Bruthish

OK so I took a strong block, had the heads re-done and milled slightly. New cam, lifters, so on. Broke it in properly on engine test stand. No noticable issues. Used a felpro shim gasket with copper spray gasket on each side. Torqued to specs.

So I get the radiator in. Engine runs strong. Noticed brown/foamy substance in coolant. It continues to flow out and foam. I was hoping it was some residual oil but it never stopped. Obvious answer is that head gasket is not sealing properly. Could there by anything I missed that is allowing oil into the water passages other than the gasket? It does NOT appear that water is getting into the oil.

forman

did you use bolt sealer

sly vette

I may be wrong but aren't all head gaskets suppose to be installed without sealer?

Bruthish

We used ARP sealer on bolts going into water jackets and also used the torque lube for the bolts heads.

CaseyJones

Sure it was a good block? Chevy blocks can crack across the webbing in the lifter valley pretty easily. I looked at several "good" 010 4 bolt blocks before I finally ordered one from Jeg's that was guaranteed as good. The cracks are difficult to see but open up when the head is torqued. I hope you just have a blown head gasket, but it could easily be other things.

Bruthish

yes I was using the block before with no issues. My gut tells me its the head gasket which would be way better than a cracked block.

lionelhutz

If your coolant builds any kind of pressure then you should be seeing coolant in the oil too.

Have you considered the trans cooler may be leaking into the rad?

Roco71

Did you use any kind of thread sealer in the intake manifold bolts. I had some oil in my coolant and it turned out to be from the intake.

Manuel Azevedo

Is this a small block or big block? Big blocks can and do rot out on the left rear side oil galley. It is located just inside the rear side core plug. I have never seen a car have the problem but it shows up a lot in boats. One thing to keep in mind in checking all this out is that oil pressure is higher than water, in other words high pressure will always go to low pressure. A crack in the valley has no oil pressure to it but does have water pressure so water in the oil, see what I mean here in looking for your problem?

billla

A steel shim gasket requires that the block deck and head deck be flat to .001...whereas a traditional gasket will tolerate quite a bit of wavyness in the deck - .003 or a bit more. I doubt that's the issue here, but just an FYI.

All the heat bolts should have sealant on them, and the gasket should have been installed on clean, dry decks.

First step from where I'm sitting would be to pull the head bolts and put a good coat of sealant on the first 1" of all of them and retorque...and we'll go from there

sly vette

Could the copper spray gasket be the culprit?

Manuel Azevedo

No. there is no oil pressure in the head to go to water! Even if one wants to say oil could leak by a bolt as soon as you start the engine water is at pressure and you have boo koo water in the oil. I believe the op say no water in the oil.

Bruthish

No water in the oil and it looks as clean as the day I put it in.

When we broke the cam in we did not notice any dirty water in the radiator. I just confirmed that ALL head bolts had sealer put on them during installation. The head was milled flat but the block was not. Its a manual car, so not tranny cooling lines.

billla

You noted previously that you put both sealant and torque lube on the head bolts - this combo basically destroys the sealant. Same for the intake bolts as mentioned.

I agree with Manuel that it's unlikely that it's the head gaskets.

Bruthish

I will confirm that both were used. I did not put the heads on, my brother did. And I think I did misspeak..now that I think about it we only had ARP assembly lube and it was used on both the threads and bolt caps. Would this have been bad? Even if so, would this lead to oil in water?

billla

Yeah, those bolts need sealant, not lube. I can definitely see that leading to the issues you're reporting. That would certainly be step one in my book - make sure you clean all traces of assembly lube off the bolts.

SH-60B

Could be.
I'd do a quick leakdown test on the motor to rule out compression pushing into the water jacket and causing that continued foaming from the radiator.

tortisevette

Exactly, It must be residual oil or transmission fluid. I don't see any senarios that allow oil in coolant but no coolant in oil.

He's goiing to tear down that engine for nothing.

Manuel Azevedo

Did you ever say what this engine is? If a big block see my first post to this thread.

Bruthish

Engine is a 4-bolt 350.

So lets say I need to pull out the head bolts and properly seal them. Could I do them one at a time and torque them back down to specs, or should I pull all of them out and start from scratch?