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Newest acquisition, and it's oil pan (ever wonder what REALLY bad headgaskets do?)


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Brought this one home today - got it for a song since it "doesn't run" Nice interior and pretty good looker I think. Anyway - the reason for it not running became obvious as soon as I removed the air filter..... all 5 pounds of it - soaked in "milkshake".

 

Now the owner said that he had a rebuilt engine put in less than 2 years ago..... so what kind of damage can I expect to see from all this water and oil mix being run through the thing? We drained a full 2 gallons of this chocolate shake stuff out of the pan, and there's at least another quart there in the bottom. Obviously he drove it some this way - he said he drove it home, and pretty much parked it after that. I can find no evidence of metal shavings to indicate that any bearings have gone, and we poured some gas in it, and it cranked over for a few secconds - sounded alright....

 

white_wagon.jpg

 

bad_oil.jpg

 

GD

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GD you say

"pretty good looker I think"

In spades mate!!!

Nice snag, I say fix it, flush it and fire it.

Keep an eye on the oil pressure, if the big end

bearing went toast, it will show up there.

Finding an engine is easy,

finding a "looker" like that...

impossible almost on this coast.

Congrats and good luck.

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yeah Andrew has experience in popped freeze plugs:D The 83 hatchback I bought from him had that same problem when he got it. After we fixed it and got it running, I retuned the carb and it ran like a champ. Then I cleaned it, found a whole bunch of rust and traded it for my 79 wagon:)

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that's what my engine looked like when I opened it up. As mentioned above, a couple of the freeze plugs had rusted through and needed replacing.

 

Also, the crank and bearings were in bad shape from spinning in water, so that had be ground and oversize bearings put it. If they stopped using the car immediately it may not be a problem...but the guy I bought my car from drove it home like this so I had my problems.

 

Another thing...the oil relief pipes in the camcases are apparently not made of aluminum and they were incredibly corroded. I might've cleaned them up but I just replaced them lest I get a big chunk of rust in the oil system down the road.

 

That's all I can recall that was damaged as a direct result of the milkshake.

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