Yesterday while driving my motor overheated really bad, I only started to notice when I noticed a change in power and the way it sounded. I pulled off and the engine was boiling and steaming out of the overflow container. I noticed the fan wasn't working, pulled the relay and realized it was corroded really bad, jumped the plug and got the fan to run. I let the motor cool down for a few hours and went to see what it would do. It cranked and started but it was definitely not going to get me home, it sounded really rough and really sick. I noticed that my exhaust smells like coolant, and so does the oil in my engine, aiming towards a blown headgasket. I also noticed metal shards in my oil, in my head, its almost like bits of sand, some silver and some copper colored. There was also oil in the bottom of my cap on my distributor. It has stage 2 cams and on the lobes they're a little scuffed up, I'm not sure so much that a finger nail would get caught on it...This seems like a bunch of problems....
Headgasket seems likely, since everything smells like coolant.
But what if it spun a bearing? I do have a oil psi gauge and it always reads that its kinda low but the car has always been at that level so I just expected the gauge is reading wrong or something. When it did crank though I don't remember hearing any extreme knocking in the motor, it just had no strength to keep running.
Maybe the scuffing on the camshafts could be from low lubrication, which could be the oil pump not doing its job, explaining my low oil psi on the gauge.
What do you guys think?? HELP please.

 

Sounds a bit like what happened to my brothers B18C, we think the oil pump went out while he was doing 130mph+ around 7k rpm. His melted two pistons and warped the block. Yours probably isn't nearly as bad, but none the less you should do tear down the engine and see what's damaged and what can be salvaged. Personally I wouldn't try throwing money at it in the hopes to get it running at its current state.

 

Sounds sufficiently trashed to me. Time to pull it.

 

b20 long blocks are cheap $350-450 for the 99+ it doesn't sound worth it to save it for the cost and time required.

 

Started it up today, sounded and ran fine except the fact that it won't idle without a foot on the gas pedal. Had someone look at these little "sparkles" in my oil and they said its just bits of carbon... the head is in great condition, the bottom end is cranking and running..its running fine, just won't idle. I'm guessing the overheating was just caused by the fan not running...I don't know I'm stumped at this point.

 

Theres no knocking, no tapping, no problem with it running (besides not keeping an idle without having to keep it up with the gas pedal) and it starts fine..This is weird lol

 

Did you fill it back up with coolant?

 

It has had coolant this whole time, even when it overheated. Just did some testing on it today and there's a stoppage at 3500 rpms, it no matter what will not rev past that... giving me the idea that the ecm put the car in limp mode.

 

Pull the battery terminal and let it sit for a while. See if it resets itself and all is well.

 

UPDATE: Ran codes, and its pulling a 3 & 5 code indicating its the map sensor; makes sense.

 

Limp mode could be cause your low on oil simply, so you think the idle issue is from the map sensor from the codes you pulled?

 

Did you ever put any stop leak in the radiator? Cause if you have (or if it ever had any before) guess whats now being pumped through your engine? Copper, aluminum, and liquid glass.

Wanna guess what cash for clunkers used to blow up engines? Liquid glass

 

It won't idle because the bottom end is warped. Took apart the B18C1 that had the same issue and with only the crank bolted in, we had to use a breaker bar just to spin in. I would highly recommend not dumping money into trying to "fix it". Also two of the pistons seized to the rods which is what caused the engine to not run, bearings did not spin.