Head Gasket Leak???

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Joeycurl

‘72 Demon 440
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Hi everyone.... so i found motor oil at the top level of my coolant radiator.... which sucks! there's enough that it's a good layer that i can soak up with paper towels. So, before i really flip, i wanted to confirm to make sure and went and did a super clean coolant flush with the cleaner and running the water hose in the radiator.... finished with new coolant. After the first drive.... sure enough....same level of motor oil thickness at the top level of the coolant. FML!

Here's my question....need to figure out what is the root cause of why the head gasket is leaking. It's fairly new with about 3k miles on it, and not run hard. The motor is 0.03" over, 10:1 compression with solid flat tappet and mopar performance AL "452" heads

Any ideas on what the root cause is? faulty gasket? warp heads?
 
Compression test all cylinders to see they are within 10% pressure of each other. If any one or two have a big drop you could look there.

My first thought is if you have oil in the water, wonder if you have some anti-freeze in the oil too from the same issue?

Anti-freeze settles to the bottom of the oil pan, so it is the first thing out when you pull the drain plug quick for a look see.

Also there is a gasket at the aluminum timing cover where oil could meet water if it is leaking, not sure on this as the cooling system is pressurized, that would push water to oil not oil to water jacket . . but can check.

20200608_114709.jpg


Process of Elimination, just have to keep ruling things out as you are diagnosing the different areas and systems of your car. Trying to figure out where and how oil could pass into the water jacket.

Also automatic trans cooler in bottom of radiator can leak oil into cooling system easily if faulty.
 
George, he has this in the big block section! OP what do you have for a transmission, is it an automatic, could it be trans fluid in the rad?
 
If it is atf in rad, guaranteed coolant is getting into transmission.
Oil into coolant, most likely head gasket. Try a retorque?
 
George Jets said:
Compression test all cylinders to see they are within 10% pressure of each other. If any one or two have a big drop you could look there.

My first thought is if you have oil in the water, wonder if you have some anti-freeze in the oil too from the same issue?

Anti-freeze settles to the bottom of the oil pan, so it is the first thing out when you pull the drain plug quick for a look see.

Also there is a gasket at the aluminum timing cover where oil could meet water if it is leaking, not sure on this as the cooling system is pressurized, that would push water to oil not oil to water jacket . . but can check.

View attachment 1715553828

Process of Elimination, just have to keep ruling things out as you are diagnosing the different areas and systems of your car. Trying to figure out where and how oil could pass into the water jacket.

Also automatic trans cooler in bottom of radiator can leak oil into cooling system easily if faulty.
Click to expand...

that's a good point for the compression check and looking at the timing cover. i don't have a trans cooler on my car, so can rule that out.
 
Here is a picture of 452 heads for a 383. Mymopar.com says torque specs on these are 70 ft. lbs.

Retorque your head bolts, if whoever rebuilt the engine used FrelPro head gaskets, they are thick enough to squish down some more and help to seal the water into the oil issue.

Like @Tooljunkie says retorque the heads.

1020162015.jpg
 
Update: I had the felpro gasket on the engine and saw that there was a "bubble" shape channel from the coolant ports and oil channel by cylinder #8. Check flatness and leak checked the heads and everything checks out. There's a slot on the gasket that's close enough to oil channel and that's where saw the evidence of "failure"
upload_2020-7-2_10-14-3.png

The new one will go on and will use a little silicone in the area to help seal it off better.
 
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