Pulled the engine out tonight (which ended up being a bigger bitch than I had intended). What I thought was a blown headgasket turned out to be a cracked block. I started worrying when I couldn't find a blown spot in the gasket, but thought for sure the block was ok...... nope.

This picture is a little blurry but if you look hard enough you can see the crack in the bottom of the bore-

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...0025Medium.jpg

Here's how the oil came out looking........ And for the record I don't normally use Fram filters

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...0026Medium.jpg

Meh...... This is just great news :blah:

 

Dang, that sucks.

What are your plans now?

BTW, that oil is definately sick looking.

Dan

 

Any ideas of why that happened?

 

Dan,

I wanted to pull the motor out while I had some spare time, but I don't have money to fix it. I just got out of college and have some bills to pay while I'm looking for a career. I'll begin with a buildup when I get a job.

Plans in the future- Get a new block! Forged bottom end (possibly 383), go through and do some more port work on the heads since the ones that were on there were my first homeport job, bigger cam, will need a trans rebuild to handle the extra power. I'll also need the supporting stuff like a bigger fuel pump and injectors. Will probably run nitrous on it at some point. I'm still up in the air about a lot of the plans I have, but I do know that is has to pass emmissions.

 

Brad,

It overheated pretty badly due to a faulty connector on the electric waterpump. I assume a small crack started forming and finally got bad enough that it opened up to the water jacket. That's all I can think of, I was running a HOTcam before, nothing major

 

Looks like Caramel about to be poured on vanilla ice cream

 

Yea the oil was really gross. Poor engine!

 

That sucks man, thats what you get for running concentrated orange juice for oil time for a 383

 

Hey FastZ what kind of electric wp were you runnung and did you have a warning light or buzzer hooked up?

 

I was running a Meziere waterpump. The problem wasn't the actual pump, but it was the supplied connector that they give you. It really isn't up to the task in my opinion, as I see signs of lots of heat and even looks like some minor melting on the plastic connector. I did not have a buzzer or warning light hooked up, although if I keep an electric waterpump on after the new motor goes in I will hook something up.

What happened was this- Connector did not make a good connection one morning on the way to work and pump did not come on at all. I stopped and pulled over when I saw the temp almost in the red. A few minutes after stopping and turning the key off I turned the key on again to read the temp gauge. This time the pump did make a connection and a bunch of cool water from the radiator got pumped into the heads/motor. That warped the heads and eventually blew the gasket, and I'm almost sure that even led to the crack that formed in my block.