Inliners International Forums General Discussion Engines blown head gasket, crankcase filled with coolant

have a 292 with about 20k since rebuild. heater core leaked, ran hot and a week later, developed a miss. had about a gallon of coolant in the oil and found a few copper specs in the filter. while i am certainly not anxious to rebuild it again, i would much rather do it now than in the middle of the season. pulling the head is more work than pulling the entire engine. i can remove the pan while engine is still in, plan to inspect a couple rods/mains but cant touch the cam bearings unless i pull the motor. looking for thoughts/advice on either milling the head and installing new bearings on without turning the crank or just bighting the bullet and take the entire engine to the machine shop with a bag of money.

If it were me, First having drained the coolant and oil refill the crankcase with diesel and run the engine for a few minutes to absorb the remaining coolant then drain.I would then pull the head and have it checked for flatness or damage with a machinist's straight edge and checked for cracks with dye penetrant or magnaflux. Your friendly machinist should be willing to help here. Surface head only if needed. Reassemble, refill and go with it hoping for the best. I've also done quickie crack checking by spraying with brake clean and wiping off. If there's a crack you'll see brake clean bleeding out of the crack.

looks like i am heading to the machine shop with a bag of money. already flushed the block with diesel last night, first thing i did. pulled one rod bearing and that was enough! bearing is toast and minute scratches in the crank. i put it back together and yanked the engine out. machine shop can tear it down monday.

Yeah antifreeze will eat up the bearings fairly fast. If it had been just water you may??? have skimmed by on the bearing part.

depending on when it actually got into the oil, somewhere between 5 and 20 miles with mostly water, 1/4 antifreeze or less.

i have tore down blown motors with less damage!! every bearing except the rear main had many deep scratches, 4 cam lobes gone, others not far behind, lifters rounded out, valves and seats junk, head had multiple warps of .007. still cant beleive so much damage in such a short time!

DAMN! Keep us posted on the rebuild.

nothing new, waiting on parts before they go any farther. i did find that my last rebuild wasnt what i paid for. block was to be zero decked, he claimed it was .032 and took off .030, yet it still measured .024! i wanted .030 off the head, he claimed he took .012 as he was concerned about compression ratio? head cc'd at 73.5 so who knows what he actually took. i bought 9:1 pistons hoping to squeeze 9.5 or better out of it, it came out to 8.99! he never installed hardened seats and valves were recessed pretty far into the head. he also claimed to "clean up" the ports but thankfully, he never touched that. he went out of business shortly after he built mine.

(Insert sarcasm font) Wow, what a stand-up guy he is!

No sarcasm now... What a mess that engine was/is. And to think, if it was built well, it would still be running, and running well. Very frustrating indeed. Are you going to do most of the work yourself this time around? Meaning the assembly, that way you can see what was done to the block, head and internals.

no, having it built. rather than take a bag of money to just anyone, i am taking two bags of money to the best in the area. while i am quite capable of turning a torque wrench, it doesnt seam practical to save such a small amount when they can assemble it and catch all the things i might overlook. i am able to inspect everything as they go. they are only 2 miles from my shop, i was suprised to even get in but they found the time. i did mention i was paying in cash so maybe that helped.