blown head gasket

[budweiser_man]

I think my truck has a blown head gasket, water level goes down quick, oil is disapearing, and runs a little hot.

no smoke out the tail pipe yet, oil just goes down looks fine, water is rust greenish brown color, sort of a rust color. still runs fine, I do not see any white foam in the filler cap and there not any blow by. it still starts fine I have an exhaust leak so it ticks right now. I am going on a camping trip tonight so I do not have time to fix it, I am going to tighten the exhaust leak before I go.

how long does it take you guys to do head gaskets? I do plan on taking the heads to a machine shop and get everything check out and get the valves reseated. what else should I do?

what could I do for this weekend?

truck is a 74 k5 with a 350 in it.

 

[Mad-Dog]

Magnaflux the heads before doing any machine work...
if they are ok then resurface them and do a quality 3 angle valve job and slap em back on....
Removing the heads is a 1 day project if ya stay with it.

 

[454k30]

Yeah not to hard to get the heads off in a day. The most time consuming part is waiting for the machine shop to get done with them. No oil in coolant or coolant in the oil? You might be like me, worn out rings and a small radiator leak. Took me a long time to find that leak!

 

[R72K5]

you need to invest in a radiator hand pump with guage on it
my stepdad has one at the garage, we put it on the radiator filler and pump it up to 15 psi and pull the plugs and crank engine and look for water out a spark plug hole,

this is what i would do before pulling heads

pulling heads i can have a pair of chevy heads off no longer than about 2 hours at the very longest,


drain radiator and pull heater hoses and upper rad hose,
yank the alternator
unhook the carb and intake hoses and wires,,
remove a/c compressor and place to the side out of the way,
put engine at #1 TDC position and yank the distributor

pull intake bolts yank carb and intake off together, you may need a crowbar or somethintg bigger, sometimes an intake is REALLY glued down big time,
sometimes i have to take a BFH and beat the hell out of the intake to bust it off the engine, like on old 2bbl ones i am converting to 4bbl on, etc, ones i am scrapping anyways(i have busted an iron intake trying to remove it- broke it across the front, )



blast off all the dirt before you start yanking intake bolts and jsut after you pull the bolts out of the holes, then yank the intake off,

then lay rags over lifters and pushrods, cover the whole lifter gallery with them, and stuff more in the cylinders, then scrape engine decks clean

get the common fel pro (blue) self sealing gaskets from auto zone, etc,

dont get the black or red ones from napa


good luck