Guess what fellas, we finshed it up this evening and all systems are go. Chus' car is an absoulte beast and handles like no other car I've been in thanks to a fine set of *Zeal coil overs. And every Strut bar and chassie brace that will bolt to the car.

I'm thinking what happened is this; the car overheated due to an obviously damaged fan.

It was not driven hard during this brief time of over heating so the damage was contained to the head gasket. Which really had no obvious signs of sever failure. A small amount of coolant got into cylinders 1 and 2. Not enough to cause hydro lock or any thing like that. With all this going on the ECU got wise that something was not right so the car died.

On a side note; beware of who installs head studs for you. When I un-torqued the head, it was obvious the studs were not evenly torqued. And I doubt this was due to the over heating issue. I'm not saying this caused the head gasket failure, but could have contributed.

When we got the head off and check everything out it all looked really good. Cylinder walls still had the cross hatching. The valves were nearly pristine and the deck and mating surface of the head looked bran new after we shined them up with scotch bright pads. Just a bit of coolant in 1 and 2 like I said before. Check the mating surfaces with a straight edge and they looked perfectly flat.

To make a long story short we busted a$$ all Friday and Saturday changing the head gasket and installing a beautiful new radiator, oh and throwing a helix downpipe on our friend Johns black 04. Needless to say we were pretty busy.

In the end it all came together like clock work. We fired the car up and it ran like a champ.

 

A fantastic outcome! Congrats!!!

 

damn,doesn't sound good,headgasket,and depending burned piston

 

what a beautiful ending !!! good job guys

 

Hey guys this same thing just happened to me. My radiator fan exploded and shredded the radiator. Had the radiator and rad fan replaced. Car turns over. Removed the sparkers saw minimal rad fluid in the two cylinders closest to the cam gears. Removed the fluid and made sure it was all dried out. Installed new sparkers. Made sure there was enough rad fluid in the new radiator. Started up the car and it was idling real bad. Shut it off and took out the new sparkers. There was new rad fluid in those same cylinders, the two closest to the cam gears. So I guess that means I need to replace the head gasket.

So here is why I'm posting, I have two questions.
What are all the things I'm going to need to replace the head gasket myself, i.e. what tools and misc. parts am I going to need to do this myself or a link to a place on this is website where I can get all that info, besides the head gasket? Also, as a continuation to this question, is there a spot on this website where I can get a detailed step-by-step set of instructions to do this?
Second question is, does anyone have a recommended shop in Jacksonville, FL or surrounding area that could do all this work and do a good job? Maybe port-and-polish the head while I have it off.

 

Wow you just resurrected a four year old thread. Nice

 

cause you smoked the head and the rings.

 

a little late lol

 

And that matters how?...

 

The head needs to be resurfaced. It will warp from the heat and needs to be cut flat again to mate against the new HG.

 

I'd say for starters, the factory service manual.

 

i had a gf once who drove a car for 45 mins on 0 coolant, ended up cracking the ringlands on all 4 pistons