I'll probably just flush the **** out of the radiator and put it back in, i'm sure it didn't hurt the radiator.
Hey man, what brand of intake do you have? If they/you used a "proformance" or one of the cheaper intakes to carb it, it may leak. When MarkX first started his chevy it had one of those polished chinese intakes on it and it made a milkshake in 5 minutes or less. the mating surfaces were horrible.
I am starting to lean more towards that idea. It is a GM Performance Intake a factory intake that replaces the fuel injected intake. It is possible that the original block and head work done may have caused the intake surface to be off.
In college, I popped a heater hose in my Buick way out in the middle of nowhere & drove it until the exhaust manifolds were hot enough to read a text book by. It took 4 cans of Barr's Leak to get that car back on the road! I drove it for 2 more years & never pulled the heads. But seriously, I think that you're onto the issue with the intake alignment.
Did they mill the heads? Milled them for compression or something more than just cleaning them up then you might have a problem, but the intake bolts would not line up very well either.
I may have found something for you to check.. It looks like that manifold has some notes about the having no coolant p***ages. From the GM performance parts catalog: "Technical Notes: The bolt pattern on this manifold flange was revised and the holes rotate 27° to match the Gen II cylinder heads. There are no water coolant holes on this manifold, and it will only fit 1991 or later Gen II engines. Casting P/N 24502574." if there are the coolant p***ages on the head, are they getting sealed? This is a picture of the gasket they recommend using on this intake..
I won it in a raffle and killed it in less than 5 minutes! RALPH! Damn, I'm going to the wrong raffles. The last time I won, I got movie tickets.
Ok some great suggestions and some total nonsense. I'm with Revhead in that the intake or intake gaskets may not match up. Also if the engine was rebuilt and you said it had been freshly rebuilt when you got it, the machine shop may have surfaced the heads and or the block more than normal for a general cleanup. this could cause missalignment on the intake. To quote: When I killed the engine I heard the great sound of bubbling. I cracked the lid on the radiator and it looked like someone had dumped cappuccino in it. If you took the cap off the radiator and looked in it after running around the block and didn't get scalded it was not hot. If it was as hot as you think it was it would have scalded everyone within ten feet of it. If it wasn't steaming or puking water when you got back it wasn't hot. And the gages wouldn't have done a lot in this case anyhow. I would take a real close look at every gasket and gasket surface and see if there are any spots that are blown out or were not aligned correctly. Edited in reflection of CadDaddy42's post and some research. The engine in question.
Err... the water pump is cam driven. All LT1s are. Why (and how) would you put on a water pump to switch it to non-reverse cooling? The advantages of reverse cooling may be open for debate, but the way the p***ages are designed would suggest you can't switch the direction of flow and keep it from overheating, so why would someone build a water pump with no practical application? The water pump look stock int he pictures. Note: The LT1 is a modern engine. As such, it is designed to run at a more efficient coolant temperature, which most early engines can't take for long. That being the case, it probably needs a high pressure cap. Boiling coolant (which can be caused by nothing more than air pockets not bled out of the cooling system, or a radiator cap that is too weak) can loosen corrosion in the cooling p***ages, and give a brown color to the coolant. If it's boiling, it could be brown and foamy without there being anything wrong except for a weak radiator cap or water in the system. Get a replacement rad cap for a Caprice with an LT1. Probably like 20 PSI or something. Bleed the air out of the system. I notice you have a '59. In the one picture I can see the engine in the truck, and the radiator cap, it appears (as I would expect) to have the radiator cap below the top of the cooling system (heads). If so, where is the bleeder valve at the highest point in the system to get the air out? Or are you counting on the reverse-flow cooling to self bleed? If so, boiling in the heads, and sending bubbles through to the radiator, 5 minutes in, sounds like it may be part of the self-bleeding process (if it works the way I think it would). Get a service manual for a car that came with an LT1, and check out the coolant bleeding process. Also, change the thermostat. A stuck thermostat will cause a: overheating symptoms and b: coolant fans don't come on because the thermal switch you put in the radiator isn't getting hot... I have seen guys change 3 or 4 thermostats in a row on those cars in the repair shop lately - there are a bunch of defective ones out there right now. And are you using red antifreeze, not green? That would explain the color... it looks like milkshake when it's boiling. But if you run green, make sure to get a radiator cap or something with a sacrificial anode, or you'll regret it 30k miles down the road. Cuz I know you're going to drive the wheels off of that *****in truck, right? Notice the color inside the water necks in the pic. This appears to be a used (possibly high mileage) water pump. That is the normal color for the inside of a water pump in these engines. Another thing that occurs to me is coolant hose routing - if it is wrong, it won't cool properly. If I remember right, there are 2 large hose fittings and 2 or 3 small ones on the pump, and another somewhere else on the engine. You might want to seek advice on the coolant hose routing somewhere like an LT1 message board where there are LT1 swap experts to give you an idea on how o route hoses in an older car without causing problems. I have heard of problems if you do things like just blocking off certain ports because you don't have enough hoses to use them all. The cop cars have these *****in green silicone hoses for the coolant, and I seem to remember lots of them snaking all over the engine compartment. Last, but not least - overheating AND blown head gaskets (either or both) can be caused by a lean mixture (carb needs adjusted) or too much timing (how do you set the timing on an engine with no factory ignition adjustment?). I have heard horror stories about getting the rear dizzy conversion on those engines timed right, due to variations in aftermarket timing pointer setups... If you suspect the timing is an issue, use a vacuum gauge, set the timing for max vacuum, then back off a few degrees. That should be both drivable and safe.
That LT1 is a reverse flow engine. I didn't see the steam tubes on the back of your engine. They bleed the steam out of the system to allow the coolant to reach everything. If you can come up with a Jan 2008 copy of Car Craft, they did a real good piece on the LT1's. Apparently they don't interchange with anything.....jb
I don't know bout this one .Are you sure the intake and engine heads are the same generation components?Your head wont misalign enough to get p***ive fluid exchange . Look at the first set of intake gaskets and see where the impressions are at. g'luck. p.s. nice truck
There is what everyone is missing, and the first time I saw it in the posts. Oil in the radiator makes a messy radiator, BUT water in oil makes a bad engine very quickly. If it only cut loose when you stopped, you may be ok, without gauges on it you can't really say it overheated or got to temp to initiate the fan. It has to get pretty hot to turn on and a 5 minute trip down the road with air circulating may not have done it. However it may have gotten hotter and higher pressure when it was stopped and cut loose then. (I'm being optimistic here).
You know what?..that ****s! sorry to hear about your luck. here is the reason i LOVE my mechanical fans..if the engine is running so is the fan. dont have to trust some switch made in china
Thanks. No doubt, but i'm not going to ***** about a free engine. I will buy an electric fan if I have to.
That would be my guess too. My radiator cap always looks like there was cappuccino in it. It's just all the old dried up antifreeze foaming up that was in the block (that was sitting empty for who knows how long). Your's sat for 4 years. Flush the radiator, put it back together, get your fan and guages up and running and I would imagine you'd be fine.
the only thing i ever saw with oily foamy coolant was a saturn single cam engine from 1996. they had a p***age in the head that was thin-walled. one side was coolant the other oil. when it cracked the oil ran straight to the coolant because its at a higher pressure than the coolant system leaving you no oil in the engine. the catch canister was boiling with something that looked like a wendys milkshake. i dont know how chevy small blocks work as well as many others do here but i have no idea how a head gasket could do this to your motor. have any kids running around while you work? my brothers kids once poured a jug of antifreeze in his gas tank on his mower thinking they were doing him a favor once by re-filling it.
maybe its been said..or maybe not. I dont have time to read thru all the jibber.. did you take into conciteration possible corrosion in the engine block when in storrage?..possible lubericants in the cooling equipment..? radiator, heads, intake, etc? I would flush it, re-fill it..get yer guages up and working and try her again. any smoke out the tail pipe? and ugly oil on the dipstick?..is the cooling system acting like its level is rising?
Hang in there, man. I'm relatively new to the major engine swap business myself...having just completed a SBF/AOD swap. I ran into some issues along the way that really frustrated me at the time and I have some work to tackle after the Roundup to fix a few things that didn't go quite right. Once you figure it out, you'll be a lot better off because you'll know everything about your engine and setup. My build cost me a few extra dollars and a lot of time from screwing things up, but I wouldn't trade the experience for anything. I know the next one will go a lot better.
At the risk of ******* the general crowd of believers on here, I play demolition derby. With that said, I often "loose" a radiator because of a well placed hit and the engine then on the engine runs hot-- really hot for sometimes 20 - 30 minutes. From what you've said I don't think you've ruined your engine in such a short period of time. My derby engines , after cooling and an oil change start right up and run some more. Yours didn't take that kind of abuse. I'm thinking , it's still ok. But do change the oil it might have gotten water in oil pan from just sitting.
I heard back for the shop and the heads are fine, block is jacked! RALPH! So I will get to rebuild it after finding another block.
Wow. Must've been jacked up from the get-go because I can't imaging it taking a dump in 5 minutes. Sorry to hear about that. Well, at least the heads were free, I suppose!
what did the machine shop say it was in the block. Most cars dont even need a mechanical fan when running. We drove all the way to Denton with no fan in the Coupe to the Thaw (around 80 miles and never turned on the fan and it never got over 140. I think the block was jacked from the get go. Mechanical fans are definaltly the coolest looking but dont necessarily always work unless a shroud is used
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