Don:

You said the oil was not contaminated with water and the water doesn't have oil contamination. Just one question, odd as it seems, does the coolant smell bad to you, like rotten eggs? If it does, it's probably the head gasket since the combustion gas has lots of Sulfur Hydride (HS), which is the stuff that made feces and rotten eggs smell so bad. If the leak is so bad now, it must have happened gradually over a long period of time, and I suspect your coolant would stink up by now.

Regards

 

Coolant was dirty but no odor at all. Had used about three or four different rad seals just to get over the winter and waiting for cash to fix properly. When my heat went I figured time to do a flush. Very dirty but no smell. Still very clean oil and it isn't going anywhere.

 

OK, the intake manifold gasket then. Not too hard. You need to go buy an intake manifold gasket set and a good torque wrench. After I get home, I'll try to convert the instructions to pdf format and email it to you.

Good luck

 

Okay, now don't know what this would cost and am just taking a stab at this. Would JB Weld do the trick?

 

DON'T USE MULTIPLE RADIATOR SEAL COMPOUNDS!!!!!

That WILL fry your engine. There are several different ways different brands work, and there are host of different chemical reactions that can occur, causing detramental damage to your engine. I NEVER use ANY sealing compounds of that sort anyway, as they will plug every small coolant hole in your engine, cause buildup of crap in the cooling system, overheating, uneven cooling, which leads to HG failure, head warping, cracked block, etc .....
They will have little effect on a gasket failure situation too.

And yes, I have seen it all happen on a steel block.

JB Weld is NOT the right thing for the job - one of two things will happen: you will never be able to service your engine again or it will last about 15 minutes.

A new gasket will fix it, and probably for less $ than you have already put into it if you do it yourself.

No bandaids!

 

Don:

JB Weld will definitely NOT help you here. Also, there is a possibility that your head gasket is gone too. Why do I say that?

First, your water pump was gone and you didn't know it. That will certainly overheat your engine.

Second, you put the thermostat in backward. Again, that will overheat your engine.

Third, you have been using lots of stop-leaks. As 93AeroEB said, these things do plug up everything from the radiator to small water passages in the head and possibly in the intake manifold too.

With that said, you stated that you did flush the system. Hopefully that did unclog things enough for the cooling system to work. Also, if you did shut the engine off immediately at the first sign of overheating, the head gasket probably is not damaged. What baffles me here is that intake manifold gaskets do not fail in this catastrophic manner unless you overheated really badly. And if you did, I would say your head gasket is gone too. The 4.0L is a lot less forgiving in this regard than the 3.0L.

What you definitely do not want to do is to put in the intake manifold gasket only to find out later that you have to disassemble the whole thing again because your head gasket was bad in the first place. That would be costly and extremely frustrating.

So, evaluate your options and decide on what you want to do. Once you do, I'll try to help you as much as I can with the repair procedures.

Good luck and best regards

 

Good point.

Given the number of times you have at the very least potientially overheated your engine, and that you have really cooked it at least once - I am very worried about it overall - cooking an engine will do more than just blow head gaskets - it can cause pistons to rub walls, and eat/spin bearings, force valve guides out of the heads - and many other nasty things

A headgasket job would be a VERY good idea - and examine the heads/cylinder walls when out for heat damage - your engine may be toast

At the very least have your radiator "boiled out" after you do the work - even a new radiator will be very badly plugged after 3 bottles of StopLeak

On a side note - go high quality for head gaskets - aftermarkets (except FelPro) are typically very poor quality and very failure prone (you will be doing the job again in the near future) - FelPro is the only non-oem used with any success on older soobs - and those do not typically blow head gaskets unless they have been abused or are very high mile - OEM is by far best

 

Luckily the van mostly gets used for short drives and all these troubles went down during an extreme cold snap. Lucky for me no overheating and no heat damage. Probably doing the Intake Manifold this weekend. If anyone has instructions much appreciated to receive.

 

my 94 with high miles developed a difficult to see crack at the base of the thermostat housing, right where the tube meets the flange.

 

Glad to see you watch your gauges - I think less than 1% of motorists on the road actually watch anything other than fuel level - you should be fine then.

Please let me know how it goes. The incompitent fools that did my engine change used a cork intake gasket without doing a proper seal, and it is gushing oil as a result - I am going to have to do it in the near future

Good luck on the job!!!