BHG HELP!!!

[kamikazeee]

I registered for this forum long time ago because I really wanted a supra, blah blah blah, somehow now i have a 325i? Well whatever...

My girlfriend just got a free 1990 Toyota cressida from her uncle, he said the only thing wrong is the blown head gasket. So she took it...

We start it up, white cloud of smoke from the exhaust, and i noticed the inside of the valve cover has smoke in it too (opened the oil cap, it was slowly comin out, not too much just a little). I followed the whole procedure to take off the head (there's a diy somewhere around here), and on the way of taking it out , we scuffed it on the surface. I decided to take it to a machine shop. When i took of the head completely i noticed that none of the cylinders have the steamed clean kind of look, neither did the valves in the head.

Whatever, i take it to a machine shop, he says that valve cover smoke means my piston rings are shot, and told me to pour anti freeze into the cylinders, and see which one goes down. Than just rip out the piston and throw some new rings on there. I don't know, what to do now, if the guy is right well than it's a huge job, if not well than i got to machine the head and put it all back, but if it smokes again, well if you changed the head gasket on that car you understand why i don't want to do it again...

Sorry for the essay, and thanks...
Karl

 

[f00g00]

The smoke is probably just blow by which all cars have and what the pcv system is for but that advice about just replacing the rings on one piston is asinine without machine work and in that case you need to do them all.
Without machine work the rings will never seat and you will just blow about 1quart of oil every couple of hundred miles.
Just do the head gasket and get the valve stems replaced while your at it, but you should have done a compression test before you ripped it apart.
If the oil is allready contaminated then maybe his idea about the coolant in the pistons probably wouldn't hurt but Ive never heard of doing that, maybe someone with more experience could answer that.

 

[mattsplat72]

Ok my two cents are this.

Alot of people like the Cressida for drifting So....
1 you could pull the Ge out and put in a Gte and resell it for a 1500 to 2000 profit after the cost of the swap.
2 Do the same thing as number one and keep it for your own enjoyment
3 A "new" Ge can be had for about 700+ shipping which considering that you got the car for free wouldn't be too bad of an investment for a dd or a resale.

Bottom line the GE is cheap enough to get that this motor just isn't worth fixing or the trouble of it. Wish you luck

 

[CRE]

Personally, I'd refrain from pouring in coolant... I'd use gas before I poured in coolant.... I'd suggest pouring in some of the thinnest oil you can find. The cheap All-in-One household oil they sell at Home Depot and Lowes should work. Generally, you want something that's about as thin as water.

 

[kamikazeee]

Alright, update*

We took the head to a machine shop again, different one this time (those guys were idiots), he said that if i ran it only for a while than it shouldn't be that bad, so I had him mill it and check it for compression, everything checked out, and we checked the compression on the engine too, it was all around 180 or 160 i forgot now, but it was right, so we're almost done, but the car is like 30mins away so I don't know when the next update will be...
But hopefully it'll be all good, and i won't have to sell or swap the engine, the worse that can be are the valve stem seams, we forgot to check them...
...well we'll see...
Thanks for all the help, i really appreciate it