Thread: Possible cracked head or blown head gasket.

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First I'll give you some background. Its a 1988 Chevy 1500. 2WD Stock 350.

This was just my puttin around truck so it was in rough shape to begin with.

Anyway heres some background. Motor had bad valve seals, so it burnt oil. It also was starting to miss out some. It would also jump from normal temperature a little bit but then quickly fall back down to normal.

So the other morning I was driving to work and in a span of less then a mile, it jumped from its normal operating temp, 210 degrees, to completely overheating. As in filling the gauge. So I quickly pull over, shut her off and pop the hood. Just right of the heater hose, seemingly where the head meets the block, it was spraying antifreeze all over the place. I figured if I cracked the head or blew the gasket it would be spraying oil as well. My father thinks it might just be a bad hose, but he has yet to see the engine.

Any ideas on what happened?

There is no pressurized oil in the head or the head gasket, only anti-freeze. Pressurized oil comes up through the lifters and pushrods where it sprays under the valve cover. Every oil passage in the head is just a drain back to the sump. Heads don't crack there, you have blown a head gasket.

try to pin point exactly where it's coming from ,sadly it sounds like a head gasket, but i could be wrong.some more infomation could help out a bit more, is the motor burning a lot of white smoke?pull the wire out of the coil and and have a buddy turn the moter over, and listen for air hissing the only true way to find out what went wrong is to pull the cylinder head off and find out. just hope it's is a head gasket blow out or a heater hose rupture, because cylinder heads are expensive, also those cylinder heads that your truck have are thin wall castings, which means they crack easily if they get too hot.hope this helps, good luck

It only burns oil on startup and when ran wide open. And like I said, I checked the heaterhose, its clamped in place and intact. I don't think it was a part of the cooling system.