks for reading if you did... otherwise here's cliff notes...
Cliffs: Head gasket blows, I take a month to get the last head stud in, when the head stud is in I find out my head is not the correct head for the block therefore the studs are too large for the head so now it needs to be drilled out.... sigh.
-Robb
