SR corner: Overheated= head gasket?

[WorkInProgressK]

Saturday, at the track, I had to luck of having one of the prestone hoses under the intake manifold come off( I must have screwed up when installing it.

Mind I was participating at a drift event for the first time and I wasn't much paying attention at my dash. Until I smelled prestone and looked at the temperature gage showing the line at the end of the scale....

I parked the car at my spot and shot it off and the heater was cold, so I knew it was missing colant . At that moment, I shot the engine off and started looking for the leak.

After fixing the leak, which took me 1h(letting the engine cool and trying to reach that horrible area, I started the car just to realize that my exhaust fumes are white. (insert !)

I was able to drive back, but found some mayonaise in the catch can.

I took the engine appart today( well head at least)

This is cylinder no1. All 4 are the same. they seem to have leaked from the water passage nearest to both the cylinder and the exaust.

What bothers me is this.

I rebuilt this engine and I didn't get the head planed BUT I mesured the deflection with fillergages and a straight edge just like in the FSM.

Could it be my fault or its normal that if fails in that certain way?

Should I still get the new head planed? Or I can still get away by measuring?

The reason I am asking this, is because I found metal 2 weeks ago in the oil, the engine seem to by bass a lot and I don't have general confidence in my mechanical skills of 2 years ago and that bottom end doesn't seem to be in good shape..( the engine was built at that time)

Could letting it sit outside in the engine bay ( on asphalt) cause any problems to the engine? I always did an oil change before the drive of the car. Could have it lead to the weakening of the head gasket?

My fault, or not totally :P.

[slidewayzagain]

I would have old head dye checked to start with, unless the crack is obvious. Then resurface minimal amount.
I would look at cylinder walls for scratch marks.
Would others suggest popping mains and rods off to look for wear marks along with cams and reuse if not significant (dont really want to suggest that)
Personally rering and bearing it according to budget.

[Matt93SE]

What he said. if you're in doubt, pull it apart. re-hone the cylinders and re-ring the thing. new bearings and rings arne't that much in the long run.
recheck the head and see if it's warped any. you might take it to a machine shop and have them give a professional opinion just to be sure.

[WorkInProgressK]

I would have old head dye checked to start with, unless the crack is obvious. Then resurface minimal amount.

Explain? A crack on the head?

What he said. if you're in doubt, pull it apart. re-hone the cylinders and re-ring the thing. new bearings and rings arne't that much in the long run.
recheck the head and see if it's warped any. you might take it to a machine shop and have them give a professional opinion just to be sure.

When you mean re-hone, its just to buff the surface with a the hand honing tool to remove the vertical scratches and give a nice cross finish right?

Oh and why I am changing heads, is at first the old one has that cams and springs and I want to return to stock for fuel economy( had a spare engine) :P.

So I will probably build my spare engine and drop it in. Its going to save me time since the block is already clean and out of the car. Only problem with that is that I am missing a simple o-rings


Is that part common with the Ka24de?

[Matt93SE]

Yeah. not removing enough material to need new pistons. you're just replacing the rings and cleaning up the bores/crosshatching so the new rings will seat.-

i.e. get one of those dingle ball cylinder hones and go to town. http://www.google.com/products/catal...ed=0CF8Q8gIwBA

[Tower240sx]

no that is not an interchange part to the KA24de however it does cross reference to the USDM FWD SR20's

[WorkInProgressK]

@Matt

I have this, the first time around I used that. It does the same thing right?

@Tower, Thx I will check that out, sometime I forget we still had sr's to a certain point.

[Matt93SE]

Yeah, same tool, different brand basically. Kojima likes the dingle balls over those for whatever reason I read 5+ years ago. I have the 3-stone type too since I bought it 15 yrs ago before the dingle ball guys were widely available.

[Tower240sx]

Ialso prefer the dingle balls but the 3 stone bit works well also, just be consistent, whatever you do do it consistently between all 4 holes,

[slidewayzagain]

I have had heads that appeared good to the naked eye, or even with a 10x jewelers monocle.
The dye checking finds those little hidden "baz turds" I have also had heads that busted inbetween the valves and was obvious.
Dye check is probly less then $50, its been a while.
WorkInProgressK thanks for posting that pic up of the o-rings, I need to double check mine are there.
You can get different grit for the 3 blade hones.

[WorkInProgressK]

http://www.film.queensu.ca/cj3b/Tech/DyeCheck.html

Like this?

[slidewayzagain]

Thats what I am talking about.

[CodyAce]

no that is not an interchange part to the KA24de however it does cross reference to the USDM FWD SR20's

Best of all, those O-Rings are always in stock as the VQ motors also use them

Mind I was participating at a drift event for the first time and I wasn't much paying attention at my dash.

Drifting, that's it! That is the cause! hahaha.


Hard to say really, usually when they overhead it doesn't look as nice as that when you take the Head off the block (usually it rips that stock junk gasket crap). If anything the stock stuff though is much more resilient to overheating...not so much to detonation.

[WorkInProgressK]

Best of all, those O-Rings are always in stock as the VQ motors also use them




Drifting, that's it! That is the cause! hahaha.


Hard to say really, usually when they overhead it doesn't look as nice as that when you take the Head off the block (usually it rips that stock junk gasket crap). If anything the stock stuff though is much more resilient to overheating...not so much to detonation.

Well that picture is the gasket still on the block, and yes half of the gasket stayed on the block. But for some reason the head side didn't tear much out of the gasket.

Detonation might be one of the causes, I might have adjusted my manual boost controller too far and was probably boosting way too much, because on the way back I was boosting 20 psi "yikes!".

[Matt93SE]

It's nice how facts like that always comes out 3 days into the diagnosis.......

"I was granny shifting at 3k on my way to work this morning and the head just popped! I can't think of what it would be."
blah blah blah blah blah 3 hrs of diagnosis at the shop later..
"What the hell happened the day BEFORE the engine blew?"
"yesterday? uhhhh I was drifting in 100+ heat and boosting to 20psi. I was bouncing it off the rev limiter for probably 30 minutes and wasn't allowing the engine proper airflow to cool after the run. And I ran it out of coolant so I'm sure I overheated the crap out of it. But that was yesterday and the engine blew up today, so they can't be related"
And you don't think those are related?

Just yanking your chain man.. but yeah, running it hot and boosting to 20psi? yeaaaah, you should prolly start buying parts.