Another one bites the dust ......

[whelen1]

Well monday afternoon ~12:30 the beloved 81 has supposedly blown her headgaskets ... ALL OVER THE ENGINE, and I mean ALL OVER....:bash

Left me stranded 20 minutes from home, and I tried to limp her as far as I could until she couldn't limp no more.....had to AAA her to a corvette shop, and now im waiting for the words I dread so much "blown headgasket" .... Its a sad sight to see a vette on a flatbed

Not happy, not at all ....... esp since im not the owner of it yet :bash :bash

 

[81LT4]

Don't feel bad, thing's like that happen to everyone !!
look at it this way, now is the best time for mod's.
Good luck.

 

[woobie1966]

exactly! now that its in the shop....time for some upgrades!!:t

 

[GreyGhost]

I feel your pain

Sorry about the bad news. Look at it this way, this is an opportunity to do some upgrades. When it's done you'll feel better and so will the vette.

Good luck!

 

[Ctfoodguy2000]

Sheesh Brian, more bad news!!! Did you get an answer yet???

 

[whelen1]

No, no reply from the shop ....

We will find out whether its the HG or not when they run a compression test, I should hear from them some time tomm I HOPE!

Well like Steve has said .... there is nothing that I could have done to prevent this failure ..... but I hate the price of the fix

Oh well, the owner comes back to the states tomm and I get to break her the great news .. "welcome back, here's a $1000 bill"

 

[TomOB]

What happens when the HG blows? Like why does it happen and what does it damage?
sorry to hear about the loss.
tomas

 

[whelen1]

Tom, basically what happened to me is that I had coolant EVERYWHERE in the engine bay. It came out and hit the cooling fan and went everywhere. A lot of white smoke from the coolant hitting the hot maifold and the exhuast pipes. If it happens when you drive you will see white smoke trailing out of one or both of your exhaust pipes, then your car will MAJORLY overhead due to the lack of coolant.

As to WHY it happens, who knows, could be a number of things with this car. Its a 22 year old car with OEM gaskets and such, it sits without being started in the winter, its been babied its whole life ... who knows, and the worst part I don't think that you can check for any problems without pulling the heads or doing a compression test every oil change (pita)

In reality it doesn't "technically" damage anything ... It may make the car run like crap until the problem is fixed, but unless you drive the car while the guage is pegged in the red zone on the temp guage, in which case you can sieze the engine into one big iron block. If you are able to shut it down before it gets to the red then you shouldn't have a problem.

Hope this helps...

 

[TomOB]

Yea, helps alot. I assume it would be somethign like how you described. Just didn't get how that went to the "$1,000 bill" for repairs. I thought gaskets were on the cheap, relatively.

 

[whelen1]

Some gaskets are cheap depending on make model and year of vehicles and what gasket you are trying to get. The head gaskets, if you were to get one of the better sets will set YOU back around $100 if not more (thats a very low guess).


But don't forget, the bulk of the price doesn't come from the parts per-se (again all depending on what your are having modded/replaced) but with replacing the head gaskets you basically have to tear the upper portion of the motor apart to get "easy" access to the bolts you need to get to. That includes Air filter/intake, carb, lower plenium, valve covers (not 100% sure), THEN you can start taking the heads off, then scraping the old gasket off, putting the new on in correctly and making sure that there arn't any leaks, then buttoning things back up again.

Thats a lot of work to do for this repair and at $60+ per hour of labor, parts plus diagnostic fee's, storage fees (if applicable), and with vettes we all know that there is a P.I.T.A charge that is included in there just cause we bought vettes

**edit - talked to the owner today to advise her of the problem, but didn't tell her what I thought was wrong with it ... why scare her before the shop does, takes the fun out of it! ... didn't seem ****ed, but def. dissapointed.

As for the shop, I have heard nothing from them since Tuesday, and when I went cruising by there to see if they DID look at it, seemed to me that it hadn't moved so who knows.....now its a waiting game

 

[TomOB]

Oh, im low on dough, young and full of free time, so the whole "pay someone else to do it" doesn't appeal to me.

 

[whelen1]

Tom, I more than sympathise with your situation ... im the same way.

If it were up to me, it would have gotten flatbedded to the house and parked in the backyard till I get enough umpf to get my butt out there and change them myself, but there is too much risk involved with doing such a big job by myself and at the age of 22.

Anyway, if something fails you can always blame the shop, if you kill it ... its harder to blame other people

 

[TomOB]

Someday, when I actually find the vette i'm looking for (i have bad luck, it seems), I plan on doing almost all the work on it, except things like machine work (although my school has allowed me to use the machine shop, they dont have a honing machine).

 

[whelen1]

Tom - Good to hear that you are ready and willing to dive into the work yourself!! You will save A LOT of money that way.

I just don't know enough about Chevy's to feel competant to work on them.... Im a ford guy by nature (I know I know) .... But I know my way around fords like the back of my hand...

But still, good to hear that your ready and willing to do that stuff, and I give props to the school for letting you use the machine shop!

Anyway ... no word yet from the owner OR the shop.... Im hoping to find out for sure soon, just to put my mind at rest so its not just speculation anymore