Last night I decided to adjust the steering wheel as it sits a little crooked. I got it all adjusted and it was sitting straight I was tightening the collar bolts and the ratchet slips off the bolt and wacks me in the forehead. Blood start pouring out like a garden hose. The wife was saying I needed to get stitches but I had a bottle of crazy glue on my work bench. Couple of drops and the cut was fixed. Back out to the garage I go and finish up the job. Piece of cake...

Morning time comes. Looking all over the house for the keys. CRAP! forgot them in the truck last night! Go outside and truck is still there. Phew... go to start it and battery was dead. No biggie, my own fault. Grab the charger and put it on the truck. Run back into the house for a few minutes and putt around. Come back out 10 minutes later. Fired right up. Walk around to the front to take the cables off. WTF!!! Huge, I MEAN HUGE cloud of white smoke coming from the tail pipe. Right away I knew.... f$%K! Turn the truck off and pull the oil dip stick, sure enough filled to the top with coolant.

Me and the neighbour will prob pull the heads off this weekend and have a look. I suspect cracked heads. Right now I am on the fence what I want to do at this point.

There is 270,000 KM (167000 mi) I had low compression in one cylinder I had it chalked up as a bad ring, but at this point I don’t know if that was the case.

Debating if I should just
A) find a donor engine from a wrecked truck for under $500 and swap it in.
B) Pull the heads to see where it is leaking from. Repair if gaskets.

Not sure if it will be worth replacing the heads on this engine if the rings are indeed gone.

 

Well, probably cracked head/blown head gasket/combination thereof. Pull the heads, have a look at the cylinder walls, and take it from there.....

 

I bet that hurt when the wrench smacked you in the forehead.

 

I'm thinking more cracked heads. Too much coolant in the oil for the 10 seconds that it ran for it to be a gasket.

More of my pride then the forehead lol

 

you managed to crack your own head and a truck head in one night, thats impessive.

 

You made a funny

I'd have been dropping "The F Bomb" and every combination thereof, along with a few other colorful metaphors.

 

While the head is still on pour some oil down in the bad cylinder and recheck compression just to make sure that isn't the rings seal gone bad in that cylinder rather than a head problem. It's probably the head but doing all the work to fix up heads and get it back together to discover something deeper would be quite a let down. The extra compression test only takes a few minutes and could help you decide which way to go real quick.

 

This is a VERY good idea.

 

i agree that its a good idea....IMO id repair your motor....if you go to a scrap yard, you dont know how the engine was treated, how long it will last etc....in this case you pretty much know your problem...id repair your current engine since you know whats been done to it, and how it runs...

 

Bad rings will not cause "coolant in oil", only a FUBARed coolant passage does that (i.e. cracked head, head gasket etc...)