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Possible head gasket leak

Manimalmother
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  • 9 months later...
Manimalmother

Manimalmother

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Well I put this off for a while but started smelling coolant this morning in the drop off line at my kids school.  I had to run into work without looking at it but came out at lunch to a pretty good puddle under the truck.  Pretty sure it's coming from the back side of the head.  I called an engine machine shop in town that quoted me $450 to clean, inspect, and deck the head.  Does this seem about right or does it seem high?  They do not offer O-ringing but send stuff to a shop that does.

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Manimalmother

Manimalmother

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The guy I'm using does all the engine machine work for the counties fire apparatus and heavy equipment.  He quoted $400-$450 for clean, inspect, deck, and as he put it a "valve job".  Does not include gasket.  I will be buying the gasket and the studs seperately.  This is also me pulling the head.

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dripley

dripley

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Just now, Manimalmother said:

The guy I'm using does all the engine machine work for the counties fire apparatus and heavy equipment.  He quoted $400-$450 for clean, inspect, deck, and as he put it a "valve job".  Does not include gasket.  I will be buying the gasket and the studs seperately.  This is also me pulling the head.

Thats about the same as I paid for the work you describe in Hickory. No valave guides either. Mine were still good. 25k miles or so later and she still running fine.

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Manimalmother

Manimalmother

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3 minutes ago, Mopar1973Man said:

Yup.. Same here I did the head pull myself and freighted it to a machine shop in Caldwell, ID. Then he did his magic in about 3 days. The head studs and gaskets came from DAP. Even got checked for cracks. 

 

Mike what is your arp headstud torque procedure?

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  • 3 weeks later...
Dieselfuture

Dieselfuture

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8 hours ago, Manimalmother said:

but the small freeze plug on the backside of the block had a pinhole in it pissing coolant out

I was told by more than one source that all freeze plugs on the head are stainless steel, I do not know that for a fact. When I did my HG my machine shop told me they don't generally remove freeze plugs on these heads because sometimes they're not easy to sit back in. Not sure if corrosive coolant ca eat a whole through one of them.

 

I think this may be same problem you got.

 

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Manimalmother

Manimalmother

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32 minutes ago, Dieselfuture said:

I was told by more than one source that all freeze plugs on the head are stainless steel, I do not know that for a fact. When I did my HG my machine shop told me they don't generally remove freeze plugs on these heads because sometimes they're not easy to sit back in. Not sure if corrosive coolant ca eat a whole through one of them.

 

I think this may be same problem you got.

 

 

That's the exact plug that's problematic on mine.  Going to see what the machine shop says about it.  

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AH64ID

AH64ID

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10 hours ago, 015point9 said:

After putting the head back on after  couple thousand miles or so are you supposed to double-check those ARP bolts?  Just wondering.

 

As stated it is not required.. thou many do it and get some decent movement out of them. When I did mine it was all per the install instructions. I then re-torqued them and got movement on all of them and not with a hot engine. This was even with an already compressed HG and 1 bolt at a time. 

 

Our local engine builder also always does a retoruqe after a couple drive cycles and gets movement. 

 

Even ARP stats that they might be necessary depending on the headgasket used. At higher than stock clamping force it's not uncommon to get uneven clamping at first that is then fixed with a re-torque. 

 

So you may not need to, but it also may not hurt. It doesn't take long. At the end of the day if you're not pushing the limits of the HG or studs then it likely won't make a longevity difference, but again it doesn't hurt it either. 

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Manimalmother

Manimalmother

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7 minutes ago, Dieselfuture said:

PO put in a1 studs in mine, when I did my HG I just cleaned thing up and didn't need to bottom tap. I did ran a tap down the threads and seemed I was pulling too much material out so I stopped and just used carb cleaner and compressed air and shopvac to clean thing up. 

 

I happened to have an M12x1.75 bottoming tap at work and used it.  It did not remove any material until the bottoms of the holes.  Actually went most of the way in with fingers, then put the handle on.  I used axle grease on the tap to catch most of the chips.

 

I am also going to remove in freeze plugs in the top of my head and tap the holes for M24 plugs.  I've only ever heard of them blowing out on high revving high HP trucks but I figure it's cheap insurance.  

 

The small .375 external freeze plugs are also being removed and tapped 1/8"NPT for brass plugs.

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Manimalmother

Manimalmother

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So the machine shop just called me and said they can't finish the head.  He said that 16 of the valve guides are bad and need to be replaced.  He recommended another shop in Charlotte that has equipment large enough to do it.  Looked them up and they have terrible reviews.  Unsure what to do at this point.

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