In an effort to fix some oil leaks, I went through and replaced a bunch of gaskets. I replaced the oil pan and thenit seemed that the manifold was leaking slightly. So, i replaced that and the valve covers just for giggles. Well, when I put it all back together and started it up, I got billows of white smoke out the tail pipe.

As tonot freak out, I removed the manifold to verify something hadn't been screwed up by myself. It looks fine. The gaskets are where they're supposed to be and the manifold was stuck on tight. I checked all of the hoses via the radiator sticker and shbox.com and it all seems to check out. Is there something I'm missing, or is it a freak coincedence that my head gasket went bad at the same time?

The passenger side of the motor is substantially cooler than the drivers side. I didn't replace the TB gasket.

 

sounds like a head gasket went to me... i just went through all of this... and if i remeber corectly theres not even a coolant crossover in the manifold on an LT1. theres a small pipe that connects on the back of both cylinder heads that crosses coolant over

 

Yeah, it looks like the coolant goes through the TB and and then out to the back of the heads. I hadn't removed the TB, so I wasn't sure if there would be a place for it to leak from there into the intake. But, that would affect both sets of cylinders, correct?

How difficult is it to replace the head gasket?

 

Its not for the inexperianced... if youve taken the manifold off and replaced all the gaskets you've said you have you should be able to do it... Its alot of work and time consuming. And even if you know what side is leaking replace both of them to save the hassle later. When I had the motor torn that far apart i cleaned up and rebuilt the heads new valve seals, polish the valves, minor porting and polishing. I also did the rockers, pushrods, springs, cam, and lifters while I was at it lol


btw... when you replaced the oil pan was the motor in the car?

 

I left the motor in the car, but just barely. I removed the engine mounts, raised the engineup with a hoist, undid the strut towers and sway bar, removed the y-pipe, replaced the front k-member bolts with the motor mount bolts and undid the other 4 bolts and lowered the k-member as much as possible. A severe pain in the *** to say the least.

 

lll say.. when I did my cam swap you need to drop the oil pan just enough to get the front cover off and even just that was a pain. And the whole time i was doing all i could think of was how much it would suck to have to take the whole pan out...