I took another look under the hood of my touring wagon, just to make sure everything was still fine, and it wasn't. When I first looked at the car, All the fluids were at their appropriate levels and in good shape. Now the coolant is empty and the crankcase is twice as full as it should be. Needless to say I am bullpoop.

 

The guy I bought it from is a worthless drunk and probably tried to start it with ether. He told me it had sat for 2 years and it had a fuel leak on the return line side, but would fire right up. I told him, "Don't bother, I'll figure things out when I get it home." I was planning to pull the plugs, add some oil. and crank it without spark for a bit to get everything nice and ready to go.

But obviously he couldn't keep his beer soaked nose out of the car and used something to try and get it started, why I don't know. I assume he was trying ether because it is conveinient, and I'm wondering what all he could have wrecked beyond the headgasket.

 

I am personnaly against ether because I shattered the piston in a 1950's chrysler I-6 marine engine with it and doomed the whole tractor. So it pisses me off that another of my engines has suffered at the hands of a can o' ether.

I would say probably headgasket, and as it's NA, probably not much more. (unless a piston is dangling out the side) - you REALLY don't know anything until you pull the heads off. However any extra metallic noises are BAD. To be honest, there is a good chance the headgasket was already blown from overheating or something like that if the guy was apathetic towards it.

make sure to have the heads trued, and the block checked for warping prior to installing the head gasket.

 

Engines for these cars are easy to find and compairitvely speaking REALLY CHEAP, in fact, you are in luck because you have the most common engine of all of them - an SPFI one had a production run from 1986-1994 with virtually no change to the engine over the entire run - so in a worst case scenario you should be able to find one (or two or more) in a junkyard

 

Yes, I am against Ether too - always have the engine cranking and spray in short bursts

 

Good Luck!