TLSheff
New member
I bought 2003 Bonneville SSEi (supercharged 3800) from a kid that said he had been adding coolant for the last 5 months. He said it was leaking coolant and oil and he could only drive 5 miles before it would stall out. He said he was adding 1 gallon of coolant per week.
draining the oil, which is probably more coolant than oil
removed the filter
It took about 30 minutes to drain all that crap out. It was some nasty stuff. I think I drained about 3-4 gallons from the engine. Now with the dis-assembly.
Since the engine wasn't knocking yet, I decided I was going to try to save it and replace the intake gaskets. The first thing that comes off is the intake tube, and this the first thing I saw. Yes you are seeing that correctly, the "oil" level was all the way up into the supercharger and throttle body.
leaking all the way into airbox
Here is the supercharger filled with the oil/coolant solution.
lifter valley was nasty
bottom of the lower intake
I was surprised to see the actual gasket failure wasn't even that bad compared to what I'm used to seeing.
inside the valve covers
rockers, what a mess....
As this point, I’m wondering how in the world I’m going to clean this engine out. It was still running fine and it has a chance to be saved. I did some reading online about how to clean it out, but this was a pretty severe case. I did the unthinkable and took a pressure washer to the lifter valley and the heads. It cleaned up pretty nice. So after washing it out, I poured a gallon of oil all over the top of the engine to help flush any water out. I put the engine back together with new metal intake gaskets and metal coolant elbows. It fired right up and ran great. I did the first oil change after 5 minutes of running. The coolant looked the same as it did the first time from all the crap still in the oil pan. I did another oil change this time with 4 quarts oil and 1 quart of transmission fluid. I ran that mix for about 5 minutes and then drained again. This mix looked more like oil, but still not perfect. I did another oil change with oil and trans fluid and ran it for about 20 minutes. After this change, the oil looked like oil again with a slightly pink tint. I filled up the engine with its most current oil and it’s doing just great. I've logged over 1300 miles on the car since. I think I got pretty lucky.
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Was posted on the GTP Facebook Group but for those that didn't see it.
(Source) http://imgur.com/a/05azs
