RWD 3.4L - coolant in cylinders - from where???

[87SC/SS]

Hey all,

This is a long one - Here's the back story scroll down for the point.
I had a shop do some work on my '95 Firebird about 18 months ago, they fixed a bunch of oil leaks (RMS, valve cover, etc), valve job, new steering rack and pump and a few other odds and ends. I drove the car for 3 months and it had a rough idle that got worse when it was hot and humid or raining out. I thought it was electrical, but the shop had replaced the plugs and wires with OE replacements. I replaced the coil pack think that it may be a failing coil pack - no joy. So I replaced the injectors - still no improvement. After the 3 months, I bought my truck and stopped driving the Firebird for a while. The car sat for a month and when i went to drive it it was very hard to start and very rough running for a minute or so, then back to its standard rough idle.

The Point
Fast forward 4 months - the car sat again but for 4 months, I ordered a set of 8.5mm MSD plug wires, put them on, tried to start the motor and it wouldn't crank. Charged the battery - still wouldn't crank. Pulled the plugs, 3 of them were rusted, spun the motor over and it shot coolant everywhere.

Fast forward a year and I brought the car back in to the shop after a years worth of back and forth with the shop owner and they disassembled the top end and we can't for the life of us figure out where the water came from. See pics below:



All of the gaskets and gasket surfaces are clean, but the cylinders 3,4, and 5 filled with water. There's even a waterline in the intake manifold. Thoughts anyone?

Thanks,
Brian

[1988GTU]

The valve job could have opened the possibility of someone over torquing something which could break/crack a casting to a water jacket that could dump water into an oil gallery.

Was a comp/leak down test performed? Any magnafluxing done on the disassembled parts?

[87SC/SS]

The valve job could have opened the possibility of someone over torquing something which could break/crack a casting to a water jacket that could dump water into an oil gallery.

Was a comp/leak down test performed? Any magnafluxing done on the disassembled parts?

When the valve job was done, they magnafluxed the heads. There was no compression or leak down test done because the car ran fine when it went in. Just burned some oil and had some external leaks. There was no water in the lifter valley, so if there was a crack in the head, I think it would have to be in the combustion chambers on cyls 3,4 and 5 to get water in the cylinders and nowhere else and I think that would have made a bigger mess of the engine. There aren't even any water passages that go by cyls 3 and 4 in the intake, otherwise I would think it was a crack in the intake manifold.

[1988GTU]

Check the lim over really good.

[geoffinbc]

It is very common for the heads to crack between the valve seats if they ever see a situation where there is no water flowing. They can take 250*F with water in them but if they every run dry they wont last 10 minutes. If the engine is apart take a look between the valves. It should be visible by eye.

[3400-95-Modified]

Are you positive it was coolant? Perhaps not just water that could have made its way on top of the engine and then perhaps down into the intake runners via bad injector o-ring seals?

[1988GTU]

any further findings?

[Roadbastard]

Coolant through all six cylinders plus through the lifters and into the rockers. There's no way in hell that's a gasket issue that's a mechanic installation issue. Coolant has been circulating through your motor and quite heavily. I can only imagine that the mech probably didn't install the intake properly enough for it to seal on the ports and you ended up with coolant leaking into the lifter valley, and if that's not it you definitely have a wicked crack in your intake. Considering the work you had done I'd definitely say this is the shops fault.

Take the intake to a machine shop and see if they can inspect it for cracks and check the heads where the intake screws in place to see if any of the area's are striped out. They could have stripped the aluminum threads causing the intake not to seal tightly enough. That can happen especially if the guys using an air ratchet as a lot of these shops do.

That motor is done. Nothing short of a full rebuild will resurrect that 3.4. Imagine what the crankshaft and rods bearings look like after sitting for so long. If you got to it sooner might have been able to catch it but the rust has set in. They're playing stupid with you if they're pretending they don't know how that happened.

I've only seen stuff this bad when some yoyo breaks into a water jacket trying to more heads.