Where is the failure

[Gottolovem]

I have been babying my 87 for months now because of the head gasket, it has all the symptoms bubbles in the rad to the point that it pushes all the coolant out of overflow tank, sweet exhaust smell (antifreeze)and overheating of course. So I pulled the head today and if there is a failure I can't see it can there be a failure withought being able to see the failure.



side one




side two

It should be noted that it was a slow leak i had to add fluid once a week or so. and here is a direct link incase you can't zoom in

http://s1016.photobucket.com/user/dan1l ... d%20gasket

[xirdneh]

i have done quite a few blown head gaskets
i have never been able to see where the water leak was (as far as the gasket goes)
water in cylinder or extra clean piston and its combustion chamber area are what usually clues me in

[Gottolovem]

That's good to know this is only my second time for me and I could not see the failure either time I was starting to think i was going crazy.

[Gottolovem]

Understood

[marlinh]

It is hard to tell from the photos but it looks like there is distortion between # 2 and 3 cylinders. And it is clean there. What did the plugs and pistons look like? Any pics of those? Like Xirdneh said, they tell a more complete story.

[Gottolovem]

Photos of head and block there is a little condensation from sitting overnight.

[marlinh]

Very difficult to tell. Clean valves on #4?

[Petros]

they almost always fail between cylinders one and two, you usually can not tell by looking at it unless you drove it until it would not run anymore. coolant seeps from between the gasket and the water jacket, you can often do a compression test and all cylinders will show good compression.

looking at the picture of the gasket above, right between cyl 1 and 2 it looks like the gasket is not shiny like it is between the other cylinders. where it was shiny at the metal rim around the cylinders means it was making metal on metal contact, where it is dull and gray it means it is oxidized, seal was broken.

[Gottolovem]

Thanks for all the feedback the head is back on car with Petros"jets" and the additional cooling holes in gasket. The new radiator gets here tomorrow And I'll finish up.

I guess I was expecting to see some sort of visual failure not unlike the photo in the Petros head gasket repair guide.

Petros was that car actually running with that major blowout on the gasket?

[Petros]

Petros was that car actually running with that major blowout on the gasket?

I had been driving the car for perhaps 4 months with a leaky head gasket, I just kept adding coolant. first once or twice a month, than once a week, than several times a week, than everyday, running okay at first, and than losing power and clearly running on 3 cylinders. than driving it home one day when I knew it was time to change the head gasket, it lost power and It would not restart. I removed the spark plug and it would spray coolant out both one and two spark plug holes, still would not start.

So I had to tow it home the last 1.5 miles, when I pulled the head off that was the way the head gasket looked. completely blown out, after driving on it for way longer than I should have.

Most of the time when I do a head gasket it is not easy to tell where the leak was. You can only know because of loosing coolant, coolant in the motor oil (looks like chocolate milk), white steam (smoke) coming out the exhaust. Even a compression test may not tell you.