johnfharding

Well I got the heads off the car tonight. I didn't see anything majorly wrong with the heads. I haven't had a chance to inspect them thouroughly but I will clean them up and see what I think. The motor seems to have a good deal of sludge build up on the driverside push rods and two of the push rods were so sledged up that they pulled the lifter out of the hole and I now need to go in and take off the lifter valley cover and put them back into place. The cylinders are smooth with no scoring however there is a decent ring ridge at the tops of the cylinders. There is carbon deposit at on the top of each cylinder but other than that it looks o.k. I guess. I haven't tried to remove the broken studs yet but I guess I will try that tomorrow as well. Or I may just take these two ton heads to the machine shop and let them deal with it.

I have had the car on jack stands for a couple weeks now and there is a large puddle of tranny fluid under the car? I'm not sure what thats about. I can't really tell where it came from but I'm guessing either the pan gasket and then run down the transmission to the tail shaft or its coming out of the tail shaft anyway it appears it needs some attention to the seals and gaskets I guess.

I checked into a full engine rebuild and I am estimating that the minimum cost would be 2,500.00 dollars for rebuild kit and machine work. I figure probably in the neighborhood of 400 to 500 dollars to have the heads reworked.

As usual thoughts, ideas, words of wisdom are welcome. As I have no idea at this point which way i'm going to go. The looks of the coolant passages and the nasty sludge build up,, seems as though the engine has missed a few oil changes.

59-59-59

Look at the bright side - its a 53 year old engine. Everything you described sounds like normal wear, except the ultra sludged pushrods. Sounds like a blocked oil return hole in the head. Everything said, it dosent sound too bad actually. While you have the heads off, have the shop magnuflux them and also you may consider putting hardened valve seats in them while they got them.

88 coupe

First they must make sure the cores are rebuildable. Magnaflux is part of that process.

No reason to.

Norm