So posting this for a friend.
The car is a 2000 Dodge Neon. 106K miles. Previous owner overheated it and blew the head gasket; to the point that the coolant coming from the engine was fouling the spark plugs.
The head was warped a bit. Block was straight. Had the head milled, put on a new gasket and put in a new set of head bolts.
The engine now leaks coolant from the head gasket area on the corner nearest the steering wheel. From a bit of research, this is extremely common on these cars as Chrysler didn't drill the holes in the block enough to accommodate for a milled head, etc. While it appears to have been a factory issue on the "older" engines, the newer ones will do it if the head has been milled.
There have been a few things I have read online about this. Such as - shimming the bolt with a washer, redrilling and retapping the block and then cutting a bit of thread off of the bolts.
The bolt is NOT hydrolocked - we made sure the holes were clear. We used 3 cans of brake cleaner, MMO and canned air (I kid, I kid). But they are not hydrolocked causing it to not go down any more.
So - my question is what would you do? Or what can be done.
It seems that people on the Neon sites are fans of just losening the head bolts, cutting the threads on the one, then putting them back in.
Since we just put the head gasket on and it has only come up to temperature once or twice, will that cause issues? Will a new gasket have to be installed? What about the copper spray seal ... will that have to be applied?
Can we just remove the one bolt and cut? Or back all of them off to 30 ft/lbs or something - enough to take most of the pressure off to pull the one out and cut ?
Going through all of the labor to take the head off and clean the gasket is not desirable ... it's a cheap craigslist car. 3 engine mounts, exhaust and intake manifold, wire looms ... and all the other stuff in the way of the timing belt to remove the head
Thanks in advance!
The car is a 2000 Dodge Neon. 106K miles. Previous owner overheated it and blew the head gasket; to the point that the coolant coming from the engine was fouling the spark plugs.
The head was warped a bit. Block was straight. Had the head milled, put on a new gasket and put in a new set of head bolts.
The engine now leaks coolant from the head gasket area on the corner nearest the steering wheel. From a bit of research, this is extremely common on these cars as Chrysler didn't drill the holes in the block enough to accommodate for a milled head, etc. While it appears to have been a factory issue on the "older" engines, the newer ones will do it if the head has been milled.
There have been a few things I have read online about this. Such as - shimming the bolt with a washer, redrilling and retapping the block and then cutting a bit of thread off of the bolts.
The bolt is NOT hydrolocked - we made sure the holes were clear. We used 3 cans of brake cleaner, MMO and canned air (I kid, I kid). But they are not hydrolocked causing it to not go down any more.
So - my question is what would you do? Or what can be done.
It seems that people on the Neon sites are fans of just losening the head bolts, cutting the threads on the one, then putting them back in.
Since we just put the head gasket on and it has only come up to temperature once or twice, will that cause issues? Will a new gasket have to be installed? What about the copper spray seal ... will that have to be applied?
Can we just remove the one bolt and cut? Or back all of them off to 30 ft/lbs or something - enough to take most of the pressure off to pull the one out and cut ?
Going through all of the labor to take the head off and clean the gasket is not desirable ... it's a cheap craigslist car. 3 engine mounts, exhaust and intake manifold, wire looms ... and all the other stuff in the way of the timing belt to remove the head
Thanks in advance!