Some background, my 92 has 302K, the temperature gauge has never moved above half way. A couple weeks ago I drove home, turned off the truck and a couple hours later it would crank but not start. I traced the issue to the distributor/rotor/cap which were all in poor shape. I decided to replace them all due to leaking oil from the O-Ring.
I followed the FSM procedures and installed a new AISIN heavy duty black fan clutch for good measure, and a bunch of vacuum lines which were in poor shape. Buttoned everything up, and set the timing to 7 degress BTDC. Ran like a dream in down and idled nicely. I opened the rad cap to burp the system (had to remove the rear heater core line to remove the valve cover), and after it burped there were no more bubbles in the the system, even when revving the engine a couple times.
So, last weekend I was on a trip to Flaming Gorge and after we started getting into the longer mountain climbs we started to overheat at higher RPMs. The temp gauge never went above the 3/4 mark, certainly never to the red, and only was there for a couple minutes at most. I am aware this is a relative mark, and with an engine this age, could result in a blown HG at any point above normal.
Here's my rub. I took the cruiser into a local mechanic which does a good deal of Cruiser work and I have used them in the past. I asked them to verify the timing, and confirm the new distributor was advancing properly, as that appears to be the most likely reason for overheating at higher RPMs given what I had been messing with.
They did some testing, said my timing was pretty much the mark, but my head gasket was bad, as judged by the gas analyzer machine. I conceive this is totally possible, and requested a compression test. However, I am not convinced the HG caused the overheating, rather the opposite.
This truck never ever overheated, and if the timing was on, this has to be caused by poor timing caused by a malfunctioning distributor? It seems wild to me that this vehicle did not have HG symptoms before, then after repairing a different issue, the HG is instantly bad enough to cause the overheating that has never happened before.
If anyone can give me advice on what to check or verify. If I have to repair the HG, that is what it is, but I am not convinced this was the cause of the issue in the first place.
I followed the FSM procedures and installed a new AISIN heavy duty black fan clutch for good measure, and a bunch of vacuum lines which were in poor shape. Buttoned everything up, and set the timing to 7 degress BTDC. Ran like a dream in down and idled nicely. I opened the rad cap to burp the system (had to remove the rear heater core line to remove the valve cover), and after it burped there were no more bubbles in the the system, even when revving the engine a couple times.
So, last weekend I was on a trip to Flaming Gorge and after we started getting into the longer mountain climbs we started to overheat at higher RPMs. The temp gauge never went above the 3/4 mark, certainly never to the red, and only was there for a couple minutes at most. I am aware this is a relative mark, and with an engine this age, could result in a blown HG at any point above normal.
Here's my rub. I took the cruiser into a local mechanic which does a good deal of Cruiser work and I have used them in the past. I asked them to verify the timing, and confirm the new distributor was advancing properly, as that appears to be the most likely reason for overheating at higher RPMs given what I had been messing with.
They did some testing, said my timing was pretty much the mark, but my head gasket was bad, as judged by the gas analyzer machine. I conceive this is totally possible, and requested a compression test. However, I am not convinced the HG caused the overheating, rather the opposite.
This truck never ever overheated, and if the timing was on, this has to be caused by poor timing caused by a malfunctioning distributor? It seems wild to me that this vehicle did not have HG symptoms before, then after repairing a different issue, the HG is instantly bad enough to cause the overheating that has never happened before.
If anyone can give me advice on what to check or verify. If I have to repair the HG, that is what it is, but I am not convinced this was the cause of the issue in the first place.
