The bird blows a gasket!

On Wed. 2/11/09, I was driving home from work on the highway, looked in the mirror and saw a little white smoke – not good, I thought. A few seconds later I couldn’t even see the traffic behind me it was so big. We made it to a gas station and triple A’d it home.

This was about the only gasket I did not replace when putting in the new engine. Oops.

Tore the top end off the same day in the dark and could go no further because no place had head gaskets or bolts in stock. Cylinder 4 was steamed clean and there was a very obvious gasket break.

Got the gasket and bolts the next day after work and started in (with some help) on it again. The head and block looked ok (the cylinders actually look pretty nice still.) By about 9:30 it was back together and running but still puffing a lot of smoke. Crap. I thought maybe the head was cracked so I quit for the night.

With a little help from my friends at v6z24, I found that it could still be more in the exhaust (even though I had run it for a while, which surprised me – it could take up to a half hour to run it all out!) I cranked it with the plugs off to see if any were getting coolant filled. Then I ran it with the exhaust unhooked at the exhaust manifold and it was clean! No smoke! So needless to say I was pretty happy not to have to tear it apart again. It’s a bit of a pain.

So now we’re back on the road!