[Romer]

Originally Posted by tiorio

C'mon! Who's gonna ask about the condition of the head gasket? Or did I miss something? Wasn't that the whole point?

Thought that was pretty much described above. Classic wear points were developing. Had not failed yet, but wear was evident.

[tiorio]

Originally Posted by Romer

Thought that was pretty much described above. Classic wear points were developing. Had not failed yet, but wear was evident.

Sorry, just re-read your first couple of posts and didn't see anything specific to the HG and specifically to #6 gasket deformation, etc. I'm just still a skeptic on this whole 'head gasket as PM at <200k miles' so I'm curious how bad it was.

[Romer]

Originally Posted by tiorio

Sorry, just re-read your first couple of posts and didn't see anything specific to the HG and specifically to #6 gasket deformation, etc. I'm just still a skeptic on this whole 'head gasket as PM at <200k miles' so I'm curious how bad it was.

Guess your right. I didn't take pictures, but Robbie showed it to me before we threw it out. It matched the other HG's that were or already did go bad. Must have posted that in another thread.

[turbocruiser]

Originally Posted by Romer

Thought that was pretty much described above. Classic wear points were developing. Had not failed yet, but wear was evident.

That's the funny thing, I had the classic catastrophic wear points/failure points (#6 water jackets and fire rings) but I also had failures ALL OVER the thing as evidenced by razor thin seals around all the cylinders' fire rings and almost all of the water jackets (specifically the oval ones that are not reinforced) were swollen and just just just starting to shed a little. The whole thing was structurally starting to fail. It may have lasted ten more miles or it may have lasted ten thousand more miles.

That's the problem; as close as I can tell there is no way to tell what's wrong unless you actually have some symptoms startup. In my case I had no single symptom...I know at all times exactly what my real coolant temp is, I know that with each and every oil sample sent in it came back clean, I know I have no external leaks, I even know at all times what my air/fuel mix is so I could instantly detect if something like internally leaking coolant was leaking enough to effect the mix measured by the o2 sensors. I had no single symptom and yet it was failing for sure.

I think the message is two-pronged: one - I cannot imagine anyone doing this as a PM being sorry they did; IOW I cannot imagine anyone doing this as a PM and being able to say "My gasket was perfectly fine." two - If your strategy is simply to wait til the thing blows then AT LEAST make sure you aggressively address the problem as soon as the symptom starts and IF you start overheating somewhere pull over right away, pump the heat up full force, and shut down as soon as possible. Anyways, my .02$. HTH