1 170 psi 2 171 psi
3 154 psi 4 153 psi
5 141 psi 6 125 psi
7 160 psi 8 171 psi

#6 is 73% of 2 or 8 which is within FSM specs of 70% or better. I'm not going to get crazy with buying test equipment. I would like to know if there is a crack, but wouldn't the numbers be a bit worse or under the spec?

I have had a truck in the past that would heat up to 200 deg within 2 minutes without coolant. The air temp inside the engine will get very hot and very fast without water on the sensor.

It will be a few days before I can get some time to do more testing. I have compressed air but not the leakdown tool. Maybe the exhaust dye would give me some info.

I really do apreciate the info and conversation here to help me understand what is going on here. Keep it coming. Thanks

 

When I was a kid I built up a big block engine and dropped it in a car....I got her all hooked up and hit the key to start/run it.....it purred like a kitten. It took about a minute or two before the smoke started to pour/peel off the block's paint. I forgot to fill the coolant system :o

 

Ouch

 

 

I have bought some fittings so that I can rig up my compreesion check guage and air hose to the #6 cylinder and perform a leak down test. At TDC, I will pump 125 psi into the cylinder and close a ball valve. I will monitor the time for leakdown and compare to #1 since it is easy to place at TDC. Hopefully I'll get around to this tonight.

 

Anthony,
A leakdown tester has 2 gauges. The first gauge is connected to the inlet pressure from a compressor, and should read around 100 PSI or so. that tells you what the test pressure is.
THe second gauge is connected to the spark plug hole. The air pressure goes into the cylinder, and the piston needs to be on TDC for that cylinder. There needs to be a restrictor between the two gauges.
The second gauge will read what the pressure is in that cylinder while being filled with the compressor air.
If the first gauge reads 100 PSI, and the second gauge reads 80 PSI, you have a 20% leak rate.
It is easy then to remove the oil cap, radiator cap, and go to the throttle body or exhaust pipe and listen for the air escaping out.
IF the air is hissing out the oil cap, it is rings, if it is coming out the intake, it is a bad intake valve, if it is bubbling out the radiator, it is a cracked head, bad gasket or bad block. If it is coming out the tail pipe, it is the exhaust valve.
I would guess that your problem is that the heads have no coolant aound the temp sender and that if you burped the radiator, all your problems might go away.
Just add antifreeze to the radiator, then burp it, check the coolant reservoir and the hose that feeds it from the radiator, and change the radiator cap.
If the antifreeze keeps adding to the reservoir, the cap or hose is bad.
Try that and it should all be fine.

 

Thanks for the info and thoughts. Since I don't have the 2 guage setup and my budget is already blown for the month, I'm going to use what I have made from a tee, my compression guage, and air hose. This may not work as well as the real deal, but it should give me a really good idea of the shape that #6 is in. If I had the funds right now, then I would buy a nice setup. I currently have #1 at TDC. I will pump maybe 100 psi in, shut a ball valve and time the guage. I will then put #6 at TDC and do the same. Hopefully the results will be similar. I will also listen for bubbling in the coolant.

I think you are right about the low coolant. I wonder if my heater core has been weeping or letting air into the system. I have a new one ready to install. I will perform my "budget leakdown test" for peace of mind and proceed with the heater core and new thermostat. A proper coolant fill may be all I really need. I hope.

 

My motor was blown when I bought my car because someone replaced the intake gaskets and installed them backwards where the block off plates for the heater was where the thermostat is so no water was flowing through the top hose if someone has had the intake apart this could be your problem????

 

Definitely not the issue as I've driven this car for about 6,000 miles with no cooling issues. Thanks for throwing the idea out there though.

I am getting close to having my first "budget" leakdown test. I need one more fitting to get everything plumbed up. Hopefully it will not be interesting.

 

I attempted to perform a leak down test on cylinder #1 last night. Apparently my valve timing is slightly off as the air immediately left the cylinder through the intake. I have the line on the balancer perfectly lined up with the "0" mark on the timing tab and the rotor in the distributor is pointing to #1. It would have been good to have been able to make a comparison between #1 and #6, but I'm not going to **** around with this anymore. I think the car is fine except for the cooling issue which might be due to a leaky heater core that would possibly pull air into the system when cooling down and causing an air lock. The car runs great and the compression numbers are within spec. I'll keep an eye out for water in the oil. Thanks to all for your input.

 

Good luck to you.

 

When I pulled the head off my old 2.5 turbo in my Spirit, there was a chunk missing from one valve big enough to put a #2 pencil through. It ran, but it ran really rough and used almost 3 quarts of oil in 100 miles. If you have a burnt valve you'll know pretty quick.

 

Supposedly you can run vac checks to find out things about your engine like burnt valves. Don't know if this is true or not:

www.secondchancegarage.com/public/186.cfm

http://www.international-auto.com/fi...uum-gauges.cfm

 

Interesting links. Thanks for the info. I suspect that my valve timing is slightly off at 106k. I'm getting ready to put my new plugs in. Ater a new thermostat and heater core, I'll see how everything goes.