fun times & coolant fumes

[diozqwin]

TL,DR: Coolant fumes come out my tail pipe and after the engine runs for a couple minutes the turbo starts smoking white and smells like coolant, what tests can I do to find the source?

Full story:

Okay so I'm basically stuck at this point, winter ended and while the car was drivable but it sometimes had a lack of power and a bit of a miss. I flushed the coolant several times with distilled water because the coolant was a nasty unknown orange color.

Shortly after It came out clear when flowing through just the radiator. The way I did it was by filling up the coolant tank with distilled water, letting it run for a couple minutes while adding more water till it was full. Then unfasten the lower radiator hose and try to avoid getting burned by the water.

The water came out pretty orangish/brown for at least 3 to 5 cycles (i kinda lost count, i bought a lot of distilled water). So I changed the oil and it looked like it had coolant in it and was an uneven viscosity. A few more flushes later the water was coming out much clearer but still tinted brown, which at that time I assumed was oil mixing with the coolant somewhere.

As a side note, my coolant tank also developed a very tiny hole in a seam near the cap where it would spray out coolant right before I did all this. I cleaned it with bbs and cleaner and then epoxied the hole.

So after some drinking I bit the bullet and took apart the engine and got the head off, brought the head to an engine rebuild shop and had them check for cracks magnaflux, level the deck, do a valve job and replace those valve seat bushings and the cam bearings (93K on motor).

The head gasket had a few of the holes rusted shut on the side passages, and looked the weirdest around the 3rd cylinder. 3 head bolts on the exhaust side of engine were kindof rusty on the threads, but they all came out okay. Then I blew compressed air into the side (coolant?) passages on the block and orange particles would blow up into the air, I kept spraying in air and vacuumed them all up with a shop vac.

Didn't resurface the block, I asked the engine rebuilder if it was necessary and he said it was less likely to warp than the head and to leave it, so I just scraped the old gasket off with a razor blade & a gasket scraper.

Picked up gaskets, and rebuilt fuel injectors from blugg and some extra factory head bolts, and put it all back together by the Thursday before Carlisle, started it up and a lot of white smoke was coming out of the tail pipe. Oil was over filled by maybe 2 quarts, drained it, and still kinda smoking but not nearly as much.

I drained all the oil again and put in a batch of castrol 10-30, still some white smoke.

After Carlisle this week, I've re-timed the engine since I didn't think it was dead on, and I've considered taking off the Turbo and getting it rebuilt. But I don't know if the source is the turbo, the block, or the head gasket or ?

The engine runs right now, but the fumes it puts out are probably dangerous and smell kinda foul. The engine also looks like it has a lot of vibration bouncing side to side.

heres a video of the smoke coming out of the turbo, http://youtu.be/sGEvzFH9IUk

this is my first engine work, any opinions greatly welcomed

[RichBaker]

Definitely have a miss, either plug wires swapped, or the hg didn't fix it.

[thesameguy]

Gotta say, it sounds like a head gasket. I would try capping off the coolant feed & return to the turbo to eliminate that as a source of coolant loss. It won't hurt it to run without coolant.

[Ed Lijewski]

Did your machine shop do the Magnafluxing? And give it a clean report?

The coolant drain/refill procedure you described if taken literally would have caused cracks in the head. Filling, running for some minutes, draining, and immediately refilling with ambient temp coolant isn't easy on iron.

YMMV

[motorhead_1]

compression test, leakdown test and then pressurize the coolant system and see if and where it leaks. into oil? into cylinders?

[diozqwin]

machine shop gave me a full green light on the head, said there was no cracks, magnafluxed, cleaned, decked, and valve job. I ran the car today and took some videos.

I wouldn't mind if it was the head, I'm more worried about starting another project on the Turbo or Block while still be questionable on the head, especially now that it is brought up the my flushing procedure could likely cause cracks in it. I did totally overfill the engine with oil when I first tried to start it, and it ran for maybe 5-15 minutes until I drained it until it was at the right level. Ran it again, had much less smoke, changed the oil then let it sit until I could spend a few hours timing it after carlisle (first time timing it alone). It ran more consistently at that time but these symptoms are still present.

I've been busy just being crazy lazy and 23 since I last posted, didn't really do anything to the car for about a week, I ran it again today to film it to see if anyone can identify it based on these symptoms.

White smoke, smoke at first smells like disgusting coolant, then starts to smell more like fire / oil, at the end of the run, it smelled like fireworks. A spill out of the tail pipe, looks like oil to me.





As it was starting to warm up video
https://youtu.be/dgue312MYI4

After it was warmed it up, revving the engine
https://youtu.be/T-KVCTcgVPo

[Ed Lijewski]

I'd bite the bullet and remove the head and start over.

YMMV

[John Brennan]

Did you or the shop check both mating surfaces for flatness?

[thesameguy]

You really need to do a leakdown test or at least a compression test to determine whether the issue is in the engine or the turbo. Taking things apart without diagnosis is pointless.

[Ed Lijewski]

If the head has crack(s) near a valve seat, neither test will point to that.

YMMV

[thesameguy]

Yeah, but if the problem is the turbo seals, pulling the head won't cure it. Find the problem, then fix it. Don't just take stuff apart for fun. Cap off the coolant to the turbo, do a leak down test, maybe even a cooling system pressure test.

[Ed Lijewski]

Before all of what you've posted here, did the engine smoke and/or puke lfrom thr tailpipe ike it is doing now?

What head gasketdid you use? What head bolts?

YMMV

[Ed Lijewski]

So after scratching my head for days I finally check Urban Dictionary for TL, DR to learn this:


"tl;dr
Literally, "Too long; didn't read"

Said whenever a nerd makes a post that is too long to bother reading.
"omg you postwench. i can only say one thing in response - tl;dr"
"tl;dr...why dont you give up on your unabridged edition of War and Peace or at least stop posting it here?"

Funny.

YMMV

[diozqwin]

Lol too many times in the past I've written something that length, with a response "yeah i didn't read that, too long"

Tl:dr -- see compression test results

Collected a bit of data, things are in motion now again to pull the head and do it again, and all things considered - it's about all I can do at this stage aside from a whole rebuild (would much prefer to do that ~2 years down the line). I went to see my local merkur master jimmy, he agrees and thinks the gasket isn't sealing. I did a few things wrong (didn't set the head down very even, used a metal gasket scraper to scrape off the blue gunk, took me a couple attempts to line it up, event still maybe block not clean enough)

Previously it did have white smoke on startup, which is gone since the head came back. The car will run, kinda has very low power, sometimes goes into a chugging train funk at ~500 rpms until it dies or pulls itself out into an either rumbly 1000 or decently smooth 1000 rpm. It'll die just trying to move it around the driveway (unless I keep it at 3000 rpms, even still before it used to have enough to torque for me to inch off the cluth and it would scoot a little)

COMPRESSION TEST RESULTS

First compression tests (dry, warmed up engine)
1: ~80 PSI
2: ~95 PSI
3: ~ 95 PSI
4: ~95 PSI

Second compression tests (dry, cold engine, max #'s)
1: ~90
2: ~110
3: ~105
4: ~110
(this was the only time I had someone help me by cranking it as i watched the gauge, each crank seemed to pump up the gauge about 15 psi rather consistently)

After this, I ran the engine until the smoke came and took notes,
Hard to start, ran steady for 5 minutes
Change of tone 5:30, sounds like a gurgling toilet from oil cap hole
8 less noise -- timing starts to go kinda crazy
9:40 starts to smell
11 at 2000 RPM on its own
11:30 revved down
12:30 smoke from tailpipe, revs back up, shut off car.

Days later, I rented the coolant pressure tester, pumped to 16 psi, only detectable leak was front radiator hose - tightened it
Changed a couple sketchy vacuum lines, (couldn't get pressure to build from pumping a vacuum tester tool). Turned on the engine with the vacuum tester connected into the lines, hovering crazily (not calibrated gauge?) around 12-16.

Car took quite a lot of cranks to start that time, first started at 500 rpms chugging but not dieing
Shut it off started at 1000 after a couple tries

Coolant pressure gauge didn't go up at all while the car ran, i pumped it to 16, didn't notice a change like coolant was leaking any more than before, (engine was basically "cold" though)

Oil puddled on camshaft pulley, as if it came through the middle seal.

MORE COMPRESSION TESTS (the next day)

Spark plugs pulled
Cyl 1: Smells like oil / carbon
Cyl 2: Mostly oil smell
Cyl 3: Oil, subtle coolant smell
Cyl 4: Smells like sooty coolant

Compression test (dry, cold, 10 cranks)
Cyl 1: ~85
Cyl 2: ~100
Cyl 3: ~90
Cyl 4: ~100

Compression test (wet, cold, 10 cranks)
Cyl 1: ~95
Cyl 2: ~110
Cyl 3: ~120
Cyl 4: ~120

Compression test (wet, cold, 12 cranks -- added more oil to cyl 1)
Cyl 1: ~110-115
Cyl 2: ~120
Cyl 3: ~125
Cyl 4: ~120

Compression test ( wet, cold, 20 cranks)
Cyl 1: ~120
Cyl 2: ~120
Cyl 3: ~125
Cyl 4: ~120

So I don't really know what kind of sign to make of the wet compression results, but the plan is to do the head again, this time with a Felpro 1035 gasket, cleaning the block even more, checking it with a metal ruler and a flash light, then copper gasket maker on both sides of the gasket and setting down the head as evenly as possible with a cherry picker.

[thesameguy]

That huge bump in results between dry and wet suggests it's a bottom end problem. The even results across the tests wet & dry do not suggest a head gasket. The lack of results the cooling system pressure tests isn't conclusive, but does suggest that the cooling system is intact. Gurgling from the oil filler suggests a bottom end problem. If I had to bet right now I'd bet a bottom end problem. But, you really need a leakdown test a this point to pinpoint the problem. Lacking that, I would personally assume a toasty engine.