I'm still having trouble with my engine, and it's symptoms. It smokes only when hot (and I mean oil temperature hot, not coolant temperature hot), and when it's hot, it is CLOUDS, even on idle. When it's cold, it doesn't smoke even under load or revving. Compression is down maybe 40 points, the last time I checked, almost 3 weeks ago. It is still running, but there is a bit of odd rattle kind of noises from the engine. It reminds me of how my old Santa Fe sounded.

Does this indicate head gasket, or rings?

Btw, at random intervals, I see some coolant go missing from the res. This is not an every day thing, and it has never drained the bottle. The dummy gauge for coolant temperature does not indicate high temperature.

test your coolant for hydrocarbons. If you get positive results, it's your HG. If not, I'd proceed with a leakdown, etc.

How do I do that? Also, should I send oil to blackstone?

You don't have to send off your coolant for processing. Try this. Wait till the radiator coolant is cold. with the engine off, remove the radiator cap and make sure the coolant is up to the neck. Start the engine. if there is an exhaust leak into the coolant, the coolant will jump out of the neck of the radiator. You can tell about where the exhaust is leaking into the exhaust by removing the plugs and looking for coolant contamination. Revving the engine up will make it jump higher.

If the head gasket is gone, chances are good you have a warped head and it takes someone who really knows what they are doing to "fix" a warped head by milling or any other method to keep the head gasket from blowing in the future.

If you still wanna test for hydrocarbons, test kits only cost about $40-50. Most auto parts stores dont carry them but NAPA does and they're usually available online. They're often called a "block test kit" or something rather. They either look like a turkey baster or have a hose sticking out of one end rather than the baster bulb and come with a 12 oz or more bottle of blue fluid. looks like this:



All you do is let the engine get up to operating temp with the radiator cap off, fill the clear vial with about an ounce of fluid, and stick the pointy end of the tester into your radiator creating a good seal. You pull cooling system gas through the fluid with the bulb or pulling a vacuum on the hose. If the fluid turns yellow (or very slightly greenish) youve got hydrocarbons in your coolant gasses causing your problems. Have fun.

OR...

you could do a simple dry/wet compression test and see what cylinders are bad and in which way. :rolleyes

yeah a blown headgasket will not nec make coolant jump out of the engine when its cold. typically the coolant level becomes unstable when the engine heats up, the coolant level will rise and drop rapidly.

Do the wet dry compression tests and that will give you some actual results you can draw conclusions on.

Wet comes back up. Fuck, my rings are toast. :'(

hopefully you don't have egg cylinders too. It'll be ok. just rebuild it.

Well, despite the obvious signs pointing towards a blown ring (on one cylinder? wtf?), I pulled the spark plug and it's clean ass new. I would have expected oil fouling. Thoughts?

post up your warmed up wet/dry compression numbers

I've decided, for right now, to just build back to stock, so I have my DD back, with another block, drop the rebuilt block in, take the block currently in, and if it's good, rebuild that to low compression forged internals as my wallet permits.

My question is do I need to get new pistons and rods? It's a junkyard block, but it's listed in 'a' condition. It comes with the rotating assembly. I know I can keep the crank, since that's not going to break on an extra 30 hp even if it is a rebuilt engine, but the rods and the pistons are concerning me. I don't want to put this together and then have it explode in 2 months, this has to last me until I get the forged engine put together, which could realistically be 4 years.

Let me know what you think I should include in my rebuild kit, so I can go price things....

Being a college student blows.

If you're going for a stock NA build with only basic boltons then I wouldn't worry about new rods unless you pull them and can see physical damage. Pistons might be a different story, check for damage ans signs of cracked ringlands. If your block requires overboring then you'll have to replace the pistons in order to fill the gap. If the cylinder walls are fine and you can just get away with a quick hone so that the rings will seat then you don't need to replace them.

Couldn't you just grab oversize rings and keep the factory slugs? Where can I get wristpins?

Originally posted by nicho919
Couldn't you just grab oversize rings and keep the factory slugs? Where can I get wristpins?

You'll get piston slap like a motherfucker. It'll sound like a damn diesel

Originally posted by nicho919
Couldn't you just grab oversize rings and keep the factory slugs?

No........no.....no..heh heh.

Yeah, I realized right after I posted that how stupid that would be. I still haven't really decided whether to just get built internals now and save money later, or save money now and build later. JE pistons, Total Seal rings, Eagle H beams, Clevite bearings, and the melling high flow oil pump are just about twice the price of the ITM pistons and the rest of the parts dinosaur rotating assembly. I pretty much refuse to buy rock products any more. I was really disappointed with the quality of the water pump I received.

Anyone know what the dry weight of a 420a short block is? I've looked everywhere.

Really clean plug can be caused by water/coolant entering the combustion chamber. That is how we removed carbon from pistons years ago. Slight tiny squirt of water into a running carburator.