Head Gasket Evaluation (1 Viewer)

landtank · Mar 22, 2004

I had some time today to take a closer look at the head gasket that I replaced on my 1996 LC. It was done as a pre-emptive strike against what I thought was an eminent situation. I found Grey matter in my cooling system and then came to the conclusion it was combustion gasses entering the cooling system that created the sludge and decided the head gasket had to go.

This first pic is of the portion of the gasket at cylinder #5 and #6. If you look closely you'll see that the gasket is deformed on #6. At point A the metal ring that seals the combustion chamber has actually pulled away from the rest of the gasket into the chamber. While at point B the oposite has happened and the gasket has pushed out of the chamber toward the rear of the engine.

landtank · Mar 22, 2004

This next shot is a closeup of A. I backed up the gasket on the scanner with pink paper in an attempt for everyone to see the paper through the gap.

landtank · Mar 22, 2004

This last shot is of point B. the gasket should be straight across at the top and not humped.

landtank · Mar 22, 2004

The amount of distortion is hard to measure but at worst it's between 2 and 3mm.

Robbie has commented that the smaller holes at the water jacket on #6 is to better absorb heat. This would go along with what I think is excessive heat expansion at #6 causing this distortion.

This is only one gasket, but one that hadn't failed yet! FWIW my personal recommendation is to anyone that has the ability to change out their gasket make plans and do it.

Scamper · Mar 22, 2004

[quote author=landtank link=board=2;threadid=13534;start=msg125237#msg125237 date=1079987000]
I found Grey matter in my cooling system and then came to the conclusion it was combustion gasses entering the cooling system that created the sludge and decided the head gasket had to go.[/quote]

Rick - are you suggesting that the grey sludge that people find in their cooling systems is related to potential HG failure? If that's true, then wouldn't a clean cooling system imply a good gasket?

Bennett · Mar 22, 2004

If you suspect your getting cumbustion gases passed the headgasket and into the coolant, take your LC to a smog shop and have them use the sniffer on the coolant to detect hydrocarbons.

ppc · Mar 22, 2004

Here is the first photo with a little brighter more contrast. It shows things up a little better. It looks like the #5 cylinder has some distortion as well

landtank · Mar 22, 2004

It looked to me that #5 was a little distorted as well. After I cut off that section I overlayed on the other piece and it was hard to tell. If it did change it was by a small amount.

I bought my truck with 38k on it. Cooling system was fine and I flushed it at around 60k I think. When the topic would come up I'd take the cap off and would see if there was anything. In January at around 115k it was majorly cantaminated. Figured something had changed and decided to change out the gasket.

I've pulled various engines apart and have never seen anything like this come out of them.

I'm not a college degree holding lab technician. Just a guy who had a contaminated cooling sytem and when I pulled the head found issues with the gasket sealing the #6 combustion chamber. Maybe they aren't connected, all I know for sure is that POS gasket is no longer in my engine.

Riley · Mar 22, 2004

Good work and great pics Rick. It would very interesting to gather data on cooling system sludge vs HG failures and see if there is any relationship between the two.

I guess I've got 20K to 40K miles to hone my skills before this hits me. We need some of this sludge examined and figure out if the HG is the root cause. :banana:

Riley

RavenTai · Mar 22, 2004

nice pics, thanks for showing them, that is pretty large distortion, wonder what caused it? if the metal ring gets distorted enough and stops sealing then the rapid cycling high pressures from the combustion chamber would quickly destroy any sealing power the paper portion of the HG has

Pitbull · Mar 23, 2004

Rick, just wondering before you decided to tear your engine down and replace the headgasket were you seeing a lot of white smoke or a loss in coolant? Just trying to understand why you decided to replace it, since what you did was not easy. I know you mentioned in a early thread that you wanted to get ahead of the curve on some maintainance issues but were you experiencing any outward signs of any failures? Also based on your tear down do you have any idea on mileage est. for failure on different parts that you replaced? Thanks

landtank · Mar 24, 2004

Pitbull,

There were no outward signs of failure that I noticed. Had a Toyota dealer flush my cooling system and they reported some contamination. My gut told me that this was the beginning so I tore into it.

Sometimes the clues to a problem aren't obvious and right out in the open for everyone to see. When I made my decission it was based on a lot of various observations of other people that I felt together indicated imenant HG failure. Not just for me but for everyone. We all know that the HG failure and a contaminated cooling system are connected. It came down to the which came first, the chicken or the egg? Most everyone beleives that the contamination in the cooling system then leads to the HG failure. I theorised that the HG began to fail which in turn contaminated the cooling system which then further aggrivated the HG condition further contaminating the cooling system. This cycle would spiral into a ful blown failure at some point.

I just looked at those scans I posted above and never realised that there a 2 tares in the gasket that lead from the combustion chamber of #6 to each one of the holes in the water jacket above it.

I'll reread the post "thread 3474" as I did write a conclusion in there about what I did and what I found to be worn.

Persoanlly the issues that I see in my head gasket, in my opinion, aren't a HG construction issue. For me it seems that it's an installation issue. I fully expect to be doing this again in another 125k miles. If I could do it all over again, I'd install it differently than how the FSM describes.

Tank · Mar 24, 2004

Riley-

Check with CDan on the test, I seem to remember him telling me what exactly the "sludge" had in it.

Mark

Scamper · Mar 24, 2004

IIRC, someone did do an analysis of the sludge and reported it on the forum. I did a search for "radiator, coolant, sludge, and aluminum" in different combinations, but didn't come up with anything...

landtank · Mar 24, 2004

As far as I know the sludge hasn't been analised. We've talked about it but never have followed through.

Tank · Mar 24, 2004

Crapshack I wish I could remember my conversation with Dan. I DO remember he stated it WASN'T a metallic substance....

LINUS · Mar 24, 2004

[quote author=Scamper link=board=2;threadid=13534;start=msg125248#msg125248 date=1079988226]
Rick - are you suggesting that the grey sludge that people find in their cooling systems is related to potential HG failure? If that's true, then wouldn't a clean cooling system imply a good gasket?
[/quote]

I can't say much about a clean cooling system since I suppose you could just pull coolant into the chamber on the downstroke but not push out anything ala' checkvalve, but I'm in the middle of this myself since I've got steam in my exaust and I pulled ~3 teaspoons of solids out of my cooling system when I drained it. I was pushing raw gas into my cooling system so mine is bad. It may or may not have been a factor, but when I went back to Toyota red coolant last fall I had a powerflush done to clean the system. Then again I just clicked 130K so it was due to fail soon anyhow.

Scamper · Mar 24, 2004

After seeing/reading all this, I think if I did a radiator flush and saw the grey goo, I'd be preparing myself for the Bigelow procedure :doh:

Chalk up another really good reason to do an annual radiator flush/fill--and do it yourself so you can see what comes out.

So Linus, are you planning to pull the head?

Tom

alaskacruiser · Mar 24, 2004

If these head gaskets are slowly losing their seal and warping, couldn't we test this with a cylinder leakdown test? Wouldn't this tell us if we have a potential head gasket problem?

landtank · Mar 24, 2004

By the time you see white smoke the break is so bad that the s*** is travelling in both directions. The combustion pressure is a greater force than the vacuum and will force material into the cooling system long before you will suck coolant into the chamber.

What we need here is another person who realizes the inevitable and is willing to tear down his/her engine prior to the complete failure so we can evalute another gasket and compare it to mine.

B, balls in your court

Head Gasket Evaluation (1 Viewer)

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