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Blown/Seeping Head Gasket?


onespiritbrain
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Which bolt is actually the first one for the passenger side which I assume means left-hand cylinder head.

Number one for the left hand cylinder head and right hand cylinder head is not an actual bolt that I can see....
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Never mind I see it now there’s a little tiny bolt at the front on the driver side and the back on the passenger side and the diagram actually shows 14 bolts including those.


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I'm an old WD21 guy so I assumed you had a 3.5 in that truck! One head is cleaner than the other, maybe the cleaner head had been replaced before you got it. You should take the rocker shafts off before you pull the head bolts, it's much easier. Just make sure you use a torque wrench to put them back. It's a very low torque, like 15 pounds I think, and are easy to strip if you over tighten. Are you just pulling the one head? If I were that far I'd pull both. That way you know they are both fresh. They usually sell the gaskets in sets anyway.

James

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What a job...

 

The driver side head doesn’t come off with the exhaust manifold still attached because the oil dipstick cannot pass thru......... that should be in the FSM for sure. And that’s my biggest most important tip so far with all of this:

Take the driver side exhaust manifold off before you loose the head! Also you have to be able to loose the EGR tube at the manifold or you can’t remove the heat shield, then you can’t reach the nuts to loose the manifold....

 

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That’s cylinder #6. You can see the fire ring is split and that’s the same place on the cylinder that was clean.

 

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You can see it great there. That fire ring is the culprit!

 

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I brought it inside since I don’t have a good surface to work with outside. The smell is quite bad. It smelled like the rest of the engine until I removed the rocker shaft bolts, then whew it smelled like a giant vat of burned oil.

 

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I am having significant trouble removing the old gasket material.. I think I might end up having to have them milled just to get the gasket off.

 

 

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Yeah, I don't think that ring's supposed to look like that! Having the heads skimmed is a good idea given that the head gasket was damaged. Good to make sure everything's flat before reassembly.

 

I think most pistons are cast aluminum, though some have some kind of steel structure cast inside to limit their warpage with heat. I'd assume the VG33 is the same.

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Very rare for the HG to fail on these. Any signs of it being opened up previously? The head colour could have changed due to the oil the PO and you use. Castrol tends to make everything dark like that.

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I am going to use pure brass wire wheels to clean up the block and now I’ll be sure to stay away from the pistons. Yes, and I am so glad it was bad enough to see the failure. I was worried as this job progressed and got harder and harder that I’d get down there and not be able to find the failure. But it was glaring the moment I lifted the head off the block.

I honestly don’t have the $$ to have these things milled... not for another two weeks anyway. I’m using no scratch scotchbrite pads (the blue nylon ones), a Delrin scraper I made at work (brown thing in the picture below), and balled up aluminum foil to clean the old gasket off and it’s working better than last night. There are these little marks though, it’s from the gasket and it’s four tiny little indentions all over the head surface. I wonder if that’s okay or not..??

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It looked like someone has had to change the valve cover gaskets before (and did a crap job) but everything deep down looks like I’m the first one to lay eyes on it. The only marks are my own, everything was pristine before I started banging around, of course besides the gaping hole in the fire ring..

I’ve always used Castrol GTX but the first oil change I did on this engine was full synthetic and I haven’t strayed from that. I did one 10w30 synthetic change and it sounded like I put a cup of sand in there. Other than that it’s been 5w30 synthetic.


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This is as good as I can get it. I scrubbed the daylights out of it with wads of aluminum foil and a mixture of toluene, xylene, mineral spirits, ethanol, and d-limonene.

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I am thinking about grabbing a honing stone from work to get these tiny little raised areas where those indentions are.. I just don’t want to ruin it after I’ve gotten so far.

They are really very flat. A .001 won’t go under anywhere, even with it as it is now.

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If it’s not passing a .001 then shouldn’t I be good??

My intake valves were surprisingly clean. The one on the right all I did was wipe it down with a dry rag. They have what feels like an adhesive on them. I’m guessing the seafoam I poured in thru the brake booster line did the trick.

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The exhaust valves look terrible though! The one in the picture below was letting air blow by during the leak down test.

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I plan to clean them all up with a brass wire wheel.


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This passenger camshaft is worn.. the driver side is fine. Also the passenger is way dirtier behind the cover at the rear of the cam. There were large flakes of hardened sludge floating around in there... probably blocking the main gallery intermittently! Makes my stomach hurt.
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Also on the passenger head and the second bearing seat I see a small crack that runs across where the cam rides and even off where it doesn’t ride..
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However that is the best looking cam bearing of both heads. It’s nearly perfect haha which is good to see, makes me feel a little better :)
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Driver
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It is what it is and I have to live with it because I have no money. Oh.. man... as I was typing that I remembered I have the other engine at work. I don’t want to do that at all.


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Chased all the threads and prepared the block surface. I also scraped all the buildup from the valve reliefs because there was at least a millimeter in some places. I figured it’d be better to have light scratching than eventually damaging a valve.
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Does anyone know if these little indentions are put there on purpose for some purpose by Nissan? Like to grip the gasket??
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I would guess the texture on the gasket caused variations in how the metal pitted. Sucks about that cam bearing. If you have a parts engine, you might as well see if it's got a better head. I don't know how tolerant these motors are of that sort of thing but it would suck to get it back together and have to take it apart again.

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I wish I had taken the cams out before I spent 6 hours scraping the gasket material off........................

 

I will pull the cams out of the old motor today to see if its any better in there. The upper intake is off and all the brackets that bolt to the heads are off so it won’t be too much work.

 

This motor was making a grinding noise from the beginning. I chalked it up to and idler bearing but now I wonder if the worn cam bearings were where it was actually coming from.

 

Thank yall

 

 

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I just looked and the cam bearings look 10 times better on this other engine.. I guess I’ll be cleaning these heads up. I think I might as well get the driver head as well while I’m at it because the one at my house looks pretty poor too.

 

I wonder if this was caused by an over tightened timing belt...

 

I did drop this other engine and it landed on the oil pan and passenger head. It left a dent but it’s only a small place outside of where the valve cover should seal.

 

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I'd be surprised if you could tighten a timing belt enough to do that without something else failing first.

 

Looking back at your earlier pictures it looks like it's not just the bearing that's cracked, it's the head casting it's pressed into. Good thing you've got the other set of heads on hand! I wonder if that crack was letting something (combustion gasses? Coolant?) into the head and causing the sludge buildup you found there.

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Geez these heads are 10 times dirtier! But the cams and bearings look much much better. I’ll post better pics tomorrow.

All of this definitely has me worried about the bottom of the engine... with the oil light on warm starts... I may end up checking it out. We’ll see.


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yeah..... I used to think 7000 miles on Dino oil was just fine till I opened up the valve covers on that engine and saw that it was encased in sludge like one of those YouTube videos of the old lady that never changed her oil.


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I got it out but none of the bell housing bolts are long enough to attach to the engine stand. Not sure how I had two engines mounted before, I can’t even mount one now. Anyway I’ll be getting some bolts from work tomorrow.

I’ll say.. this is all a lot more involved than I thought it was going to be. If I knew I was going to have to do all this crap then I would have taken the engine I drowned apart and fixed it. However I suspect there may have been cylinder wall damage on that block.


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Damn! So it turned from a seeping head gasket to the whole motor! Just freshen up that motor and you will know you have something good.

I think reading your post jinxed me! I got a head gasket leaking on mine now! I went to stat it monday to go to work and the motor locked! pulled the plugs when I got home and the middle cylinder on the passenger side was full of coolant. I have VG33 heads on a VG30 block though and I used cheap head gaskets from rock auto! I thought all was good with the different heads, they have been on there for 13K miles with no issues. I got the water out and the motor still runs good and idles smooth. It may have been like this for a while just never stopped that cylinder on a compression stroke.

James

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