Hi guys,

I blew my head gasket last week after cruising around out in the Inland Empire -- I didn't fully overheat, but i think the gasket was getting ready to go -- noticed some weird performance issues and a leakdown/compression test sealed the deal.

I was puzzling over why the head gaskets would blow -- i had a new water pump, new gaskets, 160 thermostat, fans tuned to come on much earlier as well as an all aluminum multi core radiator.

I used to have a B-body engine in my car before it spun a bearing -- i had mimiked the B-body cooling system by integrating a pressurized coolant tank, vs the F-body system which has no tank. When I swapped in the Camaro engine last year, I kept the cooling system because I already had the parts, and it was essentially new.

Is using a B-body system with a coolant tank possibly to blame for the overheating of the engine? I was thinking GM designed the system for the F body with the integrated cap on the radiator with the Aluminum heads in mind, but is there actually an engineering reason? I want to know before replacing the heads if I need to get a new radiator, water pump & fan setup.

Thanks!

 

The Y-Body (Corvette) LT1 has the elevated, self-purging, pressurized reservoir (not sure if identical to the B-Body), and they use aluminum heads. The Y-Body system is designed to eliminate the problems of purging the air out of the system. Sounds like the B-Body might have got the same system. The lowly F-Body got short-changed.

The next question would be whether the system was configured properly, when it was integrated with your 94.

 

I didn't realize the Y-body had a pressurized coolant tank as well. That is good to know that I can keep the same system.

When i mated the systems I used the same configuration as the B-body -- same water pump, same coolant reservoir tank, etc. I can't recall exactly where each hose went off the top of my head, but it was put back together the same way as it was set up with the B-body engine. I can take some photos later, but I think it's OK. Maybe it was just time for the gasket to go -- it was hot out in the desert.

One other cooling question, perhaps I'll have to show a picture -- but I mated the dual fan assembly to the corvette radiator with 4 bolts. The camaro fan assembly clipped right to the radiator. Perhaps my fans need to be "blocked off" so the air rushes through only the radiator and not anywhere else.