Hey all, long time since i've been on the forums, and my 302 Mustang gave me some bad news recently. Theres some white foam on the Dipstick and the breather on the valve cover has it too. My first guess was that with the cold weather and only short trips that it was just condensation in the oil. So i took her on the freeway to get the oil temp up to burn off the water, soon to come it started sputtering/missing. So now i think i've identified it to being a blown head gasket. The radiator also has an orangish brown gunk coating the cap.

So what do you guys say about my situation. And if its the case how should i go about replacing the head gasket? And should i replace anything else while i'm at it? Thanks again.

 

AFR's? Valve job? Stem seals? Carb rebuild? thats about it.

 

The orange/brown stuff in the radiator is absolutely a dead give away for compression leaking into the coolant!

Normally you can get away with just replacing the gaskets on what I would call a "salvage job". I have done this many times on work vehicles usually without issues. There is always a chance that there might be a cracked head or damage where the combustion gasses cross from the top of the cylinder to a water passage. I have seen these gasses actually damage the iron in these areas. One of these two complications usually effect about 1 in 10 blown head gaskets.

The other possible complication is a result of water in the oil. If you notice that your oil pressure has degraded a lot after the head gasket repair, you will probably be due for new rod and main bearings in the near term. If the pressure is ok, there has probably only been very limited or no bearing damage and it should be ok for some time.

In the vast majority of instances where water has gotten into the oil for one reason or another in one of my vehicles, the simple repair of the offending component has fixed the problem.

 

How many miles are on the engine and was it still running well prior to this problem? If I had a tired engine, I'd probably be thinking of a rebuild or a replacement motor. Swapping head gaskets isn't a major expense if you do the work yourself but if you have to take it to a shop you may be looking at a thousand or more in SoCal. Your skills and budget will greatly influence how to proceed.

Good luck!
Jeff

 

just to add to that, if you just do the gaskets and you do the work yourself your looking at 100 bucks including quality felpro gaskets, a tube of permatex, carb cleaner, new oil and filter, and any other misc expenses that come along the way.

 

Bottom line is you abviously have a water-oil leak in there. There are a number of potential sources though. I would start by tearing down as if you were going to replace the head gaskets and inspect everything along the way. Carefully inspect the intake manifold gaskets as well, it is common for the seal to the water jackets to leak as well. Then if all else is clear once you get down to the heads pull them off, check the surfaces of the heads and the block closely and look for wherea leak may have happened on the head gasket itself. Usually it's pretty obvious if that was the problem. While you have the heads off, you should also have a look at the cylinder walls to make sure all is well there as well as looking at the valve heads.
Don't forget to buy intake manifold gaskets too sincereplacing the head gaskets require you you pull them up on the way down!