Greetings again,
I thought I would share my reflections on the last 7 days with my TR3B.
For those of you just tuning in, I got this car after sitting in the
PO's garage for 18 years or so. When I got it, the cooling system was
dry. I flushed and flushed, used Prestone chemical flush and flushed
some more. I then put the car on the car on the road, and noticed my
coolant was getting pretty cruddy after a hunderd miles or so. I flushed
the system several more times, each time getting more crud out. It
always ran right around 185 F.
Then, last week I decide to try another chemical flush, as I had the
Stowe trip coming up. I went to the local auto parts store, and found a
product I have never seen before, Permatex Heavy Duty Flush. I followed
the directions on the bottle, which instructed me to flush the system,
add the contents of the quart bottle to the radiator, top up with water
and idle the engine for 30 minutes. During the idling period, the head
gasket blew.
I pulled the head, and the head gasket revealed the problem. The #4
cylinder blew back into the rearmost coolant passage. With the head is
sitting on the bench, I take a look at the coolant passages, or should I
say the blocked coolant passages. There was all kinds of crud blocking
the coolant passages to the head, the #4 cylinder passages were all but
completely blocked. Lots of time spent with a coat hanger loosened up
the obvious problems. Since I didn't have time to pull the liners out I
didn't want to disturd the figure 8 gasket, so I was careful not to
scrape the bottom of the liners. I flushed as best as I could. I know
there is still all kinds of crud down on the bottom of the coolant
passages, but I really had no way of getting it out short of tearing the
engine down.
The head had lots of crud as well, but with the head you have access and
I was able to clean the coolant passages.
My conclusions:
1) If you try to run a wet sleeved TR engine after it has spent a long
time with no coolant, you will have lots of crud in the coolant passages
that has no way of getting out;
2) If you get too agressive trying to get the crud out, you will loosen
it up, but it will have no where to go except where it can do lots of
harm; and
3) If your engine runs with the temperature within an acceptable range,
be happy and don't use chemical flushing agents!
Comments?
<nomex on>
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Henry Frye E-mail - thefryes@iconn.net
TR3B TCF1927 L http://www.iconn.net/thefryes/
TR250 CD8096 L A Little Town In
TR250 CD1074 L Connecticut, USA
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