What would you do? Head Gasket blown, coolant mixed, but not for that long! (1 Viewer)

[bob82pigdog]

My head gasket blew in November. Highway driving, pull over to get my kid something, engine overheats, engine sputters and misfires as I pull onto road shoulder, turn off engine. As soon as I got the truck home I checked the oil, phew! No milkiness on the dipstick or under the cap. So I figure I am good for a simple head gasket job when I have the time.

Fast forward, to about a month ago. I pulled the truck into my garage, about a 45 second drive from the back yard. Then before I started the tear down, I wanted to get an idea of what the compression numbers were. In order to get good results, the engine needs to be warm. I debated on this, should I do cold compression numbers, or hot. Whatever, I figured I turned the engine on to get the truck in the garage, what will running it 10 minutes hurt? So I turned on the engine for about 10 minutes and let it get up to about 185, maybe I shouldn't have, I don't know. Anyway, the compression numbers looked really good, all around 190 psi except cylinder 6, it was 140 psi, confirming what I already knew, but at least I knew the motor was pretty healthy otherwise.

So I began the tear down, hadn't drained the oil yet. As I'm working on the intake manifold, I go to remove the oil dipstick and oil starts dripping out. D'oh guess I should have drained the oil earlier, but when I go to look at the oil, uh-oh, it's milky looking. So I pulled the plug on the lower pan and got this:

Coolant definitely got mixed in with oil, but had to be for only for 10 minutes and not with me driving the truck or putting much strain on it. I was kinda sorta thinking about just crossing my fingers and finishing my top end rebuild as if nothing happened. Of course, I'd still drop the lower oil pan and clean up what I could and run some oil through and change it and the filter a time or two upon reassembly. Maybe I should pull the upper oil pan and inspect some bearings? (Not excited about that) Am I crazy for even considering ignoring the milkshake? I was on such a good productive streak and this has put a big damper on my motivation to finish the top end job. What would you do and what does your thought process look like?

 

[ppc]

I say it was a mistake to let the engine sit for 5 or 6 months and then run it. If the oil started coming out of the dipstick then the bottom end bearings were submerged in a nasty oil/coolant mix that most likely have corroded the bearing surfaces. I would pull the bearing caps and check things out at a minimum.

 

[BILT4ME]

^^^ What he said.

Unfortunately, that also means cylinder #6 probably had water sitting on top of it for 5-6 months and MAY have rusted the rings on the cylinder wall.

Fortunately, you didn't run it much, but that's still water on the bearings and not oil.

Odds are you didn't damage it in the 10-20 minutes you ran it, but the sitting in a coolant / oil bath didn't do it any good.

Plan on pulling the head and checking the top end of the cylinder. If that looks OK, the dropping the pans to inspect bearings would be next. It's a PITA to do it in-frame but it can be done. Otherwise, yank it all and go through it or pick up a spare and drop it in.

 

[KrOswalt]

Pull the engine and send it to me, start yourself an LS swap

 

[maxamillion2345]

Agree with above, months of coolant oil bath has potential to etch bearings. Probably fine but would inspect farther.

 

[bob82pigdog]

Seems like I just need to suck it up and inspect things to be sure. I'll start looking into pulling the pans with the motor still in. I didn't want to pull the motor out of the truck, but honestly there are parts of me that wouldn't mind anyway, would make the rest of the head gasket repair easy and that way I could really clean it up and replace that leaky rear main as well. Thanks, all.