Head gasket replacement

[Slitherbeast]

Have you tightened the harmonic balancer bolt yet? You need to remove the belt and remove the lower pulley.(6 bolts) . that will give you good access to the balancer bolt. tighten the big bolt and see if the balancer moves towards the engine any. If it moves at all you should remove the balancer and inspect that it isn't cracked. The balancer may be damaged and is cocked awkwardly with belt tension on. this could be causing your belt to jump on the P/S pulley and to slip enough to cause the water pump to stall. First thing I would check.....

 

[NukeGM/Ford]

I'm thinking that the belt was that way before you started it and you just missed it. Reset the belt then do it again

 

[Kopack_05]

Not terrible but not for the faint of heart either. I can get you upgraded head gaskets as well as new head bolts. Have heads checked while off. New set of springs wouldn't hurt either.

I don't want to hijack this thread, just curious about your comment on having the heads checked while off. Obviously a good idea but was this comment made due to your thoughts on his particular issue, or is this something we should always due with these engines when removing the heads? Is there a common issue with these heads?:dontknow:

Thanks

 

[mtltemplar]

I've looked from on top and up from below and all the pulleys seem to be in alignment, none of them farther away/closer to the engine than the rest, thus I hadn't gone to the trouble of removing the crank pulley and checking the balancer. I would hate to have to remove and re-torque that bolt, just cause of it being an automatic and all that, but I guess that's the next thing to check.

@NukeGM, I wish it was that easy, but I'm actually overly anal when doing these kinds of things (same as I am in my day-to-day job, well life in general), so I know it wasn't like that before I started the truck up, it was seated properly. Plus, I did reseat it and restart the truck yesterday and it did the same thing by the time I got out of the truck and walked around to the front to check it, which is when I took the pictures. Didn't mention that in my post cause I figured that was immaterial since it had happened twice in a row...

 

[NukeGM/Ford]

I've looked from on top and up from below and all the pulleys seem to be in alignment, none of them farther away/closer to the engine than the rest, thus I hadn't gone to the trouble of removing the crank pulley and checking the balancer. I would hate to have to remove and re-torque that bolt, just cause of it being an automatic and all that, but I guess that's the next thing to check.

@NukeGM, I wish it was that easy, but I'm actually overly anal when doing these kinds of things (same as I am in my day-to-day job, well life in general), so I know it wasn't like that before I started the truck up, it was seated properly. Plus, I did reseat it and restart the truck yesterday and it did the same thing by the time I got out of the truck and walked around to the front to check it, which is when I took the pictures. Didn't mention that in my post cause I figured that was immaterial since it had happened twice in a row...

sorry, didn't know you had tried it again

 

[mtltemplar]

No worries, you couldn't have known, sorry I didn't mention it in my first post. I'm going to try to take the pulley off tomorrow night and start checking out the balancer. Is there room in there to use an impact wrench to get the crank bolt off or how do you suggest bracing things to keep the engine from just turning over when I'm trying to haul on it? I hate the idea of using the flywheel teeth after taking off the starter, but that's just because it seems like it would be easy to break one off.

 

[seethrough]

Maybe someone can respond with torque specs on the crank balancer bolt but I don't think it is so much that you will have to get into the flywheel and "hold" the crank from spinning. It's a large V-10 so the compression should be enough to hold everything in place.

 

[VPRPWRD]

Maybe someone can respond with torque specs on the crank balancer bolt but I don't think it is so much that you will have to get into the flywheel and "hold" the crank from spinning. It's a large V-10 so the compression should be enough to hold everything in place.

Bolt-Crankshaft Vibration Damper 130 ft/lbs

 

[BigRed460]

I don't want to hijack this thread, just curious about your comment on having the heads checked while off. Obviously a good idea but was this comment made due to your thoughts on his particular issue, or is this something we should always due with these engines when removing the heads? Is there a common issue with these heads?:dontknow:

Thanks

Reinstalling a head with a bent valve is a lot off lost time and money, any machine shop can do a quick valve job.

 

[mtltemplar]

So does one seriously have to drain the cooling system, remove the coolant reservoir and disconnect hydraulics and remove the rad fan before being able to remove the crank pulley and/or check the crank bolt? Seems like there's just enough room for a wrench and socket in there (barely) but if you have to use a pulley puller on that pulley, there would be no room for that... I'll remove it all if I have to, but damn, that's a lot to remove and it's been too cold here lately (single digits to low teens on the days I've had time to work on it)...

 

[JTS VENOM PERFORMANCE]

you can check the crank pulley bolt , but has to be from underneath

 

[mtltemplar]

So I don't have a 31mm socket (of course), just a 30 and 32, but the 32 was close enough to at least give it a shot - put a normal socket wrench on there and tried to 'tighten' it, and it just turned the crank over, no tightening of the bolt that I can tell. I went ahead and gave it a full rotation so I could look at the damper, and it seems perfectly fine, as in no visible cracks, etc. I also took a pic of the alignment of the pulleys from underneath, they seem good to me, none of them noticeably out of line.