[sasilverbullet]

<img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/blink.gif" class="smilie" alt="" /> Is kinda the way I feel right now!



Just got back from the shop, here's what's up:



1. The head gasket had failed on the bottom edge of no. 4 cylinder - you should see how clean that cylinder is! NO carbon!

2. It was about to fail at the same spot on no.1.

3. Both the head and the block were not warped.

4. The valves were all in great shape!

5. VarioCam blocks are both badly worn - $45 each from paragon

6. VarioCam sprockets on cams were in great shape. <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/biggrin.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />

7. The little sensor behind the timing belt sprocket for the cam disintegrated - will get a new one.

8. They drained the oil into a clean bucket - had some evidence of coolant. Because of this they want to do new rod bearings. So now the leaky oil pan gasket will finally get fixed!

9. There was a LOT of black gunk in the intake manifold and in the intake ports of the head. They say it's because the previous owner drove it too slow...I'll never be guilty of that!

10. Going to have the injectors cleaned.



Well that about sums it up for now...I'll let everyone know how it progresses and hopefully have some pics later.



They say it will be done Wednesday and I should have the car by Friday!

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[mike]

Glad to hear you had no warpage. My 944S2 recently had a head gasket failure that did warp the head and was quite expensive to repair.



I was curious to know how your shop could tell that there was coolant in the oil because I don't know that my shop checked for that.



Thanks,

Mike



'95 968 Coupe

'91 944S2 Coupe

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[midblue]

Sorry to read about your recent dilemma. Good luck with the repairs! If you don't mind me asking........how many miles on the car when you first noticed something was not right?



Ron

94 coupe/6 speed

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[Eric_K]

If you can afford it, I would also change the engine mounts while they are out. I recently did my rod bearings and was planning on leaving the engine mounts alone, but one of them was puking it guts out. The car only has 42k miles. (okay maybe not highway miles)



Eric

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[sasilverbullet]

Eric - thanks for the reminder about the mounts, one of them is kaput for sure...



midblue - about 142,000 is when I started noticing coolant missing and no visible leaks. Other symptoms - hard starting in the morning, ran a little warmer than it should.

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[sasilverbullet]

Oh, and to tell if coolant in oil - it makes it a kinda brown soup...easy to recognize when you pour it in a clean WHITE bucket!

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[Cloud9...68]

From the responses to the recent head gasket-related threads, I'm starting to wonder if head gaskets are a weak spot on these engines, or is this just a case of anecdote overwhelming objective data? I've got 88K miles on my engine - surely I can expect the head gasket to survive many more tens of thousands of miles, right? Thanks.

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[sasilverbullet]

Well, according to the experts at my shop, here and over on rennlist - it's normal for a head gasket on an aluminum engine to only last 120,000 miles. They say that's due to 'scrubbing' of the gasket because of the expansion of the metal.



It's really not that big a deal when you factor in that at 120,000 miles you probably need new variocam phenolic blocks, a good inspection of the sprockets for the variocam, the intake manifold cleaned out real good.



And it's worth changing early because if you get coolant in the water like I did, you have to put new rod bearings in.



And I had all this done for right under $3k, not bad...

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