I have a pretty good idea what's wrong, but I want to see what the experts on here think. First of all, somehow the fuse blew on my electric water pump, causing the car to overheat. I caught it within 1 or 2 minutes, and immediately stopped the motor. I fixed the fuse and everything went fine, ran 2 time trials and 1 round of eliminations and went home. Next week, during time trials, I started smelling that antifreeze smell when I let off the gas at the end of the second run. I looked at the exhaust, and there was white smoke coming out and you could smell coolant strong. I loaded it on the trailer immediately and went home and it has stayed parked for 3 months. I took a long break from racing, but now I'm ready to get this car fixed and get back out there. What is the process? What should I look for to determine what is actually wrong before I go crazy and pay a shop $1500 to replace the head gaskets? Or worse yet, try to tackle a job like that with my limited skills.

 

Sounds like you blew a head gasket to me....Save the money and do it yourself...If you have limited experience like you stated, get a buddy to help and buy a haynes or chiltons manual..

Good luck!

 

You already know the answer but here goes: If you have noticable amounts of coolant exiting the exhaust on an lt1 (normal SBCs have coolant in the intake so it could be intake related; but we don't so leaking in intake gasket is not an option) at the cheapest you've got a blown/leaking head gasket. Worse case cracked head/block. The cause was probably your overheating episode, but it may have happened even with out the overheating, sometimes bad things happen to good motors when at the track.


Now the fix is:

Minimum
Check oil for signs of coolant dilution
pull the heads, check the deck and heads for level mating surfaces see if the gasket has obvious problems

if surfaces are flat and nothing is obvious besides bad gasket replace it you may be lucky and get another XXX,XXX miles out of the engine.


What I'd do
Check oil for coolant dilution
Perform compression and leak down test
Check deck for flatness/look at bores
Take head to machinist for check out (deck/cracks/overheating/etc)

if everything checks out install new head gaskets.


Now, 'd be worried about parked for three months with the potential of coolant in a bore, coolant diluted oil, coolant on a valve or two etc

Now if I found signs of coolant in the oil I'd bust out the engine hoist and pull the puppy IOT check everything.


Good luck.

MIke

Mike