Consider some UV dye so that you can track it down next time.


George

 

Thanks George, I forgot you said something bout that . I will see bout that tomorrow.. but what if the leak has stopped...

 

I am in the same boat here. I have looked and looked for the coolant leak on my Blazer. It too seems to have healed itself. So now I drive it around.....get home, get under it with engine running...nothing. Come back 30 min later....nothing. Has not leaked in a week now. I still think it is the plastic tank on the inlet end......

 

Hey Lanny,
it's a pain in the neck trying to find this (to leak or not to leak) leak. I suppose u have tried the pressure and uv die tests huh? What was ur result? My pressure held at 15 psi for over 20 mins. Doing uv today, I'll letcha know my findings... It looks like I've got a small weep hole size of a leak from the front of the intake manifold. I just saw this last night. I will take a photo and send it in just a little while.. but who knows, it could be wet from somewhere else and my old eyes 👀
Could b deceiving me.....

 

One other thing , b4 all this started happening the blazer acceleration and performance started to decrease a little. Wasn't driving the same !! U know how you can tell when something's diff. Could a freeze plug or leaky manifold gasket cause this ??

 

Leaking freeze plug just leaks....does not impact engine performance at all....at least not until a large amount of coolant has leaked out causing the engine to overheat.

Leaking intake manifold gasket.sure could if coolant is getting into one or more cylinders or compression is lower on one or two cylinders.

And no I have not done a pressure test or the UV dye yet. Just doing the ole flashlight hunting around. When I removed the plastic shield from under the front, I had an area that was wet from coolant. Followed that to a spot on the front crossmember where coolant had dripped. Could not find anything after this. I have a paper towel stuck in under the driver's side plastic radiator tank....want to see if I get coolant here. But could be a leak in the coils..will have to remove the fan shroud to have a look-see. I am pretty darn sure it is not hoses and I just replaced both of them when I had the front diff out so I could fix the leaking front seal and oil pan gasket.

 

Okay y'all,
This is where I sit now sorry it's taking me so long to get back to y'all. So what I'm doing now I figured out that my blazer was leaking all three fluids oil antifreeze and transmission fluid. That's why I was so hard to distinguish and find the leak.
So I have a good friend of mine who is a mechanic that I've gotten back in touch with he came and looked at it and we're going to pull the motor put it on a stand and replace everything that needs replacing all the gaskets and the seals.
Then we're going to put it back in. He recommended pulling it because it's a lot easier to work on and to visually see what's going on. That way I won't have a question about if something's going to fail me. I think it's a pretty good deal he said he'd do it all for 300 bucks provided I by the parts. I thought that to be a very good deal. I very seriously doubt you could get a diagnosis from a shop for less than half of that. I'll keep you all updated.
I know we're going to change the intake manifold gasket the oil pan gasket the transmission seal I think I'm going to go ahead and put the spider injection conversion in there as well. So I'm hoping by the end of this I will have a very very dependable daily driver. Like I said I appreciate all y'all's help and I will keep you all updated thanks a lot

 

I know you all have a trove of knowledge and if you have any suggestions for me to do while I have the engine out please feel free to enlighten me I will soak up all the knowledge that I can and I'm going to be helping him do all this because I want to learn and I want to take good care of my blazer so I don't know what's going on with it but yeah if y'all have any suggestions let me know please thanks

 

All right so I need deep in my blazer we got everything off for down to the intake manifold I'm going to put some pictures in here y'all get back to me and let me know what you think I bought a head kit I think I'm going to go ahead and replace the head gaskets since the intake manifold looks the way it does anything else I should do while I'm here y'all let me know please and the last question I have is in the intake manifold the valve guides or whatever the things on the top are they when you put those back in do you have to adjust them or do you just tighten them all the way down per the torque specs?




Why why is it that the valves on the left are a lighter shade of brown then the ones on the right? Either what been replaced or ran hotter or both what's your take

What the hell is this in this port right here some type of deposit carbon or is it from mixing some kind of antifreeze or did somebody put something in my system or what.

 

Looks like a combination of oil varnish and coolant from the leaking intake manifold gasket. When you get everything cleaned up take a look at how much pitting you have on the mating surfaces. The Fel Pro gaskets can handle a certain but not infinite amount.

Do you have a recent compression and leakdown test? Might want to make sure that you don't have a larger systemic problem before too much time and money.


George