928SS

well, it was a fun $40k and 4500 miles, till the old gal locked up seemed to be using a quart or so of antifreeze every 50-200 mi, but I couldn't find any leaks. she never overheated, ran great, so I ***-u-me-d it was a leaky hose clamp someplace I couldn't see yet, cause I'd found a couple of others recently.

parked in the garage thurs night after a 130mi run to OC (not over triple digits more than, um - well no tickets anyway). was running fine. I cked the coolant level, added another 2 qts or so friday am and started it up. it was running very rough (1st time since OH), and was blowing white vapor out the pipe - classic H2O signals... I let it run for another 3 min and it cleared up sounded fine again/idled smooth but was still blowing a LOT of white vapor out the pipes on idle or decel if I rev'd it up a tad (was cold and I never go over 3k till it's nice and toasty).

I shut it down and said bad words. took other car to client, and went drinking last night cause I knew it wasn't going to be fixed by cleaning a few dirty contacts. today, I rechecked the fluid level and it was down another qt. or so. tried to fire it up again and it locked up before it turned over 1/2 a revolution or had a chance to light up.

my guess is that it's just hydo-locked. given it wasn't running at the time/just on the starter, there'd be no damage beyond the cause of the leak, probably, maybe, hopefully (lights candles now).

I'm guessing it's just that stupid cometic head gasket that leaked like a sieve when 1st installed (but then "magically" stopped leaking after about a dozen heat cycles). probably should have replaced it at the time, as cometic had told me they had some "issues" w/a batch of gaskets and offered to send me a new one at no charge (course, I'd have to pay to R&R the friggin thing, and since it stopped leaking/all seemed fine - I let it go)...

I suppose I could pull plugs and see what happens/what spits out & where, just for grins. but I think a head will need to come off to fix it, so it's kinda moot beyond telling me which side has the issue. I am sooooo glad I put head bolts instead of studs in there

good news is that theres no water in the oil and oil/dipstick look good, so theres no cross fluid contamination. and I'd guess it's not a metal part failure cause it wouldn't seal up enough for it to lock up, probably, maybe, hopefully....

gotta admit - I'm tempted to just sell it before my wife kills me or I have to deal w/another "project" . but if it's just a gasket, I"d hate to orphan the old gal off for "nothing"...

anyone seen a head gasket leak enough to lock it up overnight?? think any other damage could have occured? thoughts from the gurus/bench racers?

light the candle andrew!!!

Normy

Candle lit. Now get your *** in the garage and fix the thing!

Chamber volume of my car is something like 58 cc's. That is a tiny amount- kind of like a tablespoon! A small amount of water that was forced into one of your cylinders by a bad gasket may have taken up residence there, and when you turned it over...since water isn't compressible...your starter worked against a solid block in one cylinder.

BEFORE you sell it to me or someone else, you ought to do a bit more investigation....

N!

Randy V

Damn, Rob - that blows!

I still haven't completed mods to your sub enclosure, but I have placed the overdeck and gotten rid of the Bazooka. Looks much better fer sure.

I still need to find a small separate sub preamp to power the sub - not enough juice from my head unit to power it directly.

Nicole

Hi Rob: It was great to see you at Sharktoberfest, and I hope you will be able to attend many more fests with your beast. I cross my fingers that you can get it fixed without too much hassle and get to enjoy your baby again soon!

bd0nalds0n

The heads can crack allowing water to enter where it shouldn't. May not be the gasket. My cometic leaked for a while. My mysterious disappearing coolant was due to cracks.

928SS

for the candle/thx guys/Nicole!!

good point N, and those chambers get REAL small w/11.3:1 compression/so even a tad of H20 can make a big diff for sure... I suppose even if it's just the gasket, I"ll have to pull both sides off to insure I don't do this again for a few weeks...

I was kinda surprised to see it fill like that though/maybe it was just "luck" sitting at the bottom of the exhaust stroke and had some vacume which pulled the H20 in???

I'm not parting her out just yet - just thought I'd threaten her in public so she doesn't get any more bad ideas (yes, I talk tough when she's not able to hear me, but it's a PWipped "anything you say dear" when she's within earshot)

so you'll have to go to your local car stereo shop for that one randy get a decent sub amp (most will easily fit there) and you'll be amazed at how good she'll sound in short order you'll probably be done before I am on this round of sharkfun

928SS

you had head cracks?? (not to be confused w/crack heads) where?? did you have them welded??

I intentionally used the later MY heads cause they were supposed to be better/have thicker bosses, etc... hmmmm..

Bill Ball

Leave the plug out of that one bad cylinder and just keep driving it.

bd0nalds0n

I had a busted cam, and the heads exchanged for rebuilt units. The heads I (Greg) got in exchange had cracks...

When this was discovered and addressed , I paid extra to get GT heads which have thicker bosses. I mistakenly thought you were running early-style 32V heads.

hacker-pschorr

Stop speculating & pull the heads. Find out what is going on.

928SS

well, I could have porken design a drain for the leaking cyl, so I could just drain it prior to engine start /kinda like an old radial motor that needs to have the oil drained out of the bottom cyls prior to start if left sitting too long... hey maybe I could recycle the coolant too

ah... these looked pretty good, but I didn't bother getting them magnafluxed...

guess we'll have to follow hacker's suggestion- but it's always best to speculate 1st while holding a credit card in front of the shrine... I left a message friday w/greg, begging for an appt to bring it down... if I take it apart myself, he'll charge me extra to put it back together - for no good reasons I can think of... well.. except maybe cause the last time I took it apart, it took him 100 hrs to put it back together ok, so the pistons, rods, cam & valve stuff should've been marked, there were a few lawnmower parts accidently mixed in there, and "organizing" doesn't mean all the small parts go in the small parts box and the big parts go in the big parts box - but they were clean

hacker-pschorr

Pulling a head is a piece of cake, at least you don't have head studs to deal with.

928SS

compared to the early 32V stuff, the later MY intake looks like it has 50 less parts... I suppose that's an upside to my "little upgrade"... at the rate I'm going - I should have quick releases installed throughout

redpathtribe

Rob, that sucks, BUT, if there's no internal damage, you can replace both head gaskets and solve your coolant leak!

This is how my motor rebuild started, leaking head gasket, didn't have anything lock up though. Ending up going through the whole thing. The good thing is that you've already done all the hard (and cool!) stuff to your motor. If it's only head gaskets, should be a piece of cake

Enjoyed meeting you at SF this year, don't give up, you've put too much of yourself into your car to let a little thing like head gaskets separate you from her!!!

danglerb

Engine cools down, things shrink various amounts and pressure could be very low inside a cylinder, a teenie tiny path overnight would suck in plenty of water to cause trouble.

I've heard so many bad things about the cometic gaskets they must be super duper when they work.

Are there any aftermarket heads for the 928?