1957 cadillac series 62 head gasket replacement.

[mldurocher]

Hi guys, I did a head gasket replacement on my 57 series 62 passenger side and it lasted 2 weeks. I used a felpro gasket and cleaned the head and block the best I could, I did not have it machined, was this my mistake? I torqued everything by the book. I am frustrated with it lasting only 2 weeks, please give your 2 cents of what I might have screwed up. i also re torqued the bolts but this did not help. I have had the car for a year now and im new to doing it yourself but i cant think of what i did wrong.

[signart]

If the reason you replaced the gasket was due to failure of the previous gasket which most times results in over heating, you should at least check or have a machine shop check the head for trueness and correct as necessary.

[mldurocher]

The car never overheated that I know of, the temp was always at 1\4, just a ball of white smoke out the passenger side exhaust when she was restarted after going a small distance is what gave it away for me the first time and now the second. Using a felpro gasket with the blue seal on it do you recommend a different kind of gasket for future fixes?. I will take the heads to a guy to check them out.

[mldurocher]

i was losing small amounts of coolant from the radiator and the smoke from the exhaust smelled like it, but when i drive the smoke goes away until i stop and turn off the car and then when i start the car it blows it out for about 1 minute.

[signart]

Yeah, I should have said check for trueness AND check for cracks not seen by the naked eye sometimes. Those are good gaskets and probably didn't fail. Have them magnafluxed. You may have only one cracked head.

[mldurocher]

Thanks for your help, I hope it isn't cracked but I will see.

[fishnjim]

May have jumped to conclusion it was the gasket.
There's a common cracking issue with these carb "heater" manifolds and heads.  Someone reported/pictured a cracked "new" manifold just in the last week or two.   {I bought a supposedly rebuilt engine, and got a set of heads with new vavles sitting with both sides cracked.   The block was similarly cracked and junked.}   

When a car is "off" there's no cylinder pressure pushing in the other direction and the leaking out reoccurs.   Bad valve seals will do the same thing.   Oil seeps down when not running and not being wiped.   
Run it like it is until it gets worse or look at the mileage and if it's over 50K, probably best to consider a rebuild, but won't stop the common issues.   They sell gaskets to blank off the "heater" but haven't seen any data that it stops the thermal stresses and alleviates past damage.   Eventually they got away from this design, but like all things took a long time to change common thinking.   The "thinking" the old cars were so great isn't as accurate as the mind would like us to believe.   Some of these issues don't show up for "many" years and it's now "many" years later.   Probably not a problem when new.   Cast iron ages.

[mldurocher]

I bought the car 2 years ago, it has 94 k for mileage. After I changed the head gasket it ran great for 2 weeks before blowing smoke out the passenger side exhaust just a few days ago, so im pretty bummed out because its the first time I ever worked on a car myself with the help of my shop manual and anything you tube could give which isn't much for my car and now im back to square one,  finding heads for this car is not going to be easy, I have found out that getting parts for this car is always a challenge. Thanks for your input I really like this forum.

[mldurocher]

By the way what is a carb heater manifold? Im very new to cars.

[mldurocher]

I pulled the spark plugs and I found that the passenger side cylinder second from the front is the only cylinder with coolant on it the rest are good.

[Roger Zimmermann]

Are you sure it's coolant and not oil? After rebuilding the engine from my '56 de Ville, I had suddenly an heavy smoke at he tail pipes. I had obviously oil in that cylinder which came from the check valve for the vacuum pump. the check valve is located behind the starter motor.

[mldurocher]

It is a very small amount of coolant burning off, I can smell it  when am standing next to the exhaust and I have 1 spark plug that smells like coolant. It only smokes for about 30 seconds after you start the car and if you drive it a distance and turn it off then on again
after sitting for about 10 minutes then it clears right up.

[mldurocher]

Im going to drive it for the summer if it doesn't get worse then ill tear it apart in fall and take the heads to a guy in bay city mi that has all the equipment to get the heads looked at for cracks and trueness.