Paulsac

Newbie here. I have an issue with my 22RE I'm hoping someone could shed some light on. 5k miles ago I had my engine rebuilt. Bored .40 over so its probably been done before. I drove it for about 3 years and put 5k total since then (i work only a mile away from home) and about 2 months ago it would get hard to start up sometimes until you "cleared it out" Finally it just lost all power and I decided to pull the head. There was coolant a cylinder but the gasket didn't look too bad. I had the head resurfaced and slapped on a new OEM gasket. It ran great for another 2 months and a couple hundred miles and then it has a hard start again the other day then ran fine and today it gave out completely again. There is foam in the oil filler cap same as before. I pulled the plugs and cranked it and no fluid came out of the cylinders this time though. I ran a compression test before pulling it apart last time and it seemed fine (i.e. i did it wrong?) What could be causing this? Hairline crack in the block or head? How would I find out which?

muddpigg

iTrader: (1)

Did you do:
Chase head boots with a tap and get crap out of bottom of bolt bosses (don't know if that's right term). I didn't want to buy a tap so I used a demel and cut off wheel to make a tread cleaner and flattened end of a coat hanger to dig out stuff on very bottom. Was surprised at amount of crap in bottom of bosses.

Also did you flush out heater core. Lots of sediment can hide there and if it breaks free can clog a headggasket

Paulsac

I did flush out the heater core and ran a wire tail brush on a drill down the head bolt holes. No tap though. Plus it should have been pretty clean after a rebuild 5k miles ago

Shady Cadence

Are you losing coolant?
There's foam in the oil filler cap, does the oil look normal? Are you short-tripping it? (ie,short commute, <5mi)
Pull your plugs, does one look different?

Machine shop didn't look for cracks in the head when they milled it?

Odin

If you're not sure you have a leaker or not you can take it to a shop and have them test the coolant for exhaust gasses. It cost me $30 and I watched them do it. Call around for prices though. I found the price to vary by about $20 at the shops in my area for something that's REALLY EASY to do. I think the price for a nice test kit on Amazon was about $55 and you can reuse it a few times. To me it looked to be the exact same one that MAC sells without the branding.

In some cases reusing old head bolts can also cause problems due to stretch.

scope103

Or, for $30 you could do it yourself. Of course, it never hurts to rely on the experience of others, especially when the cost is a "push."

What this does is test for CO2 in the head space of the radiator; if there's enough, it had to come from somewhere. But it is certainly possible to have a leak-into-oil (e.g., broken ring) without anything going into the coolant. Since oil is always exposed to exhaust gas in small quantities, I don't know of any chemical test for that.

Odin

Correct, you can get a kit for cheaper and I probably would have mentioned it but I didn't remember it. The nice one I was talking about is this one with dual chambers.
(I don't know if the dual chambers helps with accuracy or just looks cooler)

I think it's the same as the MAC AC56000 without the branding and inflated price
http://www.ebay.com/itm/MATCO-COMBUSTION-LEAK-TESTER-PART-AC560000-/261684283525?pt=Motors_Automotive_Tools&hash=item3ced994885&vxp=mtr&item=261684283525&nma=true&si=4u9RzSgCWsj0IAOM55zbVCyi1TU%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Paulsac

If I tested for gasses should this help tell if it's the head or block?

Shady Cadence

No, it only tells you if there's exhaust gasses in the cooling system. Wont tell you which.

The stress is up in the head. Either a gasket failure or a cracked cylinder head. Get it to op temp, shut it off and pull the spark plugs. Watch for steam from a plug hole, inspect the plugs for one looking different.