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ok well basically my car started loosing a heck alot of water about a week ago and was loosing like a full rads worth in 3 days. so its off road now and when i took it to the garage there was basically a shed load of unburnt hydro carbon in water forcing it to go in my expansion tank in dump through the overflow. so my headgasket is completey fubar. but wot i wanna know is could i have cracked my block or cylinder heads or is more than like just the gaskets i wanna rebuild the motor from scratch and turbo it as a track day car but i honestly if ive cracked the head. i cant see anyway back for my motor. honestly im a little bit gutted since for 3 years it has been a dream. any help or info would be greatly appreciated. thanks

Wow, okay man.

year? model?

v6 or I4, you'll want to swap the motor before boosting. Don't waste moola on a fubar stock motor. 4cyl upgrade is the BP engine, KLDE/KLZE is the v6 upgrade.

it is a v6 and the head gasket thats gone is a KLZE

oh, you're ZE swapped already?

Oh boy. Yeah man, you could have any sort of problem.. only way to find out is visual inspection, and to crack it open.

It's a simple matter to have the engine inspected by a machine shop. If it's leaking that badly there's a decent chance something is cracked. the block could be sourced from any 2.5L K series engine. The things that make it a ZE are the square ports, the cams and the pistons. It would be unusual to crack a head but if you did you ought to be able to find one. It wouldn't be any tougher to rebuild than any other engine.

I don't see the problem.

Sorry to hear of your problems. Honestly I'd be surprised to hear the engine block is cracked. Way more likely that the heads may have warped a bit and the gaskets gave way. I guess if you're rebuilding then you'll be pulling the whole engine anyway. But if you decide just to fix the problem and enjoy more years of driving you might just pull the heads and get them to a machine shop. You can have them checked, decked smooth again, and even a valve job if you wish. Add some high quality head gaskets and ask about head gasket dressing to help prevent future coolant leaks. Don't forget the new head bolts since they are torque to yield and should be replaced.

Sound advice^

Though I would add you can re-use the bolts if they are within spec:


Alternately get ARP studs and never worry about bolts again! Just worry about your bank balance instead.

It'd probably be wise to check the block is still true whilst your at it, but from speaking to you earlier I think you know that!

B series engines are not TTY headbolts....

I didn't think K were either, like marcdh said, you can reuse them if they're within spec.