Hello everyone! I'm in a weird spot with my 94z M6.

The car has 115k on it and it's in pretty decent shape--it's bone stock down to the paper filter. I've had so many problems with it since I bought it in May that I haven't been able to drive it this summer, let alone work on things other than what needed to be done to make it drivable.

To make a long story short, the car sprung a leak in the radiator and overheated. I got it home and put it on my ramps for the radiator swap. As I was checking the placement on the ramps, I noticed white smoke coming from behind the car. I gave it some gas and quite a bit of smoke came out. Once it got back to idle, there wasn't a ton of white smoke pouring out, but there was a decent amount (coming primarily out of the driver's side tail pipe).

At this point, I assume that I have a blown head gasket, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I am 100% certain that I do not have the mechanical capabilities to do this repair myself, so I am going to have a shop do the repair. I have a really good speed shop near me (New Era Performance) that I'll probably have do the work.

What I'm wondering is if I should take this opportunity to do a little extra upgrading to the car. My goal is to have an incredibly reliable car with perfect street manners that I can drive all of next summer with moderate power increases over stock. I'll never take it to the strip, I just want a nice car for cruising and possibly taking to shows. The original plan for the car was full bolt-ons including mid tubes and leaving the internals stock. I don't want to pour a ton of money into the car but I thought that if I needed a shop to do the head gaskets anyway, it might not be much more labor for them to install a cam too...

If you were me with power goals that weren't very high, what would you do? I've never really modified any of my cars before. Here are some of the options I was considering:

1. Small cam and new heads, full bolt-ons
2. Make sure the heads are straight and port the current heads, full bolt-ons
3. Make sure current heads are straight, just replace head gaskets and install full bolt-ons

From what I'm reading, it will cost me about $1000 in labor just to have a shop replace the head gaskets. Is this accurate? How much more in labor would it likely cost to have the valve train replaced (not sure what parts I would use, but I would research)? Would I benefit from having new springs, pushrods and RR installed without a new cam and just the stock heads?

Thanks in advance!

 

Not doing this type of work yourself makes for a pretty big hit on the wallet. The labor to do the cam with motor in the car is likely = to swapping head gaskets. Add the cost of the cam itself and then cost for the revised PCM tune.

I would:

1. get new valve springs and 1.6 RR installed and new valve stem seals
2. put mid length or long tube headers on
3. get a 160 degree thermostat
4. Get a mail order PCM tune

Parts/Labor/tune for above will likely be around $1500-$2000 beyond the head gasket fix

you see it all adds up quick

at the very least beyond the head gasket repair, get new valve springs and valve stem seals

....and if you did get coolant in oil and drove the car in that condition you may have bearing damage and that means a rebuild....

 

How much do you want to spend? What you're asking a shop to do with the heads/cam/supporting mods/tune can equate to several thousand dollars.

 

Is there a total package that's recommended here? A combo if you will.

 

Well, I wasn't really looking to spend more than $2000--that's why I was looking to just to bolt-ons and call it a day. I've had the car since May and already put a clutch, new spark plugs, wires and fresh coolant into it. It looks like I'll be sticking to just the head gasket job at most.

Thank you all for the replies. Is there any way that I would be able to tell if there is bearing damage other than pulling the engine apart? It sounds like it's running okay when I have the hood open and I'm standing by the engine compartment. At this point, should I just buy a new engine and pay someone to put it in for me? I'm sorry about all of these stupid questions, but I'm feeling a bit lost...

I know that having a shop do the work adds a ton of cost to anything that I want to do. I don't have a friend who is mechanically inclined nor do I even have a garage. Any work that I do is in my driveway, and the most intensive repair that I've ever done is a wheel bearing hub on a G6. It's not my only car, but I don't have the time, skills or money to work on the car just to screw something up and then have to pay someone to do it all for me anyway. I suppose that I could try, but winter is right around the corner here in upstate NY and the end of the year is really busy for me.

 

if you know you have a blown head gasket stop running the motor period.

If the oil does not look like chocolate milk and you have no metal flakes in oil you likely are fine on the bottom end

just get the head gaskets replaced or minimally the one head gasket that is leaking if you ABSOLUTELY know it is just one side

since the heads have to come off and the stock rockers are removed to do this than replacing the stock rockers with true RR the cost would be just for the RR themselves.

Given your stock valve springs at over 100k mi are on the back side of their life that is something to consider replacing. The heads will be off the car and replacing springs at that point is simple bench work at a shop. the valve stem seals need to come out to do that. putting in new valve stem seals at that point is simple and they don't cost much

 

no.

replacement spring kit there are various companies. Crane 10308-1 is a replacement spring kit. Comp 918 springs + the required locator, retainer is another option. If they are 7 degree retainers you can re-use your stock locks. I am not a fan of the Comp bee hive spring (918). Alex spring makes a low cost replacement spring kit but IIRC are hard to get

Comp 1:8 Ultra Pro Mag RR

FelPro Viton valve stem seals (typically available at auto part stores)

 

Excellent. Thank you for your replies!

So, at this point I would be looking at installing the rockers, springs and seals along with the new head gaskets.

Since the exhaust manifolds would need to be removed for the heads to be taken off, do you think it would be a huge add-on labor wise to have the shop install mid-lengths, a cat and a Hooker Aerochamber muffler? That would basically have me meet the goals that I have which I don't think I would be able to achieve myself.

Does anyone have a very rough idea on labor for what I've listed above? Maybe $1500?

 

Is there coolant in your oil?

 

Jimmy, I haven't checked yet. I will probably be checking tomorrow night when I get home. I am incredibly hopeful that I don't have any coolant in my oil. I'll also be checking the oil for metal particles using a strong magnet.

If there is coolant in my oil, what are my options?

 

if the motor was not run for a long time it is likely fine if coolant is in the oil. Obviously any metal flakes in oil would mean bearing damage occurred. Might want to cut open oil filter and spread out the paper and look for metal shavings also

if no metal than just replace head gaskets, fill with fluids and run motor for 15 min and then change oil/filter again. You should be good to go unless coolant continues to mix with oil...and in that case you have a warped or cracked head. You would need to send head to machine shop to see if it was repairable or you need new heads.

BTW, did you confirm your radiator side tank where the oil cooler lines go did not fail making it the source for coolant in your oil?

would be a WAY cheaper repair if that is the source of coolant in your oil.

 

Let me make it clear, I have not yet checked to see if there is coolant in my oil.

I had been having issues where I would come out after having parked my car to a sizable puddle of Dexcool on the ground. I would fill the cooling system with water and drive it. This happened twice and I couldn't intentionally replicate the situation. I purchased a new radiator cap and did a full coolant flush. I checked the oil on the dipstick and it looked fine to me.

One night, I was 50 minutes from home when my car lost power. I had been checking my gauges diligently given the odd situation with the coolant and there had been ZERO issues for the first 50 minutes of the trip. I looked down and the engine temperature was sky-high. I got out and there was steam coming from under the hood. I opened the hood and coolant was pouring out of a hole in my radiator into the engine compartment and onto the ground. Surprisingly, it cooled off really quickly after that.

I let it cool off for the night and came back in the morning. I filled it with water so that the coolant system was full and drove the 50 minutes home without a single spike in the engine temperature until I backed up into my driveway. And then, it just spiked slightly above its normal operating temperature.

The whole situation is really, really odd. So when I saw the white smoke yesterday, I was absolutely baffled. And it's a really small amount of white smoke--it's nothing like some of the videos and pictures that I've seen. But, that could be because the coolant is really diluted with the water that I poured into the system.

 

BTW, did you confirm your radiator side tank where the oil cooler lines go did not fail making it the source for coolant in your oil?
[/QUOTE]


So your saying this could this cause coolant to get into the oil pan?? How exactly do you check this?

 

So your saying this could this cause coolant to get into the oil pan?? How exactly do you check this?[/QUOTE]

we assumed your head gasket was blown causing coolant to enter the oil....but after reading your last post about teh radiator puking fluid it is quite possible the side tank of the radiator where the oil cooler lines go cracked/failed allowing coolant to mix with the oil in that tank...and that oil with coolant would cause the white smoke out exhaust.

You would need to pressure test the radiator with the oil lines disconnected from it. If it holds pressure than there is no leak in radiator or side tanks...but if you feel pressure escaping from the fittings (holes) where the oil cooler lines go than the tank is cracked between coolant passages in radiator and side tank allowing coolant to enter oil

Confirm your source of coolant to oil contamination is not from the radiator

 

Alright everyone! I drained my oil tonight and the great news is that it doesn't look like we'll be serving chocolate milkshakes any time soon! I've attached pictures. I was shining a pretty bright light on the jar to make it as bright as possible. It looks really dark to me (like oil should) and I'm seeing no settling. I googled pictures of coolant mixed with oil and it looks just like chocolate milk and it settles. Mine looks nothing like that.

So, at this point, I'm considering doing a compression test or an exhaust gas test to verify the blown head gasket before I spend the money.

Do you guys think that my oil looks good?

 

Damn, guess I have to create a shopping list. I want to replace them but I'm scared my harmonic dampener isn't calibrated correctly for TDC. It may have an indicator but I doubt i put it back the way I should have the first tiem I removed it.


Thanks for the information.

 

What are you talking about?

 

I was responding to the other guy. Sorry I hijacked.

 

Aside from looking like it was ready to be changed.....'looks' fine to me.

Still, you'll want to confirm where coolant loss is coming from. Need to tale Mr. Ball's advice.

KW

 

Thank you for taking a look at my oil pictures! I agree that it needs to be changed--I'll put some cheap conventional in it for the shop to dump out when they do the head gaskets.

I'm certain that I'm losing coolant from a puncture in the top third of the radiator. I already have a new replacement. I'm not exactly sure what happened in this thread, but I think there were a couple of different conversations going on that may not have pertained to my situation.