Got it jury rigged for a ride around my driveway. Bad carburetion but it does move ,vice grips for a steering wheel and a bunch of jumper cables and wires. I ran it for about 1/2 hour and the water temperature stayed around 160 degrees on this cool 60 degree day. And a burn out...
Well,it was all fun and games ...then.... The engine stumbled from carb problems but besides that it seemed to have a dead cylinder again... Sure enough the last cylinder on the right wasn't firing despite good spark. I pulled the spark plug and it smelled funny,like water mixed with gas.The oil showed excessive condensation..I drained the water,cleared the cylinder and fired the engine for 30 seconds. It ran great on all eight.....I pressurized the cooling system to 5 PSI and after a few minutes fucking water came out the spark plug hole. I pulled the head, no head gasket leak... Couldn't see any obvious defects in the head or cylinder ...I pried open the valves to have a look inside and there was water droplets there in the intake valve bowl.I don't know if it was from somewhere else or whatever... Before building the car the engine was put on a stand, removed the oil pan ,front timing cover ,intake and heads and had a close look.The left rear cylinder has a sleeve and a weld repair ....I put the heads and front cover back on ,filled the block with water (with detergent added to remove surface tension) and pressurized it for several days.No leaks to be seen so I put it all together and called it good to go....Not really... I built the car for my race bike rider in trade for a bike I wanted. He says can we fix it???...I say I don't know ,have to pressure check the head somehow and then maybe the block...I work on vintage British bikes not old Fords So....It might be best to ditch the V8 60, sell the Meyers dual carb intake and other good parts.Use the money to get a 4 cylinder engine of some sort. making new motor mounts and adapting a different tranny to the banjo open drive rear is no big deal... He does have a running Model A engine and tranny....I have to measure the length because it can't be longer than the V* 60 set up and shorter would be nice.... It will run again...
Truck, before ya swap out motors, my Dad showed me a trick, he called it "Water Glass", ya get it at the pharmacy (has a chemical name but I forget it now). Anyways, ya flush out the system and add this and water, let it circulate for a while and it will find any cracks, filling them up. Flush it out and fill back up with antifreeze and you should be good to go...If I remember, it was only like a few bucks, might be worth trying?
I was gonna say this Looks and sounds like the typical red neck "Hey guys watch this" fiasco..but then again since I have done something very similar it occurred to me you are not the first person to embark on such a pleasurably lark. We often get overzealous and something goes wrong,I hope it's nothing major. HRP
now THAT is why it is nice to have a circle driveway! sorry to hear about the leak, but there are a lot of products out there to try to fix it. at this point you have nothing to loose, everything to gain if the leak seals up. Also unless you really want a pressurized system, try running it with no pressure (like the old cars did) see how that works out.
Moroso makes a ceramic additive that works great for minor hard to find leaks... Are you sure you have the right Gasket? I had the same problem with a '40 flatty. It was the head gasket, it was cut wrong on the driver side, it came from Egge. They sent me a replacement, put it on problem all gone.
Laying a straight edge on the aluminum head shows it's warped about .015 with the center contacting the block before the ends.. The dead cylinder is an end one... Even though the head gasket looks like no leaks...who knows. Probably 60 bucks to have the head milled and another 50 buck head gasket. I'll meet with the car owner tomorrow, It's his decision take a chance fixing it or whatever...But being the frame is built around the engine it's likely worth the risk. It's the correct head gasket....And the cylinder will misfire even with the radiator cap off so it's probably sucking water on the intake stroke.
Water glass is also known as sodium silicate. Google it. A friend of mine uses it to seal the cooling systems on the flatheads he builds. It has to get hot, then you drain that and refill cooling system.
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