Alright well while I was waiting for my dad to come over to my house and help me with the bumpers on my cutlass ., I decided to pull the plugs out of the engine and take a look. Well I found coolant in a few cylinders. The odd part is it ran perfectly fine last summer. The last time I fired it up it started to smoke a little. Im not sure of weather affects it but this last winter was brutal cold and I noticed my intake and water pump gaskets started to leak. They never did. Im curious about if the contraction rate of the metal messed with the sealing surfaces. I hope these pics help. Im going to clean the block and check the block for straightness same for the heads. If all I have to do is add new gaskets that's great if not then im up **** creek . I did ask a few buds and got a few responses that threw caution to the wind. I used the mr gasket ultra seals . Im not 100 percent sure if the needed to be re torqued or not. I guess im looking for possibilities as to what could have caused this. All the carbon marks on the gaskets where towards the intake side. Now I know it could have been a bad tq. reading , bad deck surface or bad gasket as I was also told this . The deck surface would make sense since the mr gasket ultra seals have a steel side and a composite side and the steel needs a much smoother surface to seal . Now here is a possibility did I install them wrong . I put the steel side on the block with the copper sealant as the instructions directed. I hope its just a bad gasket. Im going to have the block probably looked at. I think its obvious in the pics where the leak was so its easy to rule out bad block/ heads. Any input is appreciated. Im not looking to avoid fixing it right I just need opinions on how to avoid and what went wrong. I know the felpros are much more forgiving on the sealing surface than the ultra seals I have some here in the parts bin.

here you can see the carbon trail past the bore sealing surface on the left side of the pic.




This one is obvious.

 

I blew a set of Corteco .040" after 8 years, 307 heads on a 76 350. Pretty sure it blew between 3 and 5 a few months back, was down on power. I had coolant only good to -30 and we had -40 wind chill at the end of March. I blew at the the #5 cooling jacket. They are the same gaskets as the Ultraseals, mine were marked which side went up. I bought the last two Corteco gaskets from Rock Auto for cheap, installed dry like last time.

 

It sure does look like failed sealing from coolant passage to combustion area.

 

So did you have either of the expected cooling system symptoms of that leak - either the cooling system becoming pressurized or bubbling, or being unable to hold pressure?

- Eric

 

Odd. Looks like you've been occaisionall lifting the head from preignition or spark knock. I'd replace the head bolts too.

 

It held pressure what seemed to be normal . I regularly check all that stuff. Even when I pulled it out when I took the cap off it had that little pffff sound so it held pressure or seemed to but it didn't seem to be pressurizing under running conditions . I'm going to take the engine apart. Inspect the bearings and stuff just because and I'm going to clean the deck surface and check it for straightness and go from there. This had to happen late in the fall. I did over heat it one but only got up to 250 ish and I shut it down fast it didn't boil over. Then the only other times I fired it up where thanksgiving last year and then in the spring which is when I noticed white smoke but not an alarming rate and it went away.

 

Smitty what are the symptoms of pre ignition besides the knock sounds . It ran fine pulled strong through the rpms and didn't stumble at all. I do have fresh head bolts here. If I was lifting the head what else should I look at as far as further damage. The pistons don't seem to have any damage and I wasn't running insane timing if anything I was holding it back some. I drove with this engine all last summer and it didn't seem to miss a beat I just want to make sure that I did not hurt anything or will in the future.

 

Makes sense. I am pretty sure it was happening to me. I over torqued the knock sensor last time, didn't realize it can effect the reading. I made sure it was installed at 14 ft lbs, so far it is fine.

 

So if I was experiencing spark knock what would be the cause. I have 10 to 1 compression , there is no areas that would create hot spots.

 

That wouldn't matter as wind chill relates to evaporative cooling (as in human skin) and your block would not experience that.

 

But would the wind chill make the block contract enough to break the seal . Anywho my point being is it happened its either a bad gasket / sealing surface then once I fired it up in the spring it pushed exhaust past the sealing surface. Like I mentioned my intake cooling passages , and water pump started to seep once the temps dropped. They had never previously leaked before. If it was spark knock , pre ignition I would like someones take on the process because I don't know how it was possible so I need a bit more info . I researched it and based on what I read it does not sound like that was my issue so Im thinking faulty head gaskets . Could a bad distributor cause pre ignition or is it strictly a heat induced process I.E. hot spot or too much compression pre igniting the fuel mixture on its way up to the end of its compression stroke. All my pistons looked good. I would assume if I experience pre ignition I would see some jagged edges that would induce it or some for of damage marks on the pistons.

 

well I took half of it apart and so far I see no bearing damage. I would assume if I had spark knock there would be some pre mature bearing wear/failure markings. I checked the deck surface and its square. Im checking the heads tomorrow. I think I just had crappy head gaskets or I installed them incorrectly or over did the copper spray or something along those lines. Im going to finish inspecting the engine and and clean some things up and re assemble with new gaskets (fel pro ) and I think I should be fine . I did find a very informative page on pre ignition and out of all places from a radiator web page. It explained a list of many little things that could cause pre ignition like steam pockets in the cooling system stuff like that. Im also going to take smitty's advice and get new head bolts. Im probably going to pop for the arp head bolts and play it safe. It also hit me my head bolts might just be stretched I ran those head bolts on 2 different engines and I pulled them from a 70 350 if I remembered right so I think that might play a roll in possibly not having enough clamping force to properly keep things together.

 

Ok so I made the drive to rocket racing yesterday. My head gasket issue was the tip on a small iceberg. I must have done something right to get some good karma because once I tore the engine apart everything looked good until I hit the cam bearings and cam. First off it did not want to come out and the bearing material looked like it was oozing out ., I had to use my slide hammer to bump it out. I talked to a few engine builders I pm'd smitty. I tried to get a good handle on the issue as this is a really good learning point. Well I brought my block to Rocket racing and I guess I dodged a big bullet. We think the cam has run out and the subsequent damage was it was starting to kill the bearings. I had 3 different engine builders tell me the possibility of run out in a cam. So we popped the bearings out and put new ones in . We also talked about my head gasket issue and it was confirmed that the mr gasket ultra seals with the shim on one side and composite on one side are just junk ! John told me run the fel pros and don't looks back. Im not making that mistake twice . Although thanks to the head gasket failing I caught an issue that possibly would have ate up 2500 dollars worth of bottom end work and parts. Im definitely not ashamed of this I couldn't have gotten luckier on finding this issue. This engine made absolutely no noise had perfect oil psi there was no metal debris . I will say this to guys who build their own stuff and run it hard. Pull it out when there is down time because 180 dollars worth of parts and work saved me thousands. Now I just hope once we check the cam that it has run out that way I can have the mfg. replace it . I did buy a new timing set from RRP very nice set does not compare to the comp and edelbrock chains . I broke the timing trying to remove the cam. Im doing block prep work tomorrow and lots of cleaning of parts then it goes back together hopefully this time with out hic ups down the road.