M35ProjectCar
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- Apr 23, 2022
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Hello Everyone,
Just signed up today for this forum because of the car that was just dropped off at my garage. There is a longer blurb in the intro section about me and the car but cutting right to the chase here. The car had no heat and the owner had another "mechanic" replace the thermostat for him. This "mechanic" merely put the new thermostat in and did not bleed & top off the cooling system, so the car had a really bad overheat scenario. The owner, assuming the car was fixed, drove it to and from work for 2 days before his dashboard became a Christmas tree! This is when the car was brought to my attention. My first attempt to fix the car was to replace the water pump (done!), replace the lower radiator hose, flush the coolant, and fill with new. After completing this work, I went to bleed the system with the help of the owner. He started the car and watched the temp gauge while I opened and monitored the bleeding valve.
Almost instantly, I could see smoke coming from behind the engine block, down in below the bleeder valve location, coming up from the exhaust near the catalytic converter. Sure enough, the car is leaking oil like crazy now!!! Like, really really badly. Sooo, that brings us to the current state of affairs. I have the car in my garage and am starting the teardown today! Thinking happy thoughts and hoping for good news, and that the oil leak is from a failed gasket and not a crack in the head or block. I plan on being pretty active here for the next few weeks as I tear down and hopefully rebuild this engine with new gaskets everywhere! There is a kit online that includes Head Gaskets, Valve Cover Gaskets, and many other gaskets and parts for this project and that's what we ordered. Ill be posting plenty of pictures and may even make a DIY video or two on how to do this work if there isn't any out there already.
If anyone has any experience dealing with this or similar issues, please reach out and let me know what you know! I am a huge gear head and have done head gaskets before on many engines (BMW, Volvo, Ford, Toyota, Honda) but have never actually worked on a Nissan or Infiniti before, so insider tips would be greatly appreciated! Anyways, I'll have a follow-up post tmrw with lots of photos. Hopefully this forum is nice and active and folks will help out and follow along!
Just signed up today for this forum because of the car that was just dropped off at my garage. There is a longer blurb in the intro section about me and the car but cutting right to the chase here. The car had no heat and the owner had another "mechanic" replace the thermostat for him. This "mechanic" merely put the new thermostat in and did not bleed & top off the cooling system, so the car had a really bad overheat scenario. The owner, assuming the car was fixed, drove it to and from work for 2 days before his dashboard became a Christmas tree! This is when the car was brought to my attention. My first attempt to fix the car was to replace the water pump (done!), replace the lower radiator hose, flush the coolant, and fill with new. After completing this work, I went to bleed the system with the help of the owner. He started the car and watched the temp gauge while I opened and monitored the bleeding valve.
Almost instantly, I could see smoke coming from behind the engine block, down in below the bleeder valve location, coming up from the exhaust near the catalytic converter. Sure enough, the car is leaking oil like crazy now!!! Like, really really badly. Sooo, that brings us to the current state of affairs. I have the car in my garage and am starting the teardown today! Thinking happy thoughts and hoping for good news, and that the oil leak is from a failed gasket and not a crack in the head or block. I plan on being pretty active here for the next few weeks as I tear down and hopefully rebuild this engine with new gaskets everywhere! There is a kit online that includes Head Gaskets, Valve Cover Gaskets, and many other gaskets and parts for this project and that's what we ordered. Ill be posting plenty of pictures and may even make a DIY video or two on how to do this work if there isn't any out there already.
If anyone has any experience dealing with this or similar issues, please reach out and let me know what you know! I am a huge gear head and have done head gaskets before on many engines (BMW, Volvo, Ford, Toyota, Honda) but have never actually worked on a Nissan or Infiniti before, so insider tips would be greatly appreciated! Anyways, I'll have a follow-up post tmrw with lots of photos. Hopefully this forum is nice and active and folks will help out and follow along!
