Possible Blown Head Gasket?

[racer_x_one]

Thats water vaporizing from the oil.that why i suggested the warm ups and cool downs.did you get a new pcv valve? I take and warm it up and shut it off and stick my vac in the fill hole and try and suck all that steam out.you wont get that much blow bye to the point of seeing it.glad she fired right up,just take it easy for a bit and double check those lower bolts

No I didn't get one yet. I havn't been out yet since it's been running. I've just been doing the warm up and cool down and oil changes. When I do get out, sometime tomorrow I'm gonna pick up a PVC, rad cap and a few other things.

Thanks again for following my thread and for all your help and to the others who have posted I really appriciate it.

 

[jd4242]

No problem man.glad shes up and running again

 

[mr cribb]

I dunno if I missed it or not, did you get new heads or just repair the old ones?

Glad she's running again!

 

[jd4242]

Yes I did from ebay as per your suggestion. Thanks again.

i think he went with 95tm from engine quest,page 4 post 65

 

[racer_x_one]

I dunno if I missed it or not, did you get new heads or just repair the old ones?

Glad she's running again!

I got new 95tm's. So far so good. Tomorrow I'll be taking her out for a test drive.

 

[mr cribb]

Let us know... that's my idea when I HAVE to get to that point.... knock on wood my old bat runs fine for now... 208k and going.

I'm curious to know if the head upgrade made anymore power.... although anything is bound to help over what you had.

 

[jd4242]

Let us know... that's my idea when I HAVE to get to that point.... knock on wood my old bat runs fine for now... 208k and going.

I'm curious to know if the head upgrade made anymore power.... although anything is bound to help over what you had.

it will increase power and efficiency by about 10%.tom morana advertises a 25-30 hp gain but i would say thats at the crank,i would say 15-20 at the ground but should really help the mpg

 

[racer_x_one]

Let us know... that's my idea when I HAVE to get to that point.... knock on wood my old bat runs fine for now... 208k and going.

I'm curious to know if the head upgrade made anymore power.... although anything is bound to help over what you had.

Ya I'm interested/excited to see what kind of power increase there will be and how it's going to run in general. The strange thing is despite the condition it was in up to this point (aside from the classic symptoms you would normaly observe) it ran like a champ you would never of thought it had anything wrong with it (drivability wise, feel, sound, power, etc), weird huh...

 

[racer_x_one]

it will increase power and efficiency by about 10%.tom morana advertises a 25-30 hp gain but i would say thats at the crank,i would say 15-20 at the ground but should really help the mpg

That's another thing I'm interested to see because mine sucked up to this point, 12mpg city.

 

[jd4242]

Ya I'm interested/excited to see what kind of power increase there will be and how it's going to run in general. The strange thing is despite the condition it was in up to this point (aside from the classic symptoms you would normaly observe) it ran like a champ you would never of thought it had anything wrong with it (drivability wise, feel, sound, power, etc), weird huh...

i mean, dont think its going to be head jolting increases but when i went from 90tm heads to my 95tm(stock ones before p+p and 422 cam)i noticed a difference

 

[mr cribb]

Ya I'm interested/excited to see what kind of power increase there will be and how it's going to run in general. The strange thing is despite the condition it was in up to this point (aside from the classic symptoms you would normaly observe) it ran like a champ you would never of thought it had anything wrong with it (drivability wise, feel, sound, power, etc), weird huh...

yeah I feel a sputter in mine every once in a while.... I just figure it's an nothing serious.... otherwise I'd have more warning.

 

[racer_x_one]

Well she's running good and definatly has a little more pep in her step. Nothing break neck as jd says but she deffinatly pulls hills better and passes better with no ping or pre det.

So for anyone replacing therir heads on a first gen or a block with first gen low dish pistons I recommend 95tm or 97tm heads.

I'd just like to add in retrospect (clip from my OP)...

I know you realy dont know till you take it apart. But if guys who have seen it before could give me an educated guess it would help. This is my only car and I cant afford to put any more money into that I dont have to. I.E. if you think its more likely to be the head than Im not going to bother. Its running for now and if thats the case I'll just start looking for something else for now.

what was I thinking...:scratch:

 

[jd4242]

Hahah yea dont we all start by thinking that!!good to hear she runs good and hopefully you get a couple extra mpg out of her

 

[mr cribb]

Glad you got her going again.... so you're running 87 octane?

Maybe it's how JD has his engine built as to why his needs better fuel?

 

[jd4242]

Glad you got her going again.... so you're running 87 octane?

Maybe it's how JD has his engine built as to why his needs better fuel?

Not a problem. I've actualy been running high octane for a while now. When I would run low octane it would knock and ping especialy under load and running higher octane alleviated that and I got slightly better mpg. I'm excited to see how it runs with the 95's...

Higher the compression higher the octane is needed.i run 93 but im higher in compression,ive ran 87 before and it ran and i didnt hear any excessive pinging but it did run like crap.if your have 10:1 i would run atleast 89,better safe than sorry

 

[racer_x_one]

Ya I've been running the higher octane for a while now.

One thing I forgot to mention...My temp gauge morphed into a windsheild wiper. It fluctuates from below the N to the L and back again. It does this while I'm driving and when I'm stoped it fluctuates from below the N to the R.

Now I've read several threads on this and because I just replaced my heads and gaskets I'm assuming it's either air in the system, water pump going or a bad fan clutch. I wanted to put a new water pump in while i was in there just couldn't afford to at the time. I'll tackle these one at a time as money permites.

 

[jd4242]

Could be a bad ground or conection

 

[mr cribb]

The only time mine did this the heater core was screwed up. This may have nothing to do with what you just did, but it's an idea.

 

[racer_x_one]

Could be a bad ground or conection

The only time mine did this the heater core was screwed up. This may have nothing to do with what you just did, but it's an idea.

I will check into both of these although I am getting heat. I didn't think about it but I'll have to check if the heat is varying with the fluctuations of the gauge.

 

[jd4242]

I would give it a couple days and just see if it was air bubbles