It appears that I have pressure in my cooling system because the overflow tank is filling up so much that it is dumping out onto the street while I drive which is draining most of the coolant in the radiator while I drive. The overflow tank looks like it's boiling (even when the motor is off), but the water temp in the overflow tank is only around 130 degrees (according to the laser temp reader). My dad thinks that it could possible be a crack in one of the heads. We didn't have them pressure checked while they were off and instead only had them planed. Before I pulled apart the motor tonight, I took a video of the exhaust system which I think sounds perfect.
We started by pulling each spark plug out to see if there was any water in any of the cylinders. We didn't see any water. Next we pulled the distributor and then all hoses and other things in the way of pulling off the intake manifold. We checked the seals to see if there was any sign of a breech between the water port and the exhaust port.
We then looked at the heads to see if there were any tell tale signs of a leak. We didn't see anything that would make us suspect that anything was amiss.
The last thing we did after dropping off the passenger side header was pull the head to take it down to the machine shop and have it pressure tested for cracks. These heads were rebuilt about 12 years ago and had minimal miles put on them and then were re-sealed and planed about a year ago so they should be good, but we've got to figure out what the problem is and this seems to be a good place to start.
If the passenger side head checks out, we'll pull the driver side head to have it pressure tested. If that comes out good then I'm not sure what comes next...the block???
Aw bugger! That's too bad. I hope it's in the top end of the engine. Any chance the intake could have a hairline fracture? The one thing I can promise you for sure is that your car will be back on the road much sooner than mine will be. :D
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