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Hey all,

thought you might be interested in seeing what happened to my engine
its a harsh reminder of how critical cooling system maintaince is

I picked up my EJ22 earlier this year and it has been running beautifully but i dropped it out to replace a gearbox seal a few months ago and had a bit of an air lock after i put it back in

it was still running sweet but was getting hot around town
overflow bottle kept bubbling and filling up when it got hot so i pulled it out to replace the head gaskets

heres what i found....







both heads and the block are a total write off
#1 cylinder its almost eaten through to the bore

it had nice clean coolant in it when i pulled it from the liberty but anything could have been in it for the 16 years before that

well thats a mess I know people are going to say Im speaking rubbish but coolant can actually cause that sort of damage as well

if the wrong sort is used or it is too strong it eats away the engine

there is only one real way to stop the electrolitic process in an engine and thats with sacrificial metal and the right coolant

a 1mm thick 10 mm wide and 150mm long zinc strip placed after the thermostat into the radiator hose or even into the radiator stops the process for a fair while but the downside is the crap that gets created by the eletrolization process

so the options use coolant and have a c clean motor with a chance of corrosion anyway

or use zinc stop the process but end up with sludge in youe engine (which can be cleaned out)

TOONGA

That's carnage!

Bugger.

Bennie

I use castrol coolant in the small bottle, used to be a small can with a ring pull in the top. Now in a small plastic bottle with a twist lid. never had any worries in any of my cars with it.

Wtf was the previous owner using as coolant??? Battery acid???

Bloody hell, i have never seen anything like that....

The coolant in my lib is over 3 year old.....

Guess what im doing this weekend....

coolant lol

its just the electrolosis process at its worst

damage looks worse than it is in spots cos theres remnants of the old headgasket there looking pretty tradgic
i dont think this motor had ever been apart let alone out of the car
it wasnt a high milage at all, only 147k in fact and i think the problem was actually due to this

the lady that had owned it only did small amounts of KMs each year so it went for years between scheduled services so it was probably lucky to see a coolant change once every 5 years

Isn't electrolysis caused by stray current? If so your coolant consistency if its to strong or weak wont make a difference it means you have a bad earth?

What km's has the engine done?

Funnily (or not really) that's exactly what my old libs internals looked like when I stripped it down at three hundred odd thousand klms , it was the last thing I wanted to see Even looks like the same place I'll try and find the pics tomorrow

geee what a mess there, not the first time ive seen this, happened to me once in the past, engine would heat up badly while idling or in traffic and it blew headgasket and when i did the headgasket i found the problems, it was blocked and the engine/heads were write off too. It was cast iron engine with alloy heads...
That is why I am very precise what I put in my cars and I am a real pain in the arse what I buy!
Cheers
AP

Does this look familiar?????????????

sadly yes, altho mine was like that only worse on both sides and both heads

its a credit to the engines though that it kept running pretty well perfectly fine like this

it was just getting hot around town then i noticed the caramel milkshake under the oil cap