Quote:
Originally Posted by SRR
Which Buick engines? I've had numerous GM engines and never lost a head gasket. I think a factor not mentioned here is neglect and the engine being over heated to the point that the head gasket gives up the ghost. Most of the knuckle dragging public will just keep adding water or pouring in stop leak plugging up the coolant passages. Most of the problems with the later SBC engines were thin castings that would crack between the valve seat before the head gasket would give out. I remember a few years ago going into a machine shop and seeing 6 sets of SBC heads on the counter...all cracked between the valve seats. Yikes.  |
350 V8
455 V8
3.8 V6
4.1 V6
I worked in a buick dealership from 1982-1985. We were constantly doing head gaskets for customer pay work, as well as warranty work.
Coolant leaking into the cylinders and burning out the exhaust. Coolant leaking externally from head gaskets running down the block. Oil seepage between the head and block. Bowed deck surfaces on the blocks between cylinders leaking compression between cylinders.
The 4.1 V6 had 6 head gasket revisions while I was working there, many times we replaced head gaskets 3-4 times on the same car before the customer either got rid of it, or the warranty expired.
Buick had a real problem from 1970-76 on their V8s, and later on the same problems existed on the V6s until at least the mid 80s. If you overheated a V8 Buick you probably doubled the possibility of a blown head gasket, running one hot (stuck thermostat) was almost a guarantee of a failed head gasket.
Unrelated to the head gasket problem we had a few V6s that had porous castings that leaked coolant, and oil behind the flywheel too. That was GMs worst time that I know of for crappy castings and soft iron from trying to save a couple dollars cutting alloys out of the base cast iron to save money and causing premature wear problems of the cylinder walls.
I had a friend that used to do valve jobs in the evenings for extra money at his house, He bought a pickup truck load of late 70s SBC cylinder heads from a wrecking yard thinking he would get some un-cracked heads to replace the cracked ones he was running into. Out of the whole load of heads, he only got 3 heads out of the whole pile. I would guess 50-60 heads with 3 un-cracked in the valve seat area. 6% good 94% cracked...….LOL.