Stuck with a head gasket replacement

achabacha322 · 09-30-2012, 06:44 AM

Hey AF, love this forum, alot of posts helped me already, but I've been stuck for awhile doing a head gasket job on my Chevy Venture.

The Problem:
Need to remove left black motor mount, which can be seen on the lower left of this picture, and has two holes with a silver screw (head bolt?) in the middle going in to the engine:

I only see one bolt, and mine is stuck, is there another bolt I can't see?

It think it should look like this once its off:

(Pictures taken from vankleef, thanks!)

This is the only thing stopping me from taking the heads off.

History:
Van has 167K, seems like lower intake manifold gasket was replaced before (bought the car at 125K), but other problems probably caused it to go bad again. Had a problem with coolant hose coming loose, which made me lose my coolant, overheat the car etc. Then mechanic put green coolant, when there was probably still pink coolant in there. Ever since I've been having cooling problems. After stop leak and other fixes, it seems the head gasket also blew out, as I was getting constant coolant leak when car got warm. My lower intake manifold gasket didn't seem that bad, there were grooves and such, but didn't seem bad enough to have a leak I was having, so I suspect a head gasket failure.

I don't have coolant in the oil, or white smoke from tailpipe thank God.

Any help would be highly appreciated!
I will post up pics I took soon.

sverker · 10-01-2012, 02:41 AM

There is a bolt under the exhaust manifold, over the AC compressor.

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achabacha322 · 10-01-2012, 10:42 AM

Thanks man! I'm going to try it out and finish the job today!

sverker · 10-01-2012, 04:41 PM

Be sure to also replace all the hoses, especially those to the heater core as those are difficult to reach when the engine is put together and the small hoses to the throttle house pre-heater. It's not uncommon that they leak.

Your symptoms doesn't clearly indicate a head gasket failure, but with the treatment that engine has been receiving it probably doesn't hurt to get it cleaned out.

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