Wondering what I should do next. I had bent valves from a skipped timing gear. I fixed the valves bought a new head gasket and installed with all timing components. Started up runs great steady idle and very quite.

Only problem now is that oil and coolant are mixing. Drained oil and it is mixed. looked in cooland and it is mixed as well. I only ran truck for about 5 minutes if that.

Is it more likely my timing cover gasket is bad, or should I attempt to torgue my head bolts more.

I cant go thru this again its awful and I dont know how to recompress timing chain tensioners.

 

Are they the hydraulic tensioners? Put them in a vice, compress and line up the holes towards the end. Insert a grenade pin (not really a grenade pin.. but it's sort of like one.) and install in vehicle. Pull pin to let the tensioner expand.

 

Did you drain fluids after the job, refill and still get contamination? Or was the contamination in the fluids that were in there during the head swap?

 

Drain, flush, and fill your fluids and see if they still mix.... you may have just had residuals in the oil system and coolant system...

Either that or you didn't install the head gasket properly.... or torque everything properly.....

Did you replace the head studs as well (please for the love of god say yes you replaced them...)

 

I believe it was just the timing cover or I hope after draining the oil and with the oil drain plug still removed I added water to the radiator and it poured out of the oil pan. I guess Harbor Freight RTV is no good. I am hoping problem is solved but wont know until tomorrow after work to give it 24 hours to setup.

I put a ton of RTV on bolted it finger tight waited an hour and then tightened really good.

Yes I re-used the head bolts as they are non TTY and can be reused as it says on every forum I have read. Am i mistaken???

 

For future work, please use as little RTV as possible. It just gets squished out except where there are scratches or uneven mating areas so you are just wasting material. The excess will plug up things such as the oil pump pickup.
Steve

 

You can reuse the 4.7 head bolts if the threads are not damaged. Did you make sure the head was not damaged because of the bent valve. Seems like the pistons would have been damaged too.

 

IDK about the 4.7 but on the 5.7, if you get the head gaskets backwards or upside down it will leak

 

Pistons were dinged smiley faces however they were fine head looked fine after I changed the valves.

 

As a rule of thumb I NEVER EVER Re-use head-bolts..... they stretch by nature after all the heat cycles that they see, which means they will likely never hold the same tolerance again, and I never want to take the risk of torquing them and having one snap inside of the head b/c it had a stress fracture or something that I can't see.... That may just be my personal opinion, but I truly believe that it's well worth being safe than sorry when it comes to a motor rebuild or even a head gasket replacement.

Anyways.... I also agree with weedahoe, about the gasket being backwards, so that is also something to check.

If you want to save yourself some time by not having to take the heads off again I would suggest that you perform a leak-down test, which will confirm where the leak is coming from, and give you a better idea of what to look for....