Ok, so I need some help. As many of you have heard me whining in the past week or so, I’m pretty sure I need to replace my head gaskets. Ive had a pretty bad leak coming from what seems like the back corner of my passenger side head area here:


. Its really tough to tell because there’s a lot of stuff in the way. Namely the coil pack and those heater core hoses that run over the passenger rocker cover. SO I yanked the coil pack to get a better look at the back half



That was the coil pack pulled out



And those are the heater core hoses that are in my way.
I wiped the valley clean and waited for the flood of antifreeze to start like usual



And of course what happened??? No leak at all. This is why I need everyone’s brainstorming help. The leak looked like it used to come from the outside firewall corner of the passenger side head, it would go down over the bell housing and drip (actually pour) off the bottom of the transfer case. But the only bolts I took out were the four holding the coil packs in. You can see it here, right in the middle of the picture. And I know they have NOTHING to do with my leak.


The only other thing I did (because this was even before I tried to tighten down all the bolts to STOP the leak) was crawl around on top of everything, leaning on the rocker covers etc. So what else do you guys think it could be? Can you think of anything else other than my original prognosis? Im set at this point to tear it down Saturday and just see what I see. Unless someone posts something saying it’s def not the head gasket. :::Sigh::: the one time I WANTED the truck to leak so I could diagnose, it wouldn’t. The only other thing I learned is that while I was in there at the end tightening everything down, was that it’s a bad idea to use cheap universal adapters on torque wrenches because the adapter breaks and makes you smash your hand into the sharpest metal part your truck may have


So please, I need some suggestions. Even if your suggestion is “it’s a head gasket, deal with it”.

Thanks

 

the 4th pic suggests that you may have a leaking intake gasket....since the coolant passes through it. It may be well worth it to snug down ALL the intake manifold bolts and that may be all there is to it. However , this IS a Rover and leaking head gaskets is also quite likely..so while you are there get some degreaser and clean everything really well so if the leak reappears you can more easily pinpoint it . Let us know how it goes

 

Do a pressure check on the cooling system.
Get a brass adaptor to fit in place of the plastic filler plug on top of the rad (1/2" pipe thread), get a tire valve and strip the rubber all off. Remove the valve stem and solder the valve to the brass adaptor. When cold reinsert the valve stem and screw the thing in the rad.
The maximum pressure the cooling system can safely take is 11 PSI.
Put some air into it and look (and listen) for the leak.
Air is thinner and escapes easier. A mechanic's stethoscope helps hear the hiss.
My coolant glows under black light.

SD
PS: use gloves, rovers can and do bite back

 

yeah, i rented a pressure tester from autozone but OBVIOUSLY it didnt have the right adapter for our trucks, i guess it never occurred to me to fab one. That was my first attempt, i'll have to go back and give that a go on saturday. Does it sound like a gasket to you? There isnt much else that leaks back there is there?
Yeah, saturday is gonna be a lot of fun wrenching all day with a missing fingernail.

 

Gloves for sure I hijacked a pair of football gloves off my son work great and I can catch a beer 30 ft away .....Good Luck

 

I would buy or rent a die kit, you put die in your coolant, shine it with a black lite, where it lites up, thats where the leak is.The kit also works with oil.

 

I had a leak coming from the exact same place. I looked all over and couldn't find it. Turned out it was simply that small section of rubber hose for the heater core which comes up out of the block and connects to the metal pipe which runs aft to the firewall.
This was a very sneaky leak. The way that the hose was positioned, at least on my truck, placed the high end of that little rubber hose just above the lip of the rocker cover gasket. So that little rubber hose would leak out some coolant, then drip it right onto the edge of the rocker cover. Since this is the high point on the rocker cover, it would gather between the edge of the cover and the little lip in the gasket (where you couldn't see it), run back, and then down to that outside rear corner, which is the low point of the rocker cover. It would gather there and then drip from the exact spot in your picture. You might check that out. It's a funny little hose which has a taper to it. One end is a larger diameter than the other. It could be on backwards, or if it was like mine someone had replaced it with a hose that was just simply the larger diameter, which made it too large on one end(the leaky end).
I went through some of the steps as you have searching for that leak, and was about ready to get into replacing the head and valley pan gaskets, when I stumbled upon that. I replaced the hose with the proper part, and haven't seen the leak come back since (knock on wood).

 

Could you imagine? Going form the 3+ weekends and $1000 plus i have budgeted for this to it being a tiny stupid little hose. You may have just delivered amazing news to me. While i wont get overly optimistic about the ultra quick fix, i certainly will look for it. Any excuse to not tear the heads off this thing is an excuse i'll take. Failing that, they dye kit and thr pressure tester sound like the way to go. Obviously i'll keep everyone updated.
Total side note while i hi jack my OWN thread, im pretty sure my fzj80 coils come in today. Pretty amped about that.

 

OK, so it's not the miracle hose. I went back in today, thought i had found the leak, snugged everything back down and got it running good and hot to confirm that im getting good gflow through my bottle etc. When the car finally got hot the leak started again, but it's coming from higher than the heads. I had wiped down the whole top half of the motor to identify the leak if it came back. When it did come back, the valley was FULL of antifreeze. does that mean Xceller8 is right and it's the intake? There's nothing else that would fill the valley with Antifreeze but only after it reached temperature right? im just not familiar enough with the coolant flow of these things to try and diagnose what else it could be. Thoughts?

 

Well, we tried. I suppose there is still a slight chance you could get lucky with the throttle body heater hoses. Basically, the throttle body is heated by warm coolant running through it. There is a small diameter hose running from the top right corner of the radiator. Follow that over to the throttle body. It sits higher than the valley, so I suppose there is the possibility that it could leak and the fluid would gather down there. Worth a look anyway.