Fingers crossed and good luck.

These engines are sturdy and can take a bit of abuse. As you said you probably stopped in time.

If you pull the pan I would still pull one bearing each (main and rod) just to make sure.

 

Job done and the damn thing is purring, once again,..........

I need to pay back, with two ideas for the job.........I pulled the hood back and tied it off to the roof rack to get the hood stick out of my way, and I made two stud bolts to use as line up for when i set the intake,.......I also made a couple of dry runs with the intake to make sure it sat down right the first time....

this may be nothing new.........but what can it hurt....

Thanks to this forum for all the help............now maybe i can continue with the exhaust and the wheel spacers.......

 

Don,

Thanks for sharing your diagnosis, repairs and final report. This is the type of thread I value the most. (Especially the final report which too few people bother to do.)

I hope this never happens to me but if it does I'll have a better chance at knowing if it is a matter of doing a good cleaning and installing the LIM gasket or if the problem is worse.

Thanks,

Christine

 

If you have records for your blazer, and you know the job has been done, I would rest a little easier, But if you don't know for sure, as in my case, I would go ahead and do the job before it blows through all at once.......if you wait, the job is 10 times harder [lots of clean-up and two or three oil changes] and you always have thoughts that you did some other damage......

My blazer had 130k and I took a chance that the job [LIM] had been done, I should have changed the LIM. gaskets when i did the spider.......

I'm sure that my blazer had great care for the first 130k......but that didn't make any difference to those dang gaskets that chevy used ;-)

Another thing that i might mention is that the synthetic oil [valvoline] that i use seemed to mix a lot better with coolant.......It was kind of odd that I had NO separation in the pan [water and oil] and it even sat over night.... It could be that the synthetic protects better than dino oil in this situation also,,,,??

Another thing that has happened after these jobs is that I have sprung a leak in the radiator, I am assuming the flushing and new coolant cleaned a crack or two out of the plastic radiator..........so now ......a new spetra cu 1826 ...and new gates hoses.......I'm sure that radiator and hoses are original, so money well spent again :-)......

 

Don,

Well, I guess I should be glad to have had the "heads-up" on this potential issue but dang, I hate that I now have a new thing to worry about. LOL

Mine has about 130k miles and I've had it since about 90k miles and I've never done the LIM gaskets.

I had the original coolant replaced at a Jiffy Lube many years ago when they used the regular green stuff before I knew of its incompatibility with Dexcool. This mixed with the old Dexcool and created a bunch of sludge that caused my radiator to get clogged. I replaced the radiator (and all the hoses) flushed the block and put the equivalent of Dexcool (O'Reilly or Autozone brand orange stuff) back in.

I noticed you did not replace the fuel spider while in there. I had that go out on my '92. Is that not an issue with the 2nd gen Blazers?

Christine

P.S. I don't go to Jiffy Lube anymore!

 

Here'a link to an article on the topic explaining the chemistry involved.

Intake Manifold Gaskets

 

I did replace the spider, .......and made a big mistake, by not going ahead with the lower intake gaskets at the same time,,,,,,,,,,,

Now i'm waiting for a radiator and hoses......I flushed the system, oil and water, after the LIM, and i must have cleaned enough dirt out of the radiator to unplug some cracks in the plastic............I'm hoping not to open the hood for a while after the radiator job ;-)......

 

Don J., thanks for your write up on the LIM gasket in your Blazer and your thought processes along the way. Very helpful to others who will have this same problem and how to address it. I just went through this at 104,800 miles when my 2003 started drinking coolant like crazy. It was summer so I switched to pure water rather than coolant and water mix. I had read that the coolant would accelerate the erosion of the bearing if it was mixing with the oil. The oil level stayed the same and the oil never got the 'brown sludge' look. This is often described as a chocolate milk shake look.... down to the foam bubbles! The Chem. Engineers call it 'emulsion'. My 4.3 had none of this, just a strong thirst for coolant. I was running Pennzoil Platinum syn. oil and that may explain why no change to brown emulsion. I had an indep. garage change out the LIM with the rec. upgraded Fel-Pro MS 98002T gasket set. They also changed the thermostat and the small 'by pass' hose from the intake to the water pump.
The Dex Cool brown sludge is a reaction of the traditional green coolant with the new long life Dex Cool. Let's don't confuse the two common brown sludge versions the 4.3L V6 may have. One is primarily oil and coolant mix in the engine and the other is Dex Cool and green coolant mix in the cooling system.

 

I'm bringing up an old thread just to give another benefit of synthetic oil.......I saved the milky sludge that I drained when the gaskets blew out.......it has been six months.........the sludge has not separated and still has the same consistency as when i drained it...........

This makes me believe that the syn oil will do less damage inside an engine than dino oil when these things happen......

maybe I'm wrong ??............But the synthetic oil made a believer out of me........