Helping Nilao out with an inframe ...

[Rawze]

Day two (saturday)...

We got the oil pan off it and pressurtized tghe system. Coolant is leaking down from around the piston on cylinder number 5. There is no sign whatsoever of it leaking anywhere else, or it leaking from around the intside of the liner around the piston. good sign for where to look once it is apart. Nilao also mentioned using the dimes in the oil pump.

With 600k miles on the engine, he/we decided that if this is all that is wrong,.. head/gasket, then just replace the head, new gasket, and throw it back together this time around,.. and then he can go another 600k and do the whole engine next time around when it gets to 1.2mil.

=======
Day three (sunday)...

I tell you these guys work fast. I point my finger and next thing I know,.. something else is removed. I have been showing them to make zip-lock baggies/label and store all the bolts with proper names of the components, etc. so they do not get them mixed up. That way the do not get confused when it is time to re-assemble everything.

We got the head off it and it is not too badly worn. As we suspected, the head gasket is bad at cylinder number 5. Here is a pic of it...



It looks like the fire-ring is crushed very badly on one side. How this happened was a mystery at that time, {updated oct. 2017 - It is a tell-tale sign that a liner is dropping for sure}. Clearly you can see the fire ring is seriously flattened out very bad.

I would hate for them to put this all back together, and have it leak again because of a liner issue. I remember when I did my own engine at 955k miles. ALL of my liner heights were perfect, and no sign of problems, gasket looked perfect,... but after pulling them out,.. it revealed a much different story. I had to counter-bore the block because of fretting that was starting to set in on the exhaust side of #5 and #6. This told me that even if liner height is perfect, you could still have issues.

I will be taking a serious look at this today and looking very hard at the bottom of the head where this damage is (and the opposite side to see if the liner was dancing too). This also makes a clear point,... NEVER NEVER assume your problems are minor when it comes to pulling the head off one of these things. BE PREPARED to do a complete in-frame and counter-bore just in case!.