Howdy! Come watch me polish a turd.

Well boys, it’s been an honor and a pleasure, but I thing this is the end.

The greasy little cocksucker I bought my tundra from put stop leak in the coolant because it has a blown head gasket. I tore apart the old radiator when I couldn’t figure out the problem and found gold.


Cylinders 4, 6 and 8 have coolant running into them and the exhaust gasses are blowing out the cooling system.


Between this and the condition of the frame, it doesn’t make sense to put another dollar into this thing. The next move is figuring out how to get more than a few bucks back out of it without having to part it out.

I didn’t even put a whole tank of gas through it.

 

Damn, that sucks. Maybe of use to someone with a rusty frame that wants a complete donor truck to swap from?

 

Maybe. It’ll probably go on FB for a month and then get scrapped if it doesn’t move.

 

What a shame

 

@BroHon summed up how I feel about this one nicely.

Man, thats' fucked.

But seriously. While I hate "fix in a bottle" repairs, there are head gasket sealers out there that will attach themselves to the damaged head gasket area and essentially build up the metal in that spot where liquid meets exhaust, when they come in contact with exhaust, and it repairs things well enough you can run for years, and they don't clog up other shit. It's possible the previous person used a shit one. Bar's Head Seal is one of those good ones, IIRC. I see people mention/reco Blue Devil a lot. There are a few, like Steel Seal that claim to be permanent fixes.

I personally wouldn't bail on the truck. I'd drop $50 on the Bar's product, install it, and reassess. You won't be out much, and if the engine is truly fucked otherwise, but you can get a few more years out of it to hunt for a donor or whatever, I think it's a no-brainer. (For me, at least)

 

Has anyone here ever done head gaskets, like at home? I bet @KNABORES could

 

Could, and would if needed. Have not, and hope not to though. Timing belt change coming up.

 

Have used this. It worked well enough to drive to Carmax, take the cash offer and laugh all the way to the bank. For the short 24 hours I have experience with it, well worth it.

 

I've been procrastinating on mine (TB WP). Have not done it since I bought it, a little less than 10k miles driven since I picked it up.
Before snow flies is my target

 

I've heard nothing but positive results from it, specifically because of how it works.

Not all Bars products are ideal. They've been around forever, though. I typically don't like and won't recommend fix-in-a-bottle products like these, things like Bar's Stop Leak, for example (just replace the f'n radiator) because some of them can legitimately cause collateral damage, or are only intended as a stop-gap measure. I think that's why products like these get a bad rap in general: The overwhelming majority of those products are stop-gap fixes, just enough to get you to the mechanic without causing other damage, but people use them as permanent fixes.

Head gasket fixes can be legitimate longer-term fixes if your vehicle uses a metal head gasket like the 4.7L and 5.7L Tundra does. Or at least this is what I've seen repeated from old-timer mechanics who know this shit better than I do. But you'd want to specifically search for a product that essentially rebuilds/bonds to the metal to make it work. And when you see you're starting to lose coolant again or the next time you change your coolant (i.e. every 3-5 years or 30k-50k miles depending whether you use red coolant or pink SLL coolant), you should probably plop in another bottle.

I bet that engine will go for another 100k-200k miles if you use the correct gasket repair product, and do what I just said @Nimitz_

 

That’s a pretty good point. Maybe I can get it running and offload it on one of our corporate overlords. I refuse to fuck over some poor guy that just needs a cheap work truck.

 

If you plan to offload it, a Carmax type of place would probably buy it, and they'd send it off to auction. Auto Nation and Carvana do as well.

One of my dear friends had one of the Prius vehicles with an apparently common, notorious head gasket failure issue. His wife ran it nearly out of coolant, it started overheating so they put it in the shop ... and that's how they found out their car was one of the models with the design flaw or whatever. The mechanic filled it with coolant, they went and bought one of the new Honda plug-in vehicles that's (apparently?) made by GM, and wanted a cash offer for the Prius, so he went to the Carvana website, plugged in the details, and indicated it had engine problems, specifically coolant loss, white smoke, and a head gasket diagnosis, they still gave him almost full market value for the vehicle. He'd sold his Mazda 3 to them previously and had a great experience, which is why he gave it a shot.

Anyway, just tossing out some ideas. Will be sad to see you go if you split after sale, you seem like good people. Hopefully you stick around in the 1st gen world!

 

Well you know what’s next…

 

I did it on a 305 V8 Oldsmobile Cutlass to help my father out. Wasn’t as bad as most people think but he did most of the work.

 

Did the 6.2. Twice.

 

Pushrod V8s are much easier than ours.

 

Agree

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLGbk4C0gGs&ab_channel=1320video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wySKtd6-3cE&ab_channel=REVALASKA