Cylinder leakdown test will tell you if you have a coolant leak into the combustion area from the head/head gaskets..... BTW notice how a leaking intake manifold gasket could easily let coolant into your crankcase. If the leak down on the engine turns out good then i would suspect the intake gasket was the culprit. Inspect the hell out of them to see if there are signs of leakage around the cooling passage ports on the intake gaskets. Doesnt take a big leak to make a big mess of the oil.

 

Bad gasket on the lower intake manifold was the culprit. I will invest in bearing very soon, is there a sticky I can go to for advice?

 

Bad news bro. If you got coolant in the oil and ran the car after it most likely not worth fixing. The problem is when the coolant is pressurized it becomes an acid and wipes out the babbit on every bearing in the motor. As a general rule it not even worth fixing low miles motors. The reason the repair gets so expensve is because the babbt that is removes from the bearing get stuck on the walls of the oil passages and can release into the next bearing down the line at anytime. The only way to be sure the repair motor is not going to get destroyed is to sink the block in acid and flush it. You are talking COMPLETE block up rebuild. On a high miles motor getting everything to fit right is crazy money.

FYI most car guys already know this. The intake gaskets on both the 3.4 and the 3800 are the weakest parts of the motor. I would bet that failed intake gaskets caused more engine failures that all other problems combined. GM was sued back in 2007 ish and anyone that had a intake issue got reinburst a percentage of the repair based on mileage and up to 10 year.

 

Well I have to try I guess, I spent all my money fixing this motor and well I can't afford a new one, hopefully the motor holds up for abit longer so I can found out what to do, but until then I'm just going to rebuild it as best I can. I have everything that is already needed so it's not really wasting any of my time and the labor well I enjoy it, but thank you for the infromation.

With that being said, during this second rebuild I am going to bypass the heater core and also remove the a/c rad..... I will keep the condenser in place as for a pulley until I can bypass that aswell. But we will see guys if I got lucky and the damages are not that bad.....

 

Dont forget the cam bearing a shot also. Your not the first person i've known to try to repair a coolant damaged motor hopfully you will be the first person that gets lucky. To date I have not seen one make it 2500 miles afterward.

 

well ididn't run it that much only about 80miles after the initial build before i realized the coolant leak, so with god on my side this motor will last me alot longer than that 2500mile mark

 

Not long with coolant in the oil is 2 minutes, Anything over 5 minutes running under load is a waste of time. 80 miles? I am surpised you made it.

Maybe God will protect your engine. Or maybe God guided you to this site to enlighten you. Who knows.

 

I pray that as well friend, It would be a real shame and waste. This was my dd, and I wasted all my money on it.

 

Could I possibly change the rod bearings and have it be good, atleast for longer?

Would there be a chemical I could use to run thru the engine? I dont have the capabilities to acid dip the block.

 

I am not aware of anything other then acid. Acid would destory everyhting non-metal in your engine. The rod bearing will be the loudest issue at idle but the main bearings are just as bad. The cam bearing will not cause as much of an issue at first but as they go you will lose oil pressure.

I was a GM master tech and I did warranty work back in the 80's. GM made us fix everything back then and we only fixed what was broken. If a V6 car came in under warranty with 5 streched connectiong rods then we replaced 5 rods and 5 bearings nothing else. The only exception was a car with coolant in the oil, that was a new engine. They did not even waste the money to take it apart and look.

Find a used motor that has nice clean oil, reseal that intake and hopfully you will be good.