another overheat story with a happy ending

I got my 66 about a year ago and it had been stored on blocks for 20 years. To bring it back to life I cleaned up the fuel system and ignition. It fired pretty easily but when it started coming to temp it would "boil". The usual cleanup of the cooling system, shrowd, fan, thermostat, flush, R&R radiator and heater core and on and on was done.
A lot of people including me thought it was head gaskets and it wasn't boiling it was just pharting. I masked off the radiator with tape and put a jar of water over the rad overflow. There was a lot of gas escaping so there was a blowby problem. Off came the heads which still had the original metal gaskets. The machine shop confirmed that they were warped.
So on went the fresh heads, new gaskets, fresh Alpine Green paint, tested thermostat, coolant and it fired right up. Also fixed that annoying exhaust leak from the heat riser.

BUT as the 225 came to temp it started BOILING.. AGAIN.

So the only piece I hadn't removed was the water pump. Off it came along with one broken bolt. The pump looked new inside but there was one small blob of spooge on the right outlet.
Then it hit me ...the entire right cylinder bank was not getting any water flow and was overheating. The timing chain cover was blocked up with crud like cement (lucky the block was pretty clean). I spent two days cleaning crud out of the cover and flushing the block with cascade (worked better than acid at breaking the crud) and water hose/compressed air rig. Also pulled a freeze plug and cleaned from below.

It all went back together on Saturday. Started easily and came up to temp and held. So for the first time in 20 years another 225 went around the block.

Just in time for summer.

Sorry for the long post.

Tom

 

Glad you got it going for summer

 

Good show. Another happy ending..

 

Sweet! Glad you found it.