the car is an 85 gt with a kenne bell blown motor from an 89. gt40 heads and some misc parts. when we got the car one plug wire was burned in half and was only getting spark to 7 cylinders. it ran 5-7lbs of boost when we got it, and we changed the pulley so it pulled 9-11lbs. i noticed alot of pinging so we changed the pulley back to the 5-7. now, there is alot of water coming out the passenger side exhaust pipe, i havent checked the oil yet to see if its milky because its brand new synthetic. about a week ago i was driving to santa cruz (uphilll for for a few miles) and the check engine light came on, and it heated up(very unusual for that car) i pulled codes and it said nothing. the motor has about 20k on it and its been babied all along with the occasional fun sprints. sorry for the essay, but i figured id get it all out at the beginning. so if it is the headgasket, should i just replace the gasket with some nice fel pros or should i get them o ringed?
possible blown head gasket...questions
- Thread starter BOWTIEKILLR
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Bolt on 5.0
Founding Member
Look for water in the oil. Look at the color of the coolant. Do a pressure test on the coolant system. If the car is running good I wouldnt worry about the water in the tail pipe. Could be moisture
the water coming out of the tailpipe is about a full glass everytime its started. the coolant is constantly in need of refilling. its hard to tell if its running good because we switched the pulley back and its not near the same power. its running smooth, but i just get a chitty feeling that its blown. im thinking it might have been blown for quite some time(like since we got it) and just never really noticed. the car was barely driven before we bought it so we really dont know when the plug wire burned or when/if the headgasket blew
Bolt on 5.0
Founding Member
Well if the coolant keeps going down most likely the gasket then. Have someone rev the motor up while standing behindthe car and look to see if there is alot of white smoke. My other car smoked real bad when the gasket blew, fortunaly it was a 4 cyl escort and was really simple to do.
regardless of what head gasket you go with, make sure and get a dyno-tune and make sure your air/fuel rato is safe. Hopefully the fuel system is adequate as well. If the car was pinging under boost then thats most likely cause of the head gasket failure. Most any decent head gasket will hold up fine with a good tune. I personally run Cometic head gaskets. They are a little pricey, but I've been happy with mine.
the fuel delivery should be good enough, 225lph pump and boost-a-pump with black injectors(38s maybe) i was thinking the pinging was because of not enough octane, but we are hoping to run 9-11lbs on 91. i know its case dependent,but is it possible to run that much boost on 91? would a piggybackk tuner be a good idea? maybe something like a tweecer or pms?
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