Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="shovel" data-source="post: 1587611" data-attributes="member: 29855">Last night I took the intake manifold back off my 302..  not real thrilled about that.I put everything back together last week to prepare for first start & filled the coolant reservoir with water (just deionized, no antifreeze for now)  and noticed the level very slowly going down, about an inch every day.   What's weird about that is all the spark plugs are still out and when I cranked the engine over with a wrench on the crank bolt,  nothing came out of any cylinder.   I don't have a bore camera but there's been at least 2 cups of water unaccounted for (it seems) so if it was leaking past the head gasket into a cylinder that would have come out when the piston came to TDC.   I had not yet drained the oil so I did that - a little water came out first from the bottom but that was expected since a little water always drops into the lifter valley when you remove the intake manifold at first disassembly.  Not a lot of water.   So after draining the oil I left the plugs out with solo cups under them and refilled the coolant system to the top (below the overflow tube) and waited a day.   Again it went down,  but it appears only residual oil had dripped out of the open drain holes.  No layer of water at the bottom of the solo cups and it was definitely oil in the cups not just dirty water. So water's going somewhere,  I don't live in a climate where an inch of water just evaporates,  it's not going into the cylinders and it's apparently not going into the crankcase and I didn't see any drips or wetness on the floor or engine.   Engine exterior is clean (not jacketed in oil and grime) so if there was significant water leaking somewhere it would be visible unless it was real sneaky water. For lack of a better plan I figured the intake was going to have to come back off so I drained the water and did that.   Nothing obvious there either, no pools of water in the lifter valley apart from maybe a little splash from removing the manifold since you can never 100% clear out the crossover channels.I'm going to have to think about this for a minute... I'm already in another ~$40 for new gaskets,  don't want to reassemble it for nothing.</blockquote>