Can a 455 have a propensity to overheat on the highway................. especially on hot days ................and contaminate the coolant if the driver side front bottom short head bolt is not torqued to 85 ft.lbs? Say it was only at 25-30 foot pounds?
Thanks
joepenoso


PS I was chasing an overheating problem at highway speeds and hope this was the cause. Sure hate to go through all this and find out it's still there

 

The concern is contaminated coolant + the overheat. What is the coolant contaminated with? Exhaust or oil? Is there any contamination in your oil? What does the spark plug look like for that cylinder, and bank?

 

If I'm not mistaken the head bolts don't go into the coolant passages. If that's your question.
Of course having it at 25-30 pounds might cause the head gasket to leak in that area.

 

The head gasket shows no signs of blowing to me. The coolant contamination doesn't seem like oil.
joepenoso

 

What does it seem like?

 

There are chemical test kit you can get from napa think like fifty bucks to test coolant .
How old is your radator it could have restriction from build up . Also what work has the motor had is the rad big enough to cool properly I would rule out clutch fan most of the time those cause over heating at idle but cool while driving , but never say never

 

I'm wondering why you have (only) one head bolt torqued to 25 -30 lb/ft????

 

Previous owner loosened the short front head bolt to attach the Ground from the battery. not having owned Olds before I assumed that was normal
joepenoso

 

What's normal is to bolt the ground cable to the front of the head where there is a 3/8 x 16 bolt hole. No need to use the head bolt.

 

I tried to keep the story short.....................the heads were marked "H" but when checking casting numbers they were really "J". The cable was placed there to cover up the shoddy reproduced fraud numbers.
I replaced the J's with exhaust crossover filled, pocket ported, exhaust dividers separated and equalized at the exit "C" heads. Looking at the (Steel shim) head gaskets I found nothing wrong............... and replacing ( New 40 year old OEM steel shim) and the aftermarket 5 blade cast iron water pump with a 7 blade aluminum German (GHB)owned Japanese manufactured water pump and Chinese aluminum radiator I never found anything unusual.
The overheating was the reason I started to take it apart and I am now replacing the stock rockers with Harland Sharp#5001 rollers. it's a MAW since I got a package deal with a lot of aftermarket parts included with the heads. It's a wonder if it's got any American parts in it. The new bumpers on it say "Made in Taiwan". I have 3 young kids under 9 years old and an angry wife so I can't make progress as fast as some others on here
Thanks
joepenoso

 

I have a 66 Cutlass with a 330. I had that problem and the reason was if you replace a standard water pump with a HD the pulleys need to be changed too. Using the correct pulleys give you 100 RPM more at the pump which the HD pump needs to properly move the coolant. That was what fixed my car.

 

Both upper and lower pulleys have 3 rows and the water pump thickness for both is about 6 inch so they are both the same
joepenoso