If you're gonna do one, you may as well do both.

And if you're gonna take it to a shop, make darned sure they know to seal the china walls else you'll be doing it all over again. At least as far down as the intake manifold anyway.

 

I mentioned this in early October... but I kind of want to repeat it again because I'd hate to see you go through the same thing I did. It IS possible you have a very small crack on one of the cyl heads. Many times when you have a bad head gasket, it can cause a chocolate milkshake mixture (which you don't have)... of course, so can a cracked head. But often times, pressure building up in the cooling passages (and having it blow out of different places), is often as a result of a cracked head... which it sounds like to me. This is usually at one of the exhaust valves. Often times, this leads to a little bit of steam when you first start it... and then it's totally fine at idle, or at very slow speeds. But then when you start driving, it can cause combustion into the cooling passages.

I guess what I'm saying is... it might not be a head gasket at all, but in fact your cyl heads. Since you have to remove the cyl heads anyway to change out the head gasket, I'd recommend having a machine shop look at your cyl heads for a couple of reasons...
1 - Have them magnaflux both of them to check for cracks at the valves.
2 - Have them make sure the heads are straight and not warped after overheating

While they're out, you can probably change out the oil seals anyway, and whatever else you want to do with it... but this would be my recommendation. Sucks... but I've been there.

 

seems more likely a warpage in overheating conditions but,’good point, I’ll inspect the heads.

for china walls I don’t know what to tell them in particular. I had a leak on the old l98, it was sealed with red rtv but I suspect it was too soft. on the 383 they used something grey and held well but now I’m going to a different repair shop

 

I only flipped through the last few postings on the thread, so didn't realize you were working with a 383.

It's what I get for not reading the op and just responding to a post later in the thread.

I was thinking L98 when I mentioned about the china wall but I don't know jack squat nothing about a 383 so maybe disregard, I probably don't know what I'm talking about there when it comes to a 383. Ha.

Sorry.

 

the block is nearly identical,
maybe slight improvements, so what you said applies to my case, thank you.