ALEV8

Car is on ramps. Sealed the system up, new gaskets, topped up coolant mixture after cracking bleed valve and listening to liquid run into system, and all new pulleys, belt, everything, aaaaaand slight drop from tstat housing initially but it stopped. I was fairly disappointed but it's holding still. I have not started the car. Going to reinstall driver's exhaust header now. Leaving cats off if it has to go to the shop......

What say the masses? Start it or not?

KNS

I'd start it up and let it idle. Watch the location you saw the drip originate, if it's going to drip it will do so under pressure.

You're not going to harm anything by idling even if it starts to drip again (hopefully it won't).

ALEV8

Came up to temp, started dripping. This is the second thermostat gasket I have installed. Everything else looks ok. Found more broken cabling guides I'll need to replace.....and maybe all the 02 sensors, and use Bosch OEM. I think this is the point I take her to the indie and stop worrying about it. No 911 for weeks sucks.

KNS

I replaced two bad OE BMW T-stats due to them leaking prematurely. Sometimes they suck right out of the box.

I switched brands and no more leaks.

ALEV8

Jay-zus!!!!
Well I did the water pump twice and forgot to order the thermostat housing and gasket the first time, then ordered and installed water pump gasket #2. Then, I realized from a leak at the thermostat that I didn't replace the thermostat gasket, so I went and got one and buttoned it all up again. Still leaking as above. Coming up to operating temp and at operating temp it was just a drip. When I was installing the thermostat housing the mating surface of the block was not pristine and whatever was on it was not fazed by acetone. I scrubbed it good though while installing that new gasket....

Petza914

Man, that stinks.

Before putting any 2 surfaces back together when doing a DIY, I have a rotary drill attachment (that I think came from Eastwood) that is essentially a velcro mounted scotchbrite pad. I spray a little brake cleaner on it, then lightly hit both sides of the mating surfaces. The contact pad is a plastic material so it's not aggressive enough to do any surface damage and the brake cleaner gets off any foreign residue that might remain (old gasket material, etc).

For both the water pump and thermostat metal gaskets, I put high temp gasket maker on my fingers and smear a very thin coating onto both sides of the metal gasket, then torque the bolts down to spec. With this process, nothing ever leaks, not oil pans/sumps, not waterpumps, etc. The secret is to not make a bead of the gasket material when using it with an actual gasket, it just helps the gasket to seal better. This also prevents globs of gasket material from ending up on the inside, breaking loose and traveling in the cooling or oiling systems (depending on what you were working on). I also let it fully cure (24 hours) before refilling whatever system it's a part of.

For oil mating surfaces, I use the black gasket maker, as it's the most oil resistant and still approved for the oil temps reached.

ALEV8

Here we go again.....coolant draining....getting back at it. What about using Hylomar Permashield gasket goo? Aviation grade.

jchapura

[I second what Pete says above. ^^]

Hey Alex. I just did my tstat again this weekend because of my "weird" temp. [More on that on my thread...]

I think the key is the housing mating surfaces. I very carefully scraped with putty knife but I did scrape. Aluminum is soft - be careful. I then used green ScotchBrite. If you suspect warping of the house covering or have deep scratches that traverse the whole mating surface then you may want to carefully file down the whole mating surface - very carefully. Very carefully. Your objective is to minimally remove material but keep the surfaces parallel. Use a very fine file. A coarse file will leave machining marks too deep.

I did not have to remove the header. Just remove all three screws, and move up and down as necessary, that black approximately 1 inch diameter coolant transfer tube. Disconnect it from the rearward rubber hose connection. I left the forward rubber hose connection untouched.

You'll definitely need a swivel socket, swivel, and or box end wrenches and variety of smaller diameter drive extensions. 1/4 inch drive works best. Even thought they are torx external heads, a regular smaller sized metric will work, because it's a low torque situation (7.5 ft lbs). I think 8 mm.

I think another helpful tool is the AirLift. You should be able to hold (10-15 minutes?) a 25-26 in. water vacuum before you fill with coolant mix. A dripping leak as you have described should have leaked-down the vacuum - raising a red flag.

In a pinch, I would not hesitate to use permatex ultra copper as an RTV. Both sides of gasket. But, I avoided the pinch, twice, apparently. No leaks. (No jinxing)

With gaskets, cleanliness is next to Godliness.

ALEV8

It's undone at the return tube, and coolant plug on the oil sump pan. Drained a little over 2.25gal of mixed coolant. I have internal torx sockets but they slip a little with the articulating socket connection, and are annoying. Just a single bolt holding housing on at the moment. I ordered the Hyalon liquid medium strength gasket assist liquid. Won't be here till Friday so we may go on without it. This time I'll scotchbrite the mating surfaces and blow the debris out. I know that's the issue. I also had one difficult to fasten bolt. It would bind almost at the very end so I thought it might be too long. We shall see.....I also have the Schwaben Airlift but I thought the circuit had to be dry to use it....the headers, cats and exhaust have been on and off countless times, I decided to do new gaskets and bolts anyway. Save you time and your precious hands by taking them off.

jchapura

Yup, that's about what I got.

Yup, that's why I brought multiple tools with me under the car. Next time, I will buy new bolts to maximize the bite the tool has the next next time - worn bolt heads make for trouble in the tight situation... Another technique so you can maximize the pressure to keep the socket on the bolt head - use an air ratchet. That way, all your hand and arm movement can be directed to keeping the socket on the head - not moving the manual ratchet to spin out the bolt.


Remove that bolt and see if the end is burnished because it's bottoming out. That definitely won't help with getting an even pressure (or any, for that corner) on the mating surfaces. New bolts or if you have a mating nut, then you can thread on the nut and then grind down the bolt, and then use the nut to chase the threads.

I used my UVIEW AirLift on the partially wet system - not a problem. Works perfect. FWIW, I did raise just the rear end in the air to do all the change-out and vacuum/re-fill work, and initial warm-up. No manually burping needed. PM me if you want to borrow it.

ALEV8

Pretty sure I just screwed the pooch on the 11 o'clock bolt. The rest came out quite easily. I'll try my air ratchet on it but I was working around the header and the black hard coolant line running to the center forward.

ALEV8

All out and ugly. Will replace these.
Old gasket baked on. Who knows. See for yourself!

yvesvidal

Alev8,

You need to clean and surface perfectly, this gasket plane. I would use Scotch Brite green stuff and lots of Naphta to make it perfect and shiny, before installing a new gasket completely dry.
Also, when re-installing the bolts, go gently and torque them in the same way you would torque the wheel lugs.

Yves

ALEV8

Hey Yves. At Porsche now picking up fresh bolts. Remembered fresh bolts for 1$. Forgot coolant plug and crush washer!

Do I need to pull pressure on the system first, as gasket is inow nstalled. Torquing to 7.5lb and then gotta get that crush washer and plug. Otherwise it'll bug me to death, and that washer is a consumable.

Update: I was torquing all bolts to just about 8 pounds with my shorter torque wrench and bolt at 4 o'clock has stripped from the block threads. Back to square one.

ALEV8

Likely that was where my leak originated from at the thermostat housing. So now helicoil or retap might do it ya think? I'll try with same size tap and get a feel first. All the others torqued properly. What a pisser.