Bad, bad day.. (head gasket)
 

Well I drive the stang to my friend's house today so I can get his distributor wrench. After RETARDING the timing to 14-15 degrees (previous idiot owner), I decided to kick it back to stock 10 degrees so I can run piss gas for now and save cash because I'm BROKE. So we set it, and I shut the car off, and I hear a sound..like RUSHING WATER..like pints and pints of water flowing...confused, I stick my head in, and hear PSSSST and see a shot of water vapor shoot out of the passenger side area around the valve cover, in the back. Then, 10 seconds later, psst...a small one..and then several drip and vaporize sounds for the next minute. Haven't been able to check my radiator cause the engine was warm, but I'm checking it tomorrow. Been meaning to flush the system because it's basically all water, virtually no antifreeze, and last I popped the cap, there's CRAP floating on the surface of the water....looks like yogurt. It's NOT black though...doesn't look like oil, looks like freakin brown/tan cottage cheese. But yeah...is there anything that this could be BESIDES a blown head gasket? Idle is fine, car runs decent except every time I give it throttle below 1000 rpms it has a nasty misfire. Still runs very cold...in what I'd guesstimate to be the 170-180 degree range. Thanks guys...wish me luck... I owe well over $3000 to my dad, which is why I'm selling my other car...I have no money. I can't afford repairs, and he could probably give me the money but it'd put him in a bad hole. :(

Blown Head Gasket.....
 

Nixon1.....Going by your nicely done description of your problem, I seriously doubt its a blown head gasket, your friend typically would have had to either seriously overheated the motor and he didn't tell you (happens to me all the time, embarrasment = lies), or something drastic, maybe a billion miles or something, ANYWAY, I suspect a hose leak, especially since you say you saw VAPOR, well somethings hot as hell home boy!

Maybe a gasket failure too, but my GUT instinct tells me something simple here.....

Good luck, Camaro's suck!

Jay

Are any of the hoses rear, passenger side coolant hoses? By the way...if it's not head gasket though, what would explain the MUCK in my radiator? As I said, the car runs ice cold..but I HAVE ran it high rpms several times..once I hit 6500, WELL into the redline..yeah, I almost sh*t my pants there.... But yeah about the vapor..I can't see a vapor stream coming from a head gasket..doesn't seem to make sense to me..wouldn't think it'd be pressurized like that. I dunno..this is confusing.

You need to check for oil in the water, and/or coolant in the oil.

It also could be just your heater hoses at the firewall, they are the 2 fairly short hoses that go down behind the throttle body area and connect to the black heater lines there. If you have a leak there, then be VERY careful when replacing those lines because they are connected to the heatercore (the 2 lines sticking out the firewall) and they can break very easily.

Next thing I suggest doing is going to autozone and renting their cooling system pressure tester. You hook it to where your radiator cap goes (with the engine off), pump it to 16psi or so, and this way you can listen and look for leaks without the coolant being hot, and no moving engine parts to rip your fingers off.

They rent tools like this for a fully returned deposit, and this one is very useful in times like this.

do this next, and let us know where its coming from

good luck

Well first, I mistyped in the first one..couldnt remember. There is BLACK/BROWN MUCK floating in my radiator...it's disgusting. Haven't checked my oil yet for coolant. My heater core is not connected...the 2 tubes from the heater core have no hoses going to them, and there's a little bypass job done under there..hoses and plugged fittings here and there. One thing is plugged with a screw..don't even know what the hell it is, I forget.

Now..cooling system pressure tester you say? Well damn, that sounds extremely convenient..I'll have to check this out. Autozone is like 5 mins from home or less..it's great.

brown stuff in your radiator almost always means a blown head gasket, unless the guy put water into the oil fill, thinking it was for the radiator... :(

a couple of other things you can check are:

1) pull one of the valve cover gaskets, preferably the one for the head for the side that you saw the water come from. if you see the same brown stuff, then you have a bad head gasket.

2) do a compression test on the motor. if one of them is much lower than the others, than that cylinder is most likely leaking into your water passage.

So you have to pull a valve cover in order to do a compression test for a bad head gasket??
Also, just for my own information..with a blown head gasket, what about that would cause the engine to misfire in low rpms only? (Less than 1000)

no, you don't have to pull the valve cover to check compression... you do that by unscrewing each spark plug and checking that cylinder's compression one at a time... what i meant was that, if you pulled the one valve cover and saw the same brown junk, you would know that you had a problem...

as far as a misfire is concerned, if that cylinder was in bad enough shape (compression wise) from a blown head gasket, then it probably wouldn't fire...

and then there's the final test...

make sure that your radiator is up to the correct level, leave the radiator cap of, and spin over the engine (you might want to pull the coil wire so it won't actually start). if water shoots out of the radiator, then you know for certain that you have a blown head gasket.

Pull all your plugs, and roll the motor over. The two holes the water comes flying out of is where the head gasket is blown. If it is the headgaskets, there will be water in the cylinders. This way you will at least know which side it is on.

Ron

I know for sure it's the passenger side because about 10 secs after I shut the car off, looking under the hood, the passenger side below the valve cover, in the back, shot out very pressurized water vapor...twice.

So..what you're saying is..disconnect the coil, and when the engine is cold pop the rad cap and use a ratchet to turn the crank...and the water level in the radiator will rise or overflow if the head gasket is blown? Am I reading that right?

I think he means, pull the coil wire, and crank the car with the key, this way the car wont start, but you need some heavy cranking power tp push that compression into your coolant. It'll also SUCK the coolant out on the intake stroke I would imagine.. so I guess the idea is you'd see SOMETHING happen in the radiator, weather the coolant went up or down.
-as

Unless of course the cylinder is full of water...with the piston at btc. Then it wont turn over at all, and could result in other damage.

Ron

So..what you're saying is..disconnect the coil, and when the engine is cold pop the rad cap and use a ratchet to turn the crank...and the water level in the radiator will rise or overflow if the head gasket is blown? Am I reading that right? [/B][/QUOTE]


no, crank the engine like you normally would, only without the coil connected... you will see coolant shoot straight out of the radiator... hard to miss it!

Maybe I will tomorrow..but..I see what you're saying, but I don't get how that works...what would make that happen?

BTW-Car is going into shop tomorrow afternoon for FULL look-over, inspection, diagnostics..the works..the guy was recommended by several shops including the local drag racing equipment shop...over the phone he says he doubts it's my head gasket..says the car would run like holy hell with it blown, which it doesn't. Can any of you confirm or deny that? Misses below 1000 rpms but has a smooth idle and purrs like a kitten all the way up the powerband.

well there's a couple things that can happen with a head gasket you can blow it between cylindars, you can blow it from a water jacket towards the cylindar or you can blow from a water jacket out the side of the head.
My girlfriends 4 cyl dodge shadow blew out the side , so it woudl leak coolant all over, but it ran fine and didnt even smoke.

so the cranking method MAYNOT show a head gasket problem if you're not getting compression into the coolant...

but if you are... when your piston comes up, it'll compress that air, it'll want to come out anywhere it can.. and if the gasket is blown out, it'll leak out that hole and get into the coolant system and it will displace coolant... the coolant will only have one place to go ... out your rad cap.

Thats BS You couls have a blown head gasket and the car still running fine. We have a car that we spray. It had a blown head gasket the last couple of races and it still ran real good. It was only off a couple of tens and a couple of MPH. I would say it's probably a head gasket. I had a bad one and it had a pressure mist the same way yours does.

Either way let us know when you find out.

I will...I'm expecting a phone call tonight telling me exactly what's wrong, but I completely expect to hear a blown head gasket, in which case, I'll be banging my head on the table....

Well good news and bad news. Here's what we were told: Head gasket is fine. Never leaked. Bad things:
*#8 cylinder is down to 125 in compression, all 7 others are good (between 155 and 160)
*4 fuel injectors are shorted and dumping fuel
*Coolant temp sensor malfunctioning, causing car to run rich..I think he said it was sticking in choke mode..
*Needs t-stat/switch
*IAC is screwy
*Throttle Position Sensor is bad, checked it with a voltmeter
*Needs various drivetrain parts
*Differential cover is leaking
*Needs u-joints
*Lower control arms and bushings
*Harmonic balancer is shot, needs to be replaced right away
*Radiator mounted incorrectly

Furthermore..it doesn't have a cam in it..previous owner lied..motor is all stock, and he actually knew the owner of the car previously, the one before the guy I bought it off of, which also lived in or very near my city, and he said the car was nitroused (hence the safety-covered toggle switch near shifter)

That's all for now.. Dad is fronting me all the money so it's gonna be repaired in a few weeks...god I'm gonna owe him so much.. Very rough estimate: $1000
Not bad eh?? Let's hope it stays that low....

OK is it just me or did I miss the reason the coolant was shooting out from the back of your head:confused:

No it wasn't just you...guy never said why..he said he didn't know, thought it might've been oil smoking up hitting the manifold..who knows..but he said he ran it for almost 2 hours straight and it never leaked a drop of coolant...and he has tiled floors too, so... I said the same thing... :confused:

Somethng seems fishy man. You said you saw pressurized water vapor shooting out of the back of the head right? So now you bring the guy the car and he tells you a whole bunch of stuff that is supposedly wrong with your car, but he doesnt know about the coolant? I dont know man, make sure you dont get hosed.

Yeah I know it sounds fishy as hell to me too..but this guy has worked on countless Mustangs in the city, he was recommended by the local drag shop, and a friend of mine, Wes, is getting advice and help from this guy to build his new 302......so.... Everyone claims he's a ******* genius or something....

Yeah he might be smart enough to cheat people out of their money too...:eek:

well you can do almost all of that stuff easily yourself and save alot of money... but lets be honest, none of those things are what you took it in for... you could pay him for his hour of diagnostics and then go fix everything yourself...
=as

Thing is, my dad's in control of the money, and he doesn't trust me.....

I'm gonna see if I can get him to not pay the guy for the TPS, IAC, harmonic balancer, and maybe the coolant temp sensor....that's probably as far as I can push it with him though.. He thinks I'm incompetent or something and would rather pay enormous amounts of money so it's done 'the right way'...just like my differential servicing was done 'the right way'....(trans shop replaced gear lube and friction modifier and put back on the BENT cover with a new gasket..naturally the bent cover won't seal so I'm leaking rear end fluid pretty substantially. Maybe I'll get a chrome one.....) :mad:

wow
 

You probably already posted this, but is your check engine light on? Did you read the codes? Man, I think this guy is B/Sing you BIG TIME! All of those things are wrong with your car?? I seriously doubt it. It's a shame your Dad doesn't trust you to work on your own car. He might shell out all this money and you could still have problems with your Mustang. The mechanic might want to keep you coming back. Many of the things this guy stated were wrong with your car...are popular things that any mechanic could (& will) lie about. You should have him prove that those things are bad. Have him show you. Check the TPS yourself, and the radiator being incorrectly mounted?? I'm sure that can be easily fixed...it's just a radiator man. And what's he going to do with the #8 cylinder to bring it back to life? New rings...a valve?? You need to make sure you (& your Dad) aren't getting taken to the cleaners here. Personally, I'd take it somewhere else...& get a 2nd opinion.... :p

Re: wow
 

Always a good idea especially when he's saying that mush **** is wrong. :confused:

Well my dad's stubborn and there's not a damn thing I can ever convince him to do, so... The mechanic's not going to repair the #8 cylinder whatsoever...leaving that alone. I didnt have time to fiddle with the connector, I was running late, and the night that I was gonna check it, he drove it into the shop before I got back from school. Mechanic said 4 codes were in the computer, 3 of which were meaningless because of all the disabled smog control crap, but one of them was the coolant temp sensor. All I know is..this guy comes highly recommended. He owns, I think it's called Genes Auto or something like that...never met him, never seen him, never seen his shop...my dad's just handled all of it and told me to pay him back in installments once I get a job that's worth a sh*t......... A friend of mine goes there a lot for advice and crap about the 302 he's building to drop into his @ss ugly T-Bird.... The drag shop too, AutoPro Racing, recommended him...

It's possible this guy is just super anal about stuff like this which can be a good thing and a bad thing.. some people want to fix everythign that's wrong.. as opposed to what needs to get done... plus with new customers mechanics generaly arent going to give you special treatment... once you build a relationship with him, he'll start to get a feel for you... and little things he'll bring up but will know how you handle your car
-as

Yeah this guy is anal as hell..I could tell just by talking to him. Supposedly he's owned pretty much nothing but fox bodies, works on them all the time, has a shop frickin FULL of them.... I can see why you'd get anal about things on a fox body when they're all you've owned and worked on for FOREVER....I'd be anal too. Hell, I already am. You should hear me complain sometimes.. 'It bogs down for like a SPLIT second when I give it some gas..it's driving me frickin crazy..I gotta get that fixed'..'It's making this little pop every time I take a turn...I think it's something in the suspension...it's driving me FREAKIN NUTS'

;)