head gaskets: take two

All the exhaust runners had a lot of really black carbon in them, but the worst was the #2 runner. Really heavy build up in spots, but also wet oil in it with a trail coming from the valve guide. The header primary was also full of heavy build up and wet oil.

Pulled the valve spring off and found this. The spring shim was all chewed up and had worn a groove in the outside of the valve guide. Weird thing is the valve seal was still pretty tight on the guide, but the valve seemed a little loose to me in the guide. I don't have a dial gauge to check the run out though so I'm having the shop check it.

So basically there was no way I was putting those heads back on the engine. Luckily I still had a set of stock heads already assembled in a box back at my apartment. I cleaned them up a little and put those on with Felpro SD head gaskets and new LIM gaskets. Everything seems to be running better and no signs of burning any fluids at this point.

Thought I'd give an update, in case anyone is interested or wants the info.

Worked on the car for three days over labor day weekend. First thing I did was drop the oil pan and get the oil pump cover off. I de-shimmed the pressure spring and put it back in. The oil pressure is still higher than I ever saw with the stock pump, but it's better. Stock pump was usually 18 psi at warm idle and never got over 50 psi. This melling pump is 25 psi at warm idle and sits around 50 psi at cruising rpm. When cold or at higher rpm it doesn't get up over 75 psi anymore though which it was doing before, so that is good. Seems the pressure bypass spring in the melling is definitely stiffer than OEM, but it's opening earlier now without the shims.

I also took the top end apart, took the heads off and changed the gaskets. The MLS gaskets had oil all over both sides of them and the outer layers where unstuck from the middle layer. The front gasket was loose and the head lifted right off without sticking at all, and the rear gasket was stuck to the head but not the block. Here's what the combustion chambers looked like.

Basically a lot of carbon build up. Too much for only 1k miles. I burned through 1qt of oil in that time, and about the same amount of coolant. The oil on the combustion chambers is just from pulling the heads off and tipping them over. It ran off the gasket area. Most of the rubber coating is gone from the gaskets.

Top of the pistons where covered in carbon build up, and there was a black ring around the top of the cylinder walls. Some cylinders it went all the way around, some the ring stopped in between cylinder pairs by the coolant ports, which I think is a good indication it was leaking coolant there.