I recently found that my oil cooler was clogged on the coolant side... took a long while to flush it out... I'm planning to flush it again after I'm done with the current batch of Prestone Cooling system Flush/Cleaner. Except for the massive torque on the bypass valve bolt.. the oil cooler is easy to remove... and per my findings, well worth checking.

oh yes, #13 goes between the driver side "ears". =-]

12 goes hear



#2 and #8 are on the oil pump i THINK... hard to remember

These oil coolers, are they only on the autos?

Nope.

Agreed- all 3vze's with the "towing package" got the oil cooler. The oil cooler is the cylindrical looking thing on the drivers' side of the block just behind the oil filter. It will have a tube that connects from it to the thermostat housing.

got the heads back last night, they're sparkly clean. no cracks, held good pressure and all valves were still strong, what a relief.

I can't WAIT to start putting this poor motor back together. Unfortunately I still need to cut off an exhaust bolt on the driver-side manifold that is clinging for dear life onto the downpipe then hopefully remove the remaining stud.

but before this i have an electrical problem on the Nova I need to address. my wife is going stir-crazy at home with our kids and needs to be able to leave the house.

Hey guys, this is my first post. I aquired a 1988 4x4 PU w/auto cheap because supposedly the head gaskets had blown. However, upon inspection, I found no oil in the coolant or coolant in the oil(oil smells a little burnt maybe). There is a lot of oil collected in the throttle body from, I assume, the copious amounts of smoke from the breather tube. The engine sounds OK with the breather vented to atmosphere and the hole in the intake hose plugged. There is a suspicious noise coming from the front of the engine at low RPM(related?). Is this excessive blowby from a broken ring, PCV problem, or does this indicate an HG problem? I'm hoping to avoid pulling the heads.
Thanks in advance for any input.

Do a compression check and have a looksie at your spark plugs. You could have an internal HG leak like I did where no oil shows up in coolant and vice versa.

Signs of BHG:
1. Oil in Coolant
2. Coolant in Oil
3. White acrid/sweet smelling smoke coming from tail pipe
4. Low compression (other cuases as well)
5. Continual loss of coolant with heat cycling
6. Over-pessurization of the cooling system
7. Wet spark plugs

I'd say that while you've got that horsepower robbing engine driven fan off of there, replace it with an electric one.

Thanks for the advice. I'm looking for my compression guage... In the meantime, I'm checking my PCV valve. It rattles, but has some black goo in the valve cover end. The hose connecting it to the intake is toast. It seems that I'm not alone concerning the mystery of oil collecting in the intake. That seems to be the origin of the smoke that was coming from the tailpipe-there's no smoke coming from the exhaust with the breather tube disconnected from the intake, but the smoke from the breather tube(coming from driver's side valve cover) is pretty heavy.
This engine was rebuilt about 30k miles ago(140k now), though that was ten yrs. ago. Would the HG's have been the same as the defective originals?

today as i was cleaning the decks i noticed these gouges in two of the pistons:

Cylinder #1


Cylinder #6


i know this isn't 'good' but is this an indication that my pistons are on their way out? who knows when the damage occurred but is this motor in imminent danger?

here's a cool pic of my Runner and my wife's Nova wagon.


the funny thing is i was in the process of resurrecting the Nova over a period of 9 months or so. as soon as i finished the Nova the headgasket went out on the 4Runner. i would have killed a lot of people had the 4runner died while the Nova project was still underway.

i can't wait until i don't see any more parts laying around underneath.

ok, i'm ready to reinstall the freshly decked heads. got the manifolds installed on the heads on the bench along with new gaskets and the heat shields. i'm about to install the rear cam cap seals and have a question, should I put a small bead of FIPG on the cam caps or install them dry? there was some on the old caps when i pulled them off but the FSM doesn't call for FIPG when putting the new ones on.

any thoughts?

anyone?

I wouldn't. I put some on mine and they leaked.

I FIPG'd everything on/around my cams, including the seals. No leaks.

I have similar indents on my #6 piston. They were caused by contact with the failed headgasket "fire ring". Did your head gaskets have a distorted fire ring in the location where you see the impressions on your pistons?
I think my indent was worse than yours.. but I didn't think it warranted a piston replacement.

kevinkal, i think you are right. the fire rings on pistons 1, 6 are both blown out/distorted, i'd have to go out to the garage and compare the bad parts on the fire ring with the locations of the gouges but it is likely the cause. i feel a little better now, thank you!

tnrabbit, i figured that the cam seals were made to fit precisely in each end of the cam so any fipg could act as a displacement and compromise the seal in the long run. i ended up taking the rear caps off, removing the fipg and reinstalling them dry. hopefully yours will stay dry.

got the heads torqued on this afternoon. they went on well and the final two 90 degree rotations were very smooth (about 90-100 ft-lbs on the final turn).

of course this couldn't go smoothly though, right? i got the passenger size cam installed and torqued down and as i was doing the driver side cam caps, this is what happened with the driver side rear cam end cap bolt.



hopefully a chase with a helicoil will fix those threads or else i'm looking at having that hole in the head drilled and retapped to the next larger size, definitely NOT something i want to do.

i actually had problems with both bolts on that end cap. thankfully i was able to use a different bolt and get it on and properly torqued, no such luck with the other.

Helicoil will fix it...I had the same thing happen to me when I torqued mine also.