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Coolant in the crankcase


VeiledLt

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So today, after a week solid of 18 hour days in the garage and 3 months of parts acquisition and seeing my car sit, I finally got the new L28 in my 280z and was going to make all the final checks and what not and went to pull my dipstick tube one last time and... I had just filled the radiator but apparently I filled the crank case as well and coolant came spewing out the tip... I am not sure how this happened but I do know I didn't do anything painfully obviously wrong to get that out of the way, so some things I was thinking of was something with the timing cover? Or maybe the oil pan gasket where it wraps around the timing cover? Anybody else out there have this issue before or have any idea what it might be? I'm off to pull the cover off I"ll check back in a few.

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Is this a fresh rebuild?

 

Core plugs left out, front of the block under the timing chain guides, or plugs left out of the the top of the head if removed during rebuild would cause this. Head gasket not sealing correctly, installed improperly, or as you eluded to, the front cover not sealing correctly?...

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This might sound dumb, but is the head gasket on upside down?

 

My friend and I rebuild my dad's Subaru Forester engine a while back, and I didn't double check his work. Next thing we knew, there was oil all over the driveway. Left side head gasket was on backward. You'd almost never notice, but the oil holes didn't quite line up. Obviously the L28 is a completely different engine, but without knowing any more about it, I'd guess head gasket troubles of some kind.

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Haha yes and thank you to everyone that answered, I did indeed do a really dumb thing and forget the block front freeze plug so I guess I did do something painfully obvious, oh well fixed now, however I have a new problem, one of the bolt holes for the timing cover bolts stripped in the process, the big dog one that goes through the far left water pump hole, and now I have a oil and water leak out that side of my timing cover... I think I can clean the threads up with a tap but I'm a tad nervous.

 

The worst part though was that in removing the cover to find the missing freeze plug my buddy pryed, ( I wasn't present for this unfortunately) the case off not realizing the top water pump bolt went through and into the block and tweaked the hole out so now I think it's causing a clearance issue which may also be the source of my oil leak. Curious what to do with this, though maybe file down the metal sticking up then drill and tap or... any ideas? Anyone done that before?

 

However, on the bright side, the motor ran, quite well too other then a pretty high idle, (1200 on a MT) but I have my dist. vacuum advance run straight to the mani instead of the air canister so I think that's why, or maybe I'm way off base? Last thing was, I swapped my 78 TB onto the 76 manifold and I have 2 air barbs on the bottom of the TB, now I think one of them got T'd off of the hose that ran from the vacuum canister to the distributor and the other went directly to the manifold via that water bridge type deal that the air reg. is bolted too, am I right on that one? Thanks alot for all your quick responses guys, helped out alot! Sorry it took me so long to respond and sorry for the novel but any help would be awesome! Thanks in advance to anyone who answers, I'm off to go rip the timing cover off...again haha check back in a bit

 

-Spencer

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So I got it all torn apart tonight and cleaned up the bolt holes, didn't need to do any filing or anything like that but the metal did seem to be causing a clearance issue. More bad news, mocha oil and oily water, haha awesome. However, there wasn't very much in either, maybe a 1.8/th quart, and a few drops of oil on the coolant after I drained the radiator, leading me to assume, hope rather, that the bent out hole and sub-par gasket job was making a gap where the water ports are in the block and splash oil from the timing cover was getting into the water pump and vice versa? Or am I maybe being too hopeful? I just can't think of any other place oil/water get that close that I did anything with, sorry just thinking out loud, any advice or input would be greatly appreciated, I'll be back at it tomorrow with updates, thanks in advance for anything!

 

-Spencer

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So the leaks are fixed, thats all good news. New issue though, noticed it was misfiring relatively bad, in fact very badly, hadn't really noticed before because of the high idle. Found to be cyl. #2 after doing a power balance, neat. It was getting spark and fuel, noted because of the unburnt fuel on the plug (not fouled), and the timing was correct... hmm so I decided to do a compression test, that would be a big 0 psi on cylinder 2...awesome, anyways so put air in it, leaking intake valve, not ever closing, sweet, so pulled the head off and the valve, bent, neat so now ordering a new intake valve and a head gasket and that should HOPEFULLY be the last of my issues. Thanks for all your help guys, realize I'm now kind of using this as a build log so I might delete it and move it... Anyways thanks again!

 

-Spencer

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