BBR's 83GT - 552 BBF version 3.0 (at least)

[TheSilverBuick]

Looking forward to hearing that thing purr, or growl or what ever awesome noise best describes it.

[SuperBuickGuy]

now you know what it takes to make it rain there

[BBR]

Filled it up with gas (13.8 gallons!) drove it to dinner after work, then home. Installed the new IVR and viola, all the dash stuff works again!! Yes!

Wired up the trailer brake controller on the Durango too.

Just need to adjust the shifter cable (start from scratch this time) again. It nearly has to be a shift cable issue since this trans worked great when it was in the Ranger.

[BBR]

After having a week to think about it, I suspect the car sucked an intake gasket, a little coolant and then pushed a head gasket out. I pulled a few plugs and some were wet with water and some had oil. It had good oil pressure when I shut it off, was not smoking and the water temp was 180-ish. It was just missing really bad. Hopefully, it will be a quick (haha gotta pull the brake booster to get to the back header and cylinder head bolts) R&R and everything will be fine.

Even before DW, I suspected the intake gaskets might be seepy since there was a water witness line on the block coming from the corner of the intake. Did not think much about it. Figured it happened when I got it a little too warm a while back. Or might be from running a 24 lb cap on the radiator. I'm going to put the 16lb cap back on.

I am going to pop it apart this week and figure out what is going on in there. Gotta get it ready for Ford Vs. Buick in Noble, Ok next month and the trans is still real lazy to 3rd. I am going to pull the valve body and check for a blown separator gasket and/or obstructions and somehow get that 2nd gear band adjustment nut loose. That thing was so tight I could not loosen it in Topeka even after I poked a hole in the floorboard to stick a socket extension through.

As far as Drag Week goes, the way everything worked out, I still got to run the Durango. Had I thrashed the Mustang and it did the same thing again Monday morn, I would have been sunk and out of the show. I guess that's the gamble we take. I decided to lay-up instead of bringing out the big driver and going for it. haha How do ya like that? A golf analogy from a guy who has never played a round of golf in his life. lol

[SuperBuickGuy]

I feel like I'm missing part of the conversation.... what happened? why did you race the Dakota?

[squirrel]

He made a run during the test and tune in Topeka the day before DW racing officially started, and the engine blew out coolant, and the plugs were wet with it. So he put the car back on the trailer, put it in the impound lot with all the other tow rigs, and put his racing number on his Durango and raced it on DW in daily driver class. It was neat that the event staff (Turk, Freiburger etc) let him do it

[Mater]

mustang blew a head gasket first round so instead of fifxing it he signed the durango up for daily driver

[BBR]

Haha During test-n-tune on Sunday I decided to make a pass. It ran fine in 1st & 2nd, lazy to 3rd, then puked water out the overflow tank onto the windshield and started missing. There were about 10 guys there ready to dive in and tear it apart and Ron Ward even offered the use of his shop, but I was demotivated, dehydrated, sunburned and was generally in a bad mood at that point. Decided to just put it on the trailer and go on.

I did find out it's pretty easy to winch the car up on there with the winch that came on the trailer. haha

Oh yeah.... it's a DURANGO, not a Dakota!

[BBR]

Say hello!



Pulled everything but the heads and headers off at lunch today. Cylinders 1 & 4 are like this and 5 & 8 might be too. They are the cylinders with intake ports next to the water crossover ports. The gasket appears to be torn and not burned so I bet those cylinders sucked some water and squished the hg out. The intake gaskets looked like they slipped down when I put the intake on it. They were pretty out of position.

I would bet $50 that these were on their way out even before Drag Week. The dipstick came up when I was driving the other day before I left. I thought it was a fluke because it had never done that before so I wrapped a rag around it and put a zip tie on it to keep it from coming up.

Tomorrow at lunch I will try to get the heads off of it and check the bores and pistons for damage.

[milner351]

damneditalltohell!

This engine hates you for some reason - after all the love and affection you've shown it - it must be beaten into submission - I have no doubts you will do just that.

I hope no more expensive bits have been injured and you'll be back on the road with new gaskets and maybe mill the heads to make sure they're flat?

[TheSilverBuick]

I hate when that happens.

[BBR]

Big blocks hate me. I've built many small blocks (Dodge & Ford) with nary a problem. The funny part is, I switched to big blocks to make more power reliably..... ha freakin' ha

I am going to switch to Mr Gasket CJ gaskets instead of the standard port Fel-pros. The word is they work better than the Fel-pros with these cylinder heads.

[squirrel]

It's just ford big blocks that cause problems, honest

Good to see you're tearing into it already, hope nothing major got damaged. I think I'd be looking at rod bearings, checking deck height, valves for being straight, etc just in case.

[SuperBuickGuy]

durango, dakota same rusty family as my fiat

sucks about the head gasket.... suck even worse if you were out at the furthest point when it happened. So, who is faster - you or Randal?

[BBR]

The only pass I made was a 12.78 @ a coasting 97 mph. lol