Hello everyone. Well with the wonderful help of John Marker (with whom I'd never been able to get this far) I finished replacing the intake manifold gasket on my 86 vette on monday. Thankfully that stopped a leak from somewhere in the front end of the block.

However- it is still leaking off the back of the engine block. Here's the deal.. it is gathering water around the area where the EGR tube that comes up from the exhaust connects to the top of the engine block (just to the outside of the passenger side of the distributor). Also thick white steam is shooting out the exhaust once it is warmed up a little bit, and where the exhaust connects to the passenger side of the engine block you can see steam escaping (a column of it at that). If you look under the car you'll notice water dripping down the bellhousing and onto the floor.

So to me it seems apparent that somehow coolant is getting into the exhaust, from somewhere inside the engine. From there, when it gets to the exhaust, most of it is turned into steam and some of the water is carried up the EGR tube up to the top where it leaks out (I noticed the gasket here did not have any sealant on it, so I left it without sealant).

Then again I really don't know much about cars and have learned everything I know only from doing an intake gasket replacement- so I hope you guys can give me some ideas of what I'm looking at.

edit: it is also strange that when so far I am getting good compression. I have only let it idle for a matter of a few seconds at a time, but it seems to be running strong.

 

If you are getting steam from an exhaust leak it is a VERY BAD thing.Is the coolant level dropping?Check your oil for coolant sounds like a cracked head to me.Sorry I am sure it is not what you want to hear.A small crack won't affect compression yet.

I believe your car has a "wet intake" (mine does not LT1) so hopefully you fubared the intake install and are leaking coolant from there.Hopefully someone with more knowledge on your year will step in and help you.

Either way you need to get a factory service manual from www.helminc.com

 

Take some pics of this. I'd like to throw a guess that it could be as simple as an oil cooler leak or as bad as a cracked head/block. Your Vette comes with an early model SBC which was a flat tappet block so finding a replacement 350-400 block shouldn't be hard at all. If you ever decide to R/R your motor, you may as well start with a fresh set of heads. Good luck on what you do.

 

If you are lucky, it is still slightly leaking from the gasket and traveling down. The manifolds can warp. If you pull the manifold, have a machine shop make a clean up cut on the manifold sides.

 

Great news..... everything is ok.

The water was leaking because the coolant line that t's off from the heater line wasn't tightly fastened ... :doh: that was a quick fix.. once John bent one of his wrenches so we could get in there without taking the distributor or EGR tube off

As far as the leaking from the exhaust... I am not exactly sure what caused it but after about 5minutes of idling it had completely gone away. An educated guess is that a piece of the intake gasket had fallen off during removal last week and managed to get lodged in between the exhaust, so it just needed to burn itself away.

Well finaly after about a month of it sitting in my garage I was able to take it for a drive today.. it was great.. totally forgot how powerful it was.

What a relief... to think I was clearing away space in my garage so I could lay out all the parts of my engine. Once again thanks to John Walker, who has basically taught me everything I know about my vette and cars.

 

Great news Glad it was an easy and cheap fix

 

We got his car running, although it was a fight to get that fitting tight. AND more important (guess it depends on your point of view) he received his acceptance letter from UC Irvine! This is where he wanted to go to college and he was accepted! WAY TO GO MATT!!!

 

Kudos on the acceptance too.Quite a day for you all things are going your way it seems.

 

Glad to see everything workin' out for ya, Matt! And congratulations on your school acceptance! One you get the degree and earn the green, you can do whatever you want to your Vette! Hard work pays off!!! Good luck with what you do. Don't you love your TPI? Yeah, you can shift at 4000 rpms and kill lotsa cars even if they are rated at a higher HP. I'd like to see a Honda, Nissan, or Toyota shift that early without being a dog.

 

thanks.. today HAS been a really good day kind of surprised I was accepted, but I am not complaining. I know I can handle the work there.. just wasn't sure if my application convinced them

everything has worked out though. Hopefully if it doesn't rain tommorow I can drive the vette to school (yeah, new weatherstripping is on the to-do list)