Hey guys,

Im posting on behave of an LSJ owner in my hometown that called me last night looking for help with his car. I just left him this post on his facebook and tell me if this sounds right based on the symptoms. I think hes got a blown head gasket. His car has a 2.9 pulley and an intake, and im not sure what kind of tune he has or if he's got the fueling mods for it... He knows nothing about the car, and he bought it the way it is.

Here's my post:

so I was thinking about whats going on with your car more and I came up with these possibilities:

A.) Either the piston in cylinder #4 bit the big one and needs replacing or the corresponding piston ring, along with a cracked coolant resovoir (sp) tank.

B.) The head gasket is blown/ cracked or split and is causing your coolant and motor oil to get into the combustion chamber and thats where the ...oil AND coolant is dissappearing too.

The symptoms you described yesterday were (reminder for anyone else trying to solve the issue here):
*Your oil is dissappearing slowly.
*The coolant is dissappearing at an unknown rate.
*Steam is coming from your oil cap when its removed.
*Grey smoke is pouring out the exhaust.
*The oil is black or dark in color (normal).
*The exhaust smells like gas (could be the smell of burning oil or actually gas not being burned off).
*The car is running rough and sounds like a "go-kart", Im betting it sounds like a subaru boxer engine and your running on three cylinders.
*Your car has no power (power reduced mode).
*The engine light is flashing (normally considered catastrophic engine failure which can include missfires.... probably from cylinder 4# not combusting properly. Cylinder #4 is usually the culprit of fried pistons or piston rings.

You can buy all the parts you need to fix this yourself from Crateenginedepot.com or GMpartsdirect.com

I prefer crateenginedepot.com
Cylinder Head Gasket Kit Cobalt 2.0 LSJ 2005 - 2007 12595961 - Crate Engine Depot

That is a head gasket kit. It has the head gasket, and the other two gaskets I told you about (exhaust and intake manifold gaskets.) This kit is for the LSJ cobalt SS (supercharged model)

Next post will show you where it goes on a diagram
See More



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
He didnt know where the head gasket went so I posted the LSJ diagram for him.

 

sounds like piston 4 died a slow and painful death with those symptoms.

 

well I hope not. I was going to offer my help to him for this but I dont want to deal with pulling a motor, lol. I think we could do the headgasket without taking the engine out... I think...

 

you should have had him do a compression test and you dont need to pull the engine to pull the head

 

yea, I told him to do that. That is suppose to happen tomorrow. I told him to do alot of research on what we need to do to change the head gasket. Ive got him a good chunk of reading material on tearing down the motor to get to the gasket. If the sleeve **** the bed like your photo there, then we will need to drop out the motor and get one out of a total balt at the junk yard.. THey found one for $200 if we take it out our selves.

 

okay, Compression test showed a 0 psi for piston 1 (driver side if I numbered that right...).

Heres a photo of the head pulled.



blown head gasket for sure. Anything that you guys recommend he does now while its pulled apart? ZZP springs? ARP studs? anything cheap?

 

I might be high (i usually am) but isnt that a pic of the BLOCK with the head removed? Not a picture of the head right?

 

yeah your not high, unless you really are Im saying this is what the engine looks like minus the head. a.k.a head pulled. or removed.

 

i envy u bro lol,


but on the real, zzp 82# springs, arp studs, port/polish, maybe swirl polish valves and relap for better seal, uhh, not much else i can think of to be cheap, go with the new/revised intake gasket if not already done while torn down, and get rid of the dex cool lol, damn cavitation

 

lol