Last summer my car overheated after I forgot to tighten a heater hose and it blew off and the car got up to 312 degrees oil temperature and blew a head gasket. I tore it down in the fall and it started getting cold in the garage so I was waiting till spring to finish putting it back together. I have new gaskets, hoses and sensors to put back in as well as a stock intake that has been polished up and with a larger throttle body intake even though I am keeping the stock TB. I still want to get a DeWitt radiator too. Now I am not able to get it back together as I have to have surgery and will be laid up for 3 months. So another concern I am having before it is reassembled is, should I go ahead and pull the engine to check the lower half as I am concerned about rubber crank seals that may be dried out and would leak oil if I reassemble it as it is now. I am not interested in updating engine to 383, but leaving it as stock as possible.

My neighbor is a GM mechanic and has a shop and hoist which could do the job. I am getting to old and overweight at this time to keep climbing under the car. It is also cold on the cement. I live in Michigan, that's why I did not get to it last fall!

Any thoughts or other concerns???

1993 Anniversary Edition Ruby
LT1 with 100,400 miles
6 speed
Was using AMS oil when situation happened.

Thanks,

Scott

 

The seals in the bottom end are the really just the oil pan, rear main, front crank seal, timing cover seals. Those all easily replaced with the engine still in the car. If your planning on not touching the bottom end, I would not worry about pulling the engine. Heck, if the seals are not leaking, I would not change them. That is not that long to sit. If it was years, I would be a bit more concerned.

 

This is what I would do. First pull the intake and heads, since the head gaskets have to be replaced. Then if you feel the need you can pull the short block much easier than the entire engine (in my opinion)

as to your specific concerns, the lower end gaskets and seals, the rear main can be addressed at some future date when a clutch job is done;
the front seals, when an opti and or water pump is replaced; and the pan gasket should be just fine.

if I may read between the lines, has there been some thought to a rebuild as versus just the head gasket repair ?

Please get well so you can enjoy your car; I imagine "corvette season" in Michigan is a little shorter than it is out here in California.

 

I thought perhaps the high temperature would be damaging to the seals. So I think I will take your comments and go ahead and either have my neighbor put it back together or wait until July when I'm better and warmer to fix it. Thanks for your time and insight.

 

Just another $0.02, but I can tell you a friend was running a 95 LT-1 powered Vette at the track and hit 300 degrees oil temp. At that point the PCM decided that he was having just a bit too much fun, and went into a "Safe Mode" that cut power and flicked on a warning light. He did a cool down lap, and pitted.

Bottom line - no gasket damage.

Get the top of the engine back together (please double check the cylinder head sealing surface for flatness - extreme heat can EASILY warp a head - it's easy to have them milled flat when they're of the car). One other thing to consider - you say that the motor has 100K miles on it, if the heads are already off - you might want to consider bringing them to a machine shop and having them do a valve job on them. It'll probably run $200 - $250 per head - but the head remove and replace job is enough of a PITA that you really don't want to do it again.

 

Yes, I had the heads checked and they were milled to take out the warp. They said they weren't too bad. I still need to have my bosch 3 injectors checked by Jon and new o-rings that may have gotten brittle due to the heat. The nozzle's look ok, but will have them checked. I do have a set of Bosch 4's I got from Jon, I could use, but they are shorter and I don't like that extra space between the rail and manifold. They have only 4 holes compared to five for the 3's. I think the 3's give better fuel volatility/finer fuel droplets.