Blown head gasket (water in oil)

johnf1nk944 · 11-13-2011, 04:16 AM

Long story sort, the head gasket in my 944 was damaged and went out, I didn't catch this immediately since I haven't driven it in a while, took it out for a right last night stalled out 26 miles later when I checked my radiator res and engine its gunked up.

My question here is, is there any way I can reliably flush the entire system out including motor that is not going to saddle me with having to perform a tear down and rebuild of the motor.

I have in the past with other cars if it was caught quicker or if they had been sitting up for a long time ran diesel fuel through the motor to break up all the gunk and cycle it through the system a few times till it was all out. I was wondering if there is a same or similar practice that can save me from a week of rebuilding.

Any recommendations would be welcome.

mikepellegrini · mikepellegrini's Garage

I'm unclear on this - have you replaced the headgasket? If it's blown, there's no way around replacing it. It'll just get worse and worse till the engine seizes or something.

If you've already replaced the gasket but there's still coolant in the oil or vise versa, yeah, you can try flushing it. I would use cheap oil and engine flush. But if you've been running it that way for long, you may have hashed the rod and/or main bearings.

For oil in the coolant, you can flush the cooling system with a weak TSP substitute solution (That contains no phosphates) with just a dash of laundry detergent; then flush with water till it's clear.

What precisely, is "Gunked up?"

If it's just oil in the coolant, are you sure it isn't the oil cooler seals that have failed? What symptoms does your car have? Have you done a compression test?

johnf1nk944 · 11-13-2011, 06:37 AM

A couple months ago when I was having an over heating issue, I replaced the water pump that was going out and flushed all the fluids, coolant, oil, etc. I bought the head gasket, my friend changed out my water pump and was supposed to have changed the gasket for me while I was out of town for work. I know every thing else got done but I'm not sure if the gasket was replaced or if it got damaged before or during putting it in since I wasn't there for that.

I know I will have to replace the gasket now, there is no way around that part.
By gunk I mean the white excretion that is made from water and oil mixing which is clearly visible in the oil and to a lesser extent the radiator res. It's not super thick or any thing which is why I was figuring flushing all the components *should* be enough to resolve the issue.

Before the break down it didn't do any thing that indicated there was an issue, it was pretty cold out side so there was steam coming off the tail pipe I didn't really pay any attention to that so there could have been small smoking issue that I didn't see that would have pointed me to check things over. It drove fine, accelerated fine, had one incident with it choking getting up to speed which gave me concern and about 10 minutes later while I was driving it home it started acting like it was going to stall so I pulled over immediately where it did choke and die on me.

bxtech · 11-13-2011, 06:50 AM

I would double check the head gasket before condemning it. Do a leak down test.

It is very common for the oil cooler seals to fail, so if the leak down test checks out good, I would suspect the seals next. If you end up doing the head gasket job, I'd also change out the oil cooler seals at the same time anyway just for peace of mind.

mikepellegrini · mikepellegrini's Garage

Yeah, do a compression test and a leakdown test before you dive in there.

smokin_944 · smokin_944's Garage

+1 Mike. Once you start, you are in for the long haul. Be very sure that you understand what has happened before you go down that road. My neighbour just went through this with his 44. Damn shame...

johnf1nk944 · 11-14-2011, 10:31 AM

Well, I drained the oil it wasn't all that milky which is pretty alright, one of the inlets on the air intake boot broke off from rotting so I won't be able to do much more work than the compression test until I get that replaced.

If it's not one thing it's another. I'm just hand cycling the flush right now, I'm probably going to borrow an oil evacuation charging unit to use to flush kerosene or diesel through it in the mean time while I am waiting on my parts to come in.