NoOne

Here is a little background. Back in October I took the car lapping at Gratten Raceway and probably put in a total of 25-30 laps, 10 at a time in a session. On the front straight I would get into the boost and stay in it from around 80mph to 135mph, temp around 70 degree's all day.

On one of the last laps the car started to overheat slowly, so I did a cool down lap and after about 2 minutes it started to really overheat. I pulled it over, threw Autotap on it and checked the temp, 245 degree's. Turned on the heat and all that, no change.

Shut the car off and let it cool down to about 225 degree's and started it back up to check. Under the hood coolant had sprayed all over the interior of the engine bay and we thought I had overfilled my 1 quart overflow bottle. Replaced the low rad with water and immediatly it went down to 170 degree's.

Let it idle for a while, no bubbles, no problems. Drove it 2.5 hours home at a steady 180 degree's, made a few WOT runs upto 120mph and although there was a slight smell of coolant it was nothing out of the ordinary since the whole engine bay was covered in it. Pull off of the freeway and come to the first light, instantly it overheated and spitted coolant again, this time I caught it at 235, waited a few for it to cool and filled it again with 60oz of water, drove it 15 minutes home no problem.

I let it sit for about 1.5 months(winter), went out, started it up and it smoked heavily from under the hood, rear driver side cylinder head, took it out for a drive and it never went over 170 degree's(35 degree day).

Parked it and tried to decide what to do...I knew it had stock head bolts and the GM MLS gaskets, plus I had always smelled a bit of coolant over the 15K I put on the motor after hard runs under boost.

I thought I'd disassembled it and inspect everything.

Well now I have...the heads look fine, the gaskets look fine although they were stuck to the head on the driver side, fell off on the passenger side. They stuck enough that when I pulled the head it bent the gaskets.

No sign of what I can see as a bad gasket but maybe I'm not looking for the right things. Is there something I should be looking for specifically?

http://photos.yahoo.com/bc/econnelle...src=ph&.view=t

There are some pics of the passenger side which is not where I thought I had a problem but the driver side looks identical.

I'm confused because I thought for sure I would see a driver side problem....there were some thoughts that I starved the water pump on the track and caused some damage to it but I'm not sure. No cracks or other evident problems.

Either way it was a good excersise for me and really not as much work as I expected.

What should I look for, what should I take pics of?

The only thing that struck me odd was how easily one of the head bolts came off on the driver side, 3rd from the back in the center, it was REAL easy to take off, broke loose with no effort. Plus the bolts were soaked in some type of anti-sieze, I'm talking gooped on, the ends of the bolts were dripping in it, possible they put too much on the heads were never torque properly?

I'm no real hurry to put it back together, want to make sure it goes back right this time.

Thanks

joghotrod

Did you check the front of the rad. before you pulled your engine apart? I once had a problem with a plastic bag that caused my 94 Z28 to overheat suddenly and when I shut it off for a while the bag would drop away and the engine would run cool until the bag blew back up in the way. Good luck on finding your problem. Jimmy

Y2K2LS1

This might be silly, but make sure your fans are turning on. Could be a fuse or relay and the car would heat up when not moving b/c the fans aren't coming on.

And when you say stock headbolts, do you mean just new Gm bolts or re-used bolts?

What does the gasket look like around the bolt that wasn't tight?