Subzali’s 1FZ-FE head gasket repair - turbeaucruiser

[subzali]

If you don’t like play by play don’t check back very frequently. For me, small amounts of progress will help me to eat this elephant.

Got the hood off.

Have been working to get the water out of Cyl 1, which dropped in there when I pulled plug 1. Blasted some penetrating oil in there tonight just to hold things over.

Pulled spark plug 3. It was pretty wet and let a bit of coolant into the cylinder but not as much as #1.

Here they are together

Throttle body was gooey

 

[subzali]

I bet nobody has ever taken a picture of the spark plug hole. But here you go

And here’s #3 with coolant on it, which dropped in from above when I pulled the plug out.

 

[simps80]

pull the wires and all the spark plugs then turn it over for one or two rotations
the water will exit the premises quickly and won’t harm anything

 

[subzali]

pull the wires and all the spark plugs then turn it over for one or two rotations
the water will exit the premises quickly and won’t harm anything

Thanks Mike I thought of doing that a few days ago but have forgotten, getting myopic, distracted with trying to solve that problem a different way. Forest for the trees situation. That’s why I think it helps to share. You guys can sit back and see I from a different perspective and lob advice in my direction.

You can also heckle/peanut gallery

 

[subzali]

In other news, my hood bled all over the floor. It must have been soaked with coolant.

My overflow was not over-full before this all happened. But somehow now it’s over-full.

Here are spark plugs 4-6. 4 and 5 had some oil spooge. From all the plugs I’m not seeing any “steam cleaning” so not sure. They all look pretty good to me.

 

[subzali]

Cyl 4

Cyl 5

Cyl 6

Again not seeing any “steam cleaning”. So not sure?

 

[subzali]

So then I cranked the engine over a bit. Nothing seemed to come out of the cylinders, which is fine. But then I took new shots of the cylinders
1

2

3

4

5

6

They all look super good to me. Next I will do a compression test. I thought of doing a leakdown test, but not sure. Going back and forth with that one. With no evidence so far of blown head gasket maybe I will do it to see what it may tell me.

 

[rover67]

You wrote "no evidence of a blown head gasket" what do you mean? it has water on a piston.. You didn't run it for long blown so you probably wouldnt get the steam cleaning effect. Is the oil still clean? you could send it out if it looks clean but that takes time.

 

[subzali]

I’m also thinking I will add catch cans when I rebuild this. The white turbocruiser has AMW catch cans, which do catch stuff. AMW is out of business so I might try these: they are pretty close to the same size.

https://a.co/d/0Xn9bBE

 

[subzali]

You wrote "no evidence of a blown head gasket" what do you mean? it has water on a piston.. You didn't run it for long blown so you probably wouldnt get the steam cleaning effect. Is the oil still clean? you could send it out if it looks clean but that takes time.

The water drained down from the spark plug hole when I pulled the plug out.

 

[60wag]

Did the radiator fail? Where did the coolant that soaked the hood liner comer from?

 

[subzali]

Did the radiator fail? Where did the coolant that soaked the hood liner comer from?

Yes. So we did Hackett Gulch, camped, and then next day did China Wall and Twin Cone. After Twin Cone when I was airing up back at Kenosha Pass I noticed the radiator was dripping. It appeared to be coming from the horizontal seam at the bottom of the top tank. Coming home at Conifer is when it went to red and steam came pouring out.

I mean maybe the head gasket is fine? But I doubt it because we let it cool off for 45 minutes from >260 back down to 200. I started it up to drive to a safer parking spot and within 30 seconds the temp had spiked to 230 again. So to me that seemed to indicate that the combustion chambers had a pathway to the water jacket and temp sensor.

Or maybe something else failed. Maybe it’s worth a leakdown to see.

 

[rover67]

Ohhh i see.

So the coolant came out of the system through the radiator crack... Maybe the restart temp spike was due to an air pocket? See if you can fill it with water purge it, and see how it goes? I mean i know the rad will leak again but you could verify it runs OK with some water. Either way you need a radiator, so you could swap that purge the air well and drive it. Theres probably a ton of air in the block though

 

[Rzeppa]

If you want to get rid of water in a cylinder why not just blast it with compressed air through the spark plug hole?

 

[60wag]

Also with the rad leaking, it won't build pressure and will boil at a lower temp. I'd clean it up, put a new rad in it and run it up to temp. A leak down test would be good but the cooling system has to closed to do it.

 

[subzali]

If you want to get rid of water in a cylinder why not just blast it with compressed air through the spark plug hole?

I tried that. Had to go to Home Depot to get an air Chuck with a long tube. Tube is still not long enough to reach to the spark plug hole because of the OHC arrangement.

Also tried vacuuming but was needing to get a straw to tape on to my vacuum attachment so I could get it down into the Cyl.

Ended up taping a paper towel to the end of a dowel and dabbing up what I could.

See what I mean about forest for trees? Spent a bunch of time trying different methods to deal with this one little probably non-issue. Oh well

 

[RicardoJM]

I’m with 60Wag - replace the radiator, fill with water and see where you are at. Earlier this summer my niece’s Solara radiator blew on I25. She limped it to a safe spot off the highway, it would not start back up. Towed it to the shop, pu a new radiator in, filled with water - ran it to temp for a couple of hours. Ran it a couple of more weeks for good measure then drained the radiator and block. Filled with new Toyota coolant and all is well. I was certain there was more severe damage - but it was that simple.

 

[subzali]

Compression test results are in. Wish it was better news.

 

[Corbet]

Well I don’t think there was ever a doubt the HG failed. Looks like just one spot so that seems like a positive to me. Pull the head do some work there if needed. My ARP stud and Cometic HG info is in my engine build thread.

 

[subzali]

FSM has 128 psi minimum cylinder pressure and 14 psi max delta between cylinders. Looks like I’m right at those limits. Rebuild?