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Blown Head Gasket 2005. 3800.

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Dalas56

New member
Hey guys, this is my first post. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

I just recently discovered my Grand Prix had a blown Head Gasket. I would like to replace it on my own. (Don't want to spend $1000 on labor)
If anyone knows any videos covering this subject, that would be amazing. any tips would be appreciated also.

Thanks in advance everyone :th_thumbsup-wink:
 


and why do you think the head gasket is blown? they hardly ever really blow.

if you hydro locked its the lim gasket and upper intake gasket failure 99% of the time.
 
hey, thanks for the speedy reply!
I believe i have a blown head gasket due to the fact that there is water mixed with my oil when i check it. ( i live in florida, so no coolant for me)
and, when i take the radiator cap off and start my car, water shoots out. a few of the sites checked out, said that almost all of the time, this is a blown head gasket.
I am NO expert so if im wrong. please let me know :)
 
if you see bubbles in the rad cap open then engine revved, yeah you just might have a blown head gasket. but it would have to have over heated pretty damn good still.

the lim can cause coolant in the oil.

id start out with a compression test, if you find a cylinder or two lower then the rest, then tear it open.
 
oh, and you should run antifreeze any ways, it lower the boiling temp of the water and keeps the inside of the engine from rusting out.
 


yeah, thats what i was planning to do tomorrow morning was a compression test. Just to be 100% certain i have a blown gasket. dont want to spend 4 hours, just to realize that my LIM has to be replaced.
 
hi again!
so today, i got some time to check my head gasket, and sure enough it was blown. Along with a cracked cylinder head. Instead of getting the head repaired, im going to just buy a new one. any advice on where to get it from? i cant really find a suitable one on ebay. and dont trust autozone or advanced auto.
 
haha no. that would be pretty much as expensive as the car itself. the engine is in great shape. its whole life span it was in florida, so hardly any rust. everything looks and runs great. except for my blown head gasket and rear cylinder head. Thanks though!
 


I had the same sad problem, cracks between the valves. I was lucky enough because a mechanic around here bought the same car from a person that never gave him the title and he was planning to rebuild the engine. He had machined heads on the shelf, i got them for 200 bucks and i was able to finish mine. Heads are a pain in the butt because they tell you that they are all different, but from my understanding all the 3.8 series 2 and 3 are the same. I wish you the same luck.
 
The L36 and L26 are basically the same, can be ran on either motor and same with the L67 and L32 heads, both can be ran on either.

It's that you can't run NA heads on a supercharged car because the injector holes are in different spots.
 


Just a design flaw I guess.

Age/mileage could be a factor but it can happen to any of the heads. It's not an issue really, there are tons of cars running around with cracks there and people don't even know it.
 
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