I hate those setbacks, but I bet it's not serious. Keep your chin up and check the head gaskets. Probably just installed wrong, or the wrong head gaskets. You'll get 'er!
I would run a compression test before you start pulling the heads off. At least it might give you an idea of where to look closer once your in there.
Pull a couple rocker studs first. They absolutely have to have sealant or teflon on the threads where they screw into the heads or they will leak a ton of coolant. We run 289 heads on 351W blocks and we use 351W gaskets. Don't use the cork ends, use silicone. Use a 1011-2 FelPro head gasket and a 1250 or 1262 (depending on porting done) FelPro intake gasket. They fit either eay. Watch the gasket coverage at the front and rear head to intake water passages. They are sometimes very close and a little silicone will seal those areas. Good luck, PM me with any other questions, SPark
Rent or buy a coolant system pressure checking tool.You take off the rad cap and screw this tool in it's place pump it up to 15 lbs. on the gauge, then start looking and listening for the leak. I pulled the spark plugs and located my bad gasket.It at least gave me some direction on the problem.Herb
Trying to start it with the wrong firing order will not harm the head gaskets in any way...if the head gaskets are good theyre good. The only thing I can see going wrong on an initial startup using the wrong firing order is possibly hurting the cam which isnt broken in yet but is being cranked over alot before the motor fires. Even that is not that big of a deal normally depends on valve spring pressure....that is not an issue here... If the guy that built that motor is giving you that line of BS..I would take everything he says with a grain of salt...and that is putting it mildly.
ok so its not what i thought it was. an old man next door had seen us trying to run water lines and said that the port on the back of the intake manifold was a water jacket. turns out its not, so i was sending water into the intake manifold. problem solved. dont trust thy neighbor.
Glad you got it fixed. I never use anti freeze when starting a fresh engine just in case, hose leak or whatever, if you have to drain the system water just evaporates away. When I started the BB in my 57 water seeped out a crack in the side of the block. The machine shop that supplied the engine re-did another block without question.
I was going to say that there is an exhaust port in the intake manifold and you might be getting coolant in that. Did you connect to the EGR port? If so, you were putting antifreeze in the exhaust which is why it was still green.
I maybe mistaken but I believe you have to seal the threads of some of the head bolts on a SBF head because they extend into the water jackets ? there's no magic additive to pour in and fix it ...sucks but either way your tearing it down.
That was simple. Hopefully no damage. Not that this helps now, but I know it's not unheard of to drill and tap the rear corner(s) of the manifold on those motors for an NPT fitting into the water jacket to help move coolant to the back of the motor. I did that on a 351w in a '69 bronco to try to help some cooling issues I was having at one time. You can see the black Y of heater hose in the pic going to rear corners in this pic, but anywhere else and you'd not really be hitting the water jackets. The was a non-EGR manifold.
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