does anyone have a ls diy head gasket or steer me in the right direction as to what parts i need to purchase and a more or less indepth then general idea on what to do?

 

what do you mean my diy headgasket? and what are you trying to do?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vietnamezerice &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">what do you mean my diy headgasket? and what are you trying to do?</TD></TR></TABLE>

DIY (Do it yourself) I believe he is trying to do a head gasket.

As always make sure you unhook your negative terminal when doing engine/electrical work. Also remove your air intake system (stock or oem).

In order to do a headgasket on an ls (B18A/B), you will need a headgasket at least if not a headgasket set, that comes with other gaskets you may need during reassembly. Most people also recommend that you do a timing belt and water pump while you have everything apart. Do it. If you don't you will regret it shortly. Now to actually do the headgasket you will need to remove ps and ac, as well as the alternator belt, and the crank pulley. If you can't do this much, you might as well pay someone else to do it for you. After that you will need to take off the timing belt cover on the driver side of the engine, and loosen the timing belt tensioner which will allow you to remove your timing belt. It is a 14 mm bolt that goes through a slotted idler wheel. Now you are ready to take off the header. Many people just take it off of the head and where it bolts to the block (front and back) and leave it sitting on the ground attached to the rest of the exhaust. It's only two more bolts after you go this far to take it the rest of the way off, so IMO you might as well take it all the way off. Next you unbolt the intake manifold on the backside of the block or where the bracket bolts to the intake manifold itself under the manifold. Next you will want to unplug all of the sensors from the head, including the injectors so that wires will not get in your way or prevent you from removing the head/IM. Once all of that is done, you need to remove the valve cover, and remove the cam caps. I would get a box to keep everything in...in order...so that you can easily put it back together. Once you have the cam caps off you will need to take the cams out towards the driver side carefully. This allows access to the headbolts, which there are 10 of. I believe they are 14mm. You will need a serious 1/2" ratchet and thinwall socket to break these babies loose. Once you have them loose, make sure they are not threaded in at all (remove them if need be) and lift the head (help needed maybe?) off of the block. The gasket will now be present on top of the block. Make sure you have an oil and antifreeze free head and block when you install the new headgasket. Also depending on how hot you got the car, you may want to get the head checked to make sure it is not warped slightly. You can do this using a straight edge, or pay a machine shop a small fee to check it out. If it is warped most machine shops can cut it down a tad to even it up. Now to put it back together you need to bascially reverse the steps listed above, being sure to properly torque the headbolts, and any other bolts that need to be torqued. Bascially you need to get some sort of repair manual or spend too much time looking online for torque specs to do this correctly. If you have any questions, feel free to post, and I'll check it out periodically to see how you made out if you try to do it. Good luck!

 

i think you should know why i'm doing a head gasket in the first place so maybe you'll have alil more info on my situation ....basicly i have low compression in cyl #2 & #3 and my coolant is disapearing, i pulled the spark plugs on both of them and looked down to the piston and saw water also while i was doing the compression test the coolant shot out of one of the cyl. so my old autoshop teacher recommended to buy some of that block seal stuff so i wouldn't have to spend all that time and effort doing the head gasket as i've never done it before. so i put it in on tues... the directions say that it recommends to pull the spark plugs so no compression pushes the liquid back and doesn't do a good seal ...so i did but just about 10 seconds into having just 2 cyl running the car wanted to die, idle went up to about 2k then just died .... so i go to turn it on but it makes no effort to start ... now before(i've been doing this for about alil less then a week now) i would cranking 3-4 times and it would sound like it was bogging but i gave it some gas and it was good(while the regular coolant/water was in the radiator)... idling fine and driving fine and everything, only prob was the first start up... now it doesn't even make the effort to start even tho i've drained all the coolant and the block stuff out of the engine. now i'm thinking maybe my dizzy's out ?? if i just have the spark plugs pulled i should be able to hear them ticking correct?? because i did it couple minutes ago and i didn't hear or see anything in the dark ... =/

 

As long as the spark plugs are in the plug wire and grounded to the engine somewhere they should def. spark. To be honest, if you have water in the cylinders, and things are acting up this bad, maybe the best route would be to find a good used engine. I know they can be had cheap these days. Good luck!

 

i bought my LS longblock for 450

 

Anything can be made to run, just depends on the amount of money/time spent. I personally would not buy a new engine without tearing it down and trying to fix it. A HG replacement can be done in a weekend.

How can you see water in the cylinder? How can you be sure it is not gas or oil?

Is the car smoking at all?

 

Well at first i pulled the spark plug and looked down there with a light ...but a new it was coolant this last time i was doin a compression test it litterally shot out of one of the other cylinders. it only smoked once and it was white..

now this guy on craigslist is selling a bare b18a1 head for 45... now is it a direct bolt on ? and he says its in good condition and its not warped ...he only has the valves and some are new and some are old ...no springs, retainers, or guides... now if i go with it what would i need to buy new as far as parts or would i be able to use the ones i have in my current head and just buy the gasket set??

 

The cams in the early B18A1 head make like 10hp less then the later model A1 cams and B1 cams. Why are you wanting to change the head all of a sudden. Do you think something happened. And in reality 45 for a bare head is not a very good deal, considering that complete ls heads can be had for like $100 or less. Like AWD Terror said, if you are up to the task, you should try to fix it first. The only thing I was wondering about is that if your cylinders have that much antifreeze in them, what has that done to the bearings and such in the bottom end?

 

because people are telling me the im in over my head and it could be warped and that 120 compression in one of the cylinders is more then just a bad gasket..
and as far a bottom end i havent even checked ... how would i be able to tell btw ?

 

just goto advance autoparts and get a head gasket kit that will give you all the gaskets you will need and pretty much the gaskets will tell you what to take off to do it and i recomend gettin some arp headbolts

 

120 can be more than just a bad headgasket, thats why I said maybe you should just look into getting a complete longblock. Doing a complete longblock is much easier than doing a headgasket IMO. The only way to tell is to take the thing apart and see...