Slant 6 Turbo 68Dart Project

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Blown head gasket?

Ick. Those words!

That's one of my other thoughts. There's no oil or coolant being mixed within the fluids themselves. The coolant is bright green still, the oil is black/brown. The coolant blowing like that could be some exhaust - yeah. I have a compression tester at work I can use and see what's up tomorrow. No water in the exhaust though - doesn't mean it cant happen.
 
Ick. Those words!

That's one of my other thoughts. There's no oil or coolant being mixed within the fluids themselves. The coolant is bright green still, the oil is black/brown. The coolant blowing like that could be some exhaust - yeah. I have a compression tester at work I can use and see what's up tomorrow. No water in the exhaust though - doesn't mean it cant happen.

Ugly words, I know. :wack:

They do make a tester that can "Sniff" the coolant for Carbon Monoxide. My dad bought one, I don't recall how much they cost though.
 
the video says private for the turbo. if you need to do a close up to show the play then i wouldnt sweat it. just check the housings for any signs that the blades got into them. fwiw, if oil is in the bearings and you were to try and check for side to side play it might not give if you dont do it super hard. way back when i had my turbo coupe i checked the turbo after running it for a while and it was tight, for ***** and grins i checked it a few days later when it was cold because i was in there and it had some play to it. as long as its not hitting the housings or really close to it i would run it. if you are afraid it might the rebuild kits are around $60 for a decent one. they are easy to rebuild too, just clean everything really well and put it back together the way you took it apart with the new parts.

no idea on the over heating. i had a slant do that to me years ago. just started over heating out of the blue. it wound up pissing me off because i couldnt figure it out and it was my dd with no backup so i cooked it and put another motor in. lol. took the tension out of the springs and it wouldnt run anymore. is the water pump original? the motor i have now was over heating on me when i first put the little turbo on. it started leaking from the weep hole on the pump though. changed that and its been good. might be worth swapping out the pump just for good measure and upgrading to electric fans. are you running a catch can? can you see the coolant flowing through the radiator with the cap off looking down in there? should be a decent flow with the thermostat open.

try putting the ignition box in the oven with an old pot under it. when that crap gets hot it will ooze. ive had them melt on me when they were on the fender so heat is definitely what is gonna get that crap out of there. also might wanna think about drilling some holes under where ever you mount it so that air can get to the heat sink. heat kills those modules.
 
Good info Jr.

I fixed the video so its visible. you do have to be pretty close to see what's going on, so maybe its just fine and I'll roll with it. I'm going to find someone to weld bigger ends on the compressor housing so I can re-use everything i have now. Then i have to clock the main body so the oil passages face the right way and wait for my new gasket for it in the mail and I'll be good to go.

The overheat is still an issue I guess. I drained all the coolant, and then pulled the pump. About 1/2 gallon of coolant proceeded to drain out after that while i was unprepared for it...

But alas, the vanes on the water pump seemed just fine. I replaced the pump anyway. I was almost sure I had it. I have not put coolant/water back in because I haven't solved the problem yet I think.

Another symptom I can think of here is that the heater does not blow hot air. I'd think it would, and the heater core is not leaking or anything. That's another reason why I thought water pump - maybe it wasn't pushing water that high into the system, since the heater core sits above everything else.

I switched over to do some painting with the '74 since I was frustrated, but I'll get back to the turbo slant tomorrow. It's dark now and I was a little heated when I saw the water pump came out clean and functional and all that coolant spilled out. I thought for sure I had it all drained.

ALl the coolant came out neon green - no issue whatsoever, not even brown in the least bit. So I am still not sure it could be a head gasket, could be a crack in the block or something, but I'm not seeing any coolant loss either to suggest that, and no steam spray from anywhere when it's running.

I'm still curious why it was puking at 190*... I am using a mechanical temp gauge also.
 
If the head gasket was popped and a small amount of combustion gasses were being pushed into the coolant they would go to the highest place (heater core) resulting in no heat. The additional pressure will push coolant past your rad cap. You need to borrow a tool to pressurize the coolant system and see if it holds pressure. When you pulled the plugs was one of them significantly cleaner than the rest?

My 2 cents
 
just watched the video. do the wheels hit the housing at any point? seems like there is a little more play then you would want but if they arent getting into the housing i wouldnt sweat it. the oil will keep it centered.
 
If the head gasket was popped and a small amount of combustion gasses were being pushed into the coolant they would go to the highest place (heater core) resulting in no heat. The additional pressure will push coolant past your rad cap. You need to borrow a tool to pressurize the coolant system and see if it holds pressure. When you pulled the plugs was one of them significantly cleaner than the rest?

My 2 cents

I'll have to find that tool. We don't have one. But someone around my shop might. The plugs were all tan and looked like they'd been working perfectly. No one was cleaner than the rest.

I'll run a comp test and see if anything's changed from where it was before. I have not refilled the system with coolant because I feel like I'll need to get at the head gasket. I would just hate to pull it apart to find nothing wrong is all, and then wind up even more lost.
 
if you were to run a hose from the top of the radiator to say a water bottle half full with the hose going under the water level and start it up cold and see bubbles i think that would work for letting you know weather or not exhaust gasses are getting in your cooling system. one or two bubbles would be understandable given the coolants rate of expansion when heated. if it bubbles persist constantly then you are beat and have to take it all apart.
 
I threw in the towel before i got that far Jr. and as it turns out, the head gasket is...


just fine.

Took me about an hour and 45 minutes to get the turbo apart, and get the head off. I discovered the exhaust leak under the turbo flange when I took it all apart, and a couple little oil drips so I will have fixed quite a few things.



Started here, and none of the rods were bent or anything, so I pulled the head off.





The fiancee helped me wrangle it out of the car too luckily.

I don't see any issue with the head gasket itself, this is cylinder 1/2 (from right to left)


This is 3/4



This is 5/6



On the head, this is 4/5/6 (left to right)



And this is 1/2/3



I don't see any surface cracks or abnormalities, but I think I'll take it back to the machinest tomorrow and have him check. I could not be able to see the crack and my dad believes it to be behind a exhaust valve or something.

Unless someone else sees something I don't?
 
not gonna cause your over heating but wondering what the shiny spot on the no.5 piston at 7 o'clock position.
 
might i also suggest remflex gaskets for the manifold to head, exhaust manifold to j-pipe and j-pipe to turbo. i know they are a little pricey but they are nice and seal. ive had mine all apart a few times with no issues re using them.
 
Well took it to the machine shop today, and they said there was nothing readily apparent that could cause exhaust to get into the coolant, but a deck check showed that the head was slightly warped. Not enough to do anything, but it could be, and they're going to resurface it flat, and flux check the head for any cracks and give it back tomorrow hopefully with the A-OK.

I modified the compressor housing to allow me to use my 3" filter, otherwise everything else is the same. I cleaned the housing up good, scuffed the intake neck, applied a bunch of JB and slid a 2 1/4" id to 3" OD piece of exhaust housing over it, let it dry, and painted the whole assembly with Silver high temp engine paint.

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Ok head is back from machinest and they had to take off .008 because the head was warped pretty considerably, but it's all straightened out now, and ready to go back on. They suggested the purchase of some higher strength studs in the future. Hopefully you all are learning from this, because I am... :D They also extracted the broken head stud for me.

I cleaned all the lovely exhaust deposits off the block and did a little touch up.



Waiting on the gaskets for the T3 bracket to come. I trashed the other one when taking it off, and the rear bracket to bolt to V band, so I can just bolt the new turbo right in where the old one was. I'll need to reweld a little too, one of my welds had some pores in it that was leaking exhaust. I don't think JB would work for this either.
 
Well i got this far today.



Being sick is not fun when you need to do work.

The valve cover is just sitting on the head, not bolted down yet.

I did not turn the rotating assembly at all when I took it apart, and I loaded the pushrods in then tightened the rocker shaft down on top of them. Is it safe to assume I can start the engine and then adjust the valves while running, or do I still need to do a bump adjust while it's cold, then adjust while running? Like I said I did not turn the rotating assembly or adjust the rocker arms any.
 
as long as the rods are seated in the lifters and rockers then you should be safe starting it and adjusting. ive done it that way a few times. once it warms up double check the bolts holding the rocker shaft down. ive had them come loose on me.
 
This is a solid cam. You can't adjust the valves running. You need to use feeler gauges.
 
I've been adjusting it while running with a set of feelers for a while now. I was asking if the valves would be in a position where I could safely start it, then adjust or if I had to bump the starter over and adjust them while the engine was off first, but I did not spin the crank while the head was off so "technically" they're still in the same spot - kind of.

But I did get the engine to fire after I finally figured out that I had a rag in the carb hat assembly. That took a few minutes to figure out why it kept shutting down...

Also these "turbo" clamps for the intake tubing suck. I keep having to replace them after I try to loosen them. Most of the nuts keep stripping on the studs so you can't retighten it down.

But it sounds fine, and this morning I'm going to adjust the valves now that I found my wrench set, put the valve cover on, get the intake tubing reassembled, and drive it two miles to work and see how it goes.

If everything is good to go, then this coming weekend I want to do my H.E.I. conversion.
 
the china tubing clamps suck. ive gotten lucky and got them all tight and havent really had to take them back off aside from a couple. i was able to find good quality ones at the local hardware store for the few that will need to come of a few more times. might be worth looking into.

lol @ the rag.

is this all back together with the new turbo?
 
Yeah they're crummy T-bolt clamps. It's all back together but still with the old turbo :( The new one is not ready to go yet. I need a different downpipe flange for it, and the body needs to be clocked, which seems like a simple task, but the body is pretty much frozen solid to the exhaust housing and can't be moved. I don't want to apply too much pressure to it, but I set some wd on it, and am waiting to find a flange that will work. The New turbo will bolt directly in place of the old one so it won't be much of a hassle at all. It uses all the same bracketry too for oil and everything else.

The car is still heating up on a 2 mile drive, except now instead of hitting 220-240 degrees, it only hits 190-200. This would normally be ok - on the freeway, with a 180 t-stat like it used to have, but I have a 160 in it right now. I think I may have changed too many things at once.

I ditched the old 7 bladed mopar fan because it was bent and had giant holes in it when the catch can flew into it while it was running, initially I thought the fan being bent almost straight was my cooling issue, and bought a flex fan, and it turned up, but happens to be a 17" fan, the old one i had was 19" and covered the radiator surface better. There's no shroud, and since I've bought the car- it has never had one. I think I have reduced the pull on the fan by making it that much smaller, and should hunt down a 19" fan.

Also my previous T-stat I drilled a 1/16" hole in it, and that solved my previous overheat issue, and I neglected to do that on this new t-stat. I'm going to try and switch those 2 things back to the way they were as much as I can, and see what happens - then move forward from there.

My dad is calling "cracked block" and I don't want to hear that junk.

Once I have the overheat sorted out, and a very obviously audible exhaust leak somewhere fixed, then I will move on with the garrett turbo. The struggle is real. I wish I had a lot of money to put towards this, but I don't and since the beginning have to get by with what I can get and make. I am determined to make it work well period, and will not give up on it.

20150304_085211_zpsghjp54on.jpg
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But at least it's all back together, and I am a step in the right direction - because it is not running as hot as it was.
 
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