- Is a head gasket worth it? Yes, okay. Yeah. Video over. (whooshing)
(hit) Yeah, that's right. Head gaskets are worth it. Some might say that your
engine can't even really run without one, but I know
you've been on Craigslist or on eBay Motors looking
at cars and you find one. It's perfect, cheap, it's got low miles. Everything seems great until
you see it, blown head gasket. You start wondering,
"Can I fix a head gasket? What does it even take? How hard could it really be? How much could it actually cost?" Well, luckily we've
got the perfect lab rat for such an experiment
and it's right over there. (car engine roaring) This isn't the only money
pit Miata in the family. Eddie owns one too and
the head gasket is blown. On this episode of Money Pit, can we make a video the other way around? - Probably not. (thunder and lightning)
(upbeat music) - Have not seen these yet. So-- - [Man] No. Boost creeps hoodie. Who's that handsome boy? Man, what a good looking hoodie. - We reworked the logo a little bit. Now it's in yellow, really
pop skins that black. We added an arm head so
you fly that donut flag. I'm gonna rock mine all fall, all winter. Go to donutmedia.com and get you one. They're probably gonna sell
out so I would get it sooner than later. (upbeat music) - So I've had this Miata for
a minute and not too long ago, this happened. (car engine roaring) - [Woman] I think you
might have broke something. (laughs) - That's normal, right bro? So I blew the head gasket. And generally speaking, when you do that that's not the only thing that goes. I also overheated it. (whooshing) So I figured while I was in here, I'd go ahead and take
the whole thing apart and really go ahead
and start from scratch. So I took it to a local machine
shop here in the Valley, and then I had them
basically start from zero. (upbeat music) - [Zach] So this is what's called an MLS or a multilayer steel head gasket. This is the seal that goes
between the bottom of your engine, the block and the
top of your engine, the head. And its job is to make
a pressure tight seal between the different systems that are at play in your engine. So we've obviously got
our combustion chambers where all the compression
is happening to make power and actually drive the
car down the street. So obviously you want that
to be sealed up so that no compression can leak out. But we've also got our oil
passages where oil goes from the block up into
the head and we need those to be sealed off so that no oil leaks. And there's also coolant,
keeping the engine nice and cool. And those need to be sealed as well so that you don't get oil in your coolant, coolant in your oil or oil
in your combustion chamber or coolant in your combustion chamber. The fact is that this is
a pretty simple thing, and it's really not that hard to install. And it's also not that expensive. So why are people so afraid of them? It's a very long and arduous process to install a head gasket. Let me show you. (drum roll) Thank you guys for watching. I hope you had a good time. Follow donut. (hit) All right, so now that we've
made it sound way too easy to replace a head gasket, let's show you where the actual work
lies which is over here. If you're replacing a head gasket, you're gonna have to do a lot
of work to get this point. I mean just here, Eddie's had to take off his intake manifold, his exhaust manifold, take off the air conditioning,
take off the head and everything attached to it. And now we're down to the head gasket. There's a lot of work
that goes into getting us to this point. Basically everything
that comes in this video from this point forward, but in reverse. Does that make sense? You've already gotten all taken apart to replace the head gasket. We've got everything we need. And you're confident about that. - Yeah, I am 95% certain-- - I'll take that. - That this car is gonna start today and work on all four cylinders. - I will take that. That's more confident than I've
been going into any episode. - This car didn't start today, I'm buying a new one tomorrow. (Zach laughing) (upbeat music) - [Zach] Something that is paramount to installing a head gasket is making sure that the gasket surface is clean or else the head gasket
doesn't stand a chance to do its job. (upbeat music) (chuckling) (upbeat music) Yup. - [Eddie] Down (mumbles) - Your head gasket was in there, right? - Don't scare me like that. (upbeat music) - All right, so my boy, Eddie's
getting the torque wrench and we are ready to torque down the head. But the way you do that matters, there is a sequence and
you need to follow it. And honestly, it's really simple, but we should talk about it. So in this case, and in most
cases, what we're gonna do is tighten down from the center out, just so we tighten everything
down nice and evenly. Like if we tighten down the
entire intake side first and then tighten down the exhaust side, we'd probably warp the head. We would forcefully
warp it because one side would be tightened down and then we would force the other side down. We don't wanna do that. We wanna make things go down evenly. So we'll start in the middle,
torque these two down, then we'll move here,
then we'll move back here, then we'll move up here,
then we'll move back here. (upbeat music) Bro, that's not the pattern. - Bro, unbelievable. - All right. So once you take an
engine all the way apart to replace the head gasket
or whatever you're doing, you're gonna have to get it back in time. The top end, the cams need to know where the pistons are at or
else things aren't gonna run. We've got an extension
in cylinder number one, dropped down the spark plug hole and Eddie's gonna turn
the crank with a ratchet. Now, as we do that, the
extension we've got here will act as a visual representation of what's going on in cylinder one. And we're looking for top dead center, the very top of its stroke. And that's basically the first ingredient to our timing recipe. - So now that cylinder
one is at top dead center, I'm gonna go ahead and
do the same to the cams. Basically, they're these little
notches on the front here that line up perfectly with our gears. So I just give this boy
a twist right here until that notch is facing
straight at 12 o'clock. And then once we have that there, we know everything is in time. (smooth upbeat music) So if we did everything correctly
and everything's in time, we should have 19 teeth
between each canned gear here. So now we just basically gotta go ahead and put the timing belt
tensioner on and we're in time. This is gonna be the
first time she turns over. (mimicking car engine sound) - It's super smooth. (upbeat music) Hey, I like this. - [Eddie] Yeah, what a role reversal. (upbeat music) - [Zach] Gorgeous. (upbeat music) - Now I have to take off the front wheels. There's like a little bracket that holds up the intake manifold and only way to access
that's from the bottom. (upbeat music) So basically here's the entire
harness for our coil pack and our injectors here
facing to the ground and everything we need to
get our entire fuel system up and running. (upbeat music) - I can't tell you guys
how much I'm enjoying today's episode. (chuckles) Just supervising, offering a word of support
every now and then. Sometimes a negative word. - Just to get me to go quicker, right? - Mostly to hurt your feelings. (upbeat music) Not quite the cooling setup
that we've got in the other one, but it'll do. (upbeat music) - And we got the second
half of the top part of the manifold here going in. (upbeat music) - All right, we've made a lot of progress. The engine itself is
pretty much back together and I feel like this thing's
gonna run pretty soon. - I mean, I don't see why it
wouldn't work at this point. - That's, those are the most
frightening things you can say, my guy. - I know, I know. (upbeat music) - All right, so Eddie, in terms of whether or not
this has been worth it, what do you think? - With $950 basically put into this build when it turns on it's gonna
be absolutely worth it. Yeah, if it does not turn on after everything we've done today and everything I've done thus
far, the money, the hours, then I would say it's 100% not worth it. So last thing there is
to do is to top it off with just distilled water and
then see if it turns over, see if it runs. (car engine roaring) - All right. (water flowing) (water bubbling) - If I were to go ahead
and gauge the odds of this all working here, I'm gonna stick with my original guess. 95%. I'm gonna say 95%. Okay. (beeping) All right, here goes literally everything. (car engine roaring) - [Zach] Yeah baby,
get that fuel pressure. (car engine roaring) - It turned on. (car engine roaring) (claps) (car engine roaring) - There's a slightly odd noise coming from the engine bay though. - [Eddie] Well, what's up? - [Zach] I don't know. - Should I turn it on
and see what happens? - Yeah. (car engine roaring) Do you hear that? - Yeah, what's that?
- I don't know. (car engine roaring) Listen, it sounds healthy. Like it's probably great. I don't know what that
kind of whipping noise is. - It's like it's idling pretty solid now. - [Eddie] Yeah, that
noise is a little suspect. - There's probably like
an idle setting process that you need to go through. (car engine roaring) Yeah, that's a 1999 Mazda Miata
idling on its own behind us. (clap) - So from here, obviously
things aren't quite perfect. - Right. - There's a little bit
of work left to be done. It does idle but it's a little rough. (upbeat music) So it can be a little bit hairy
to pick up somebody else's broken project without really
knowing what's going on. You know, maybe they kept
driving it after it blew up and then the engine is toast. The head gasket is not
necessarily the only thing that needs replacing more. Now there is one thing to consider, I think that is important, and
it's that you broke this car. Yeah, it's a lot different, I think, than taking on somebody else's project that has a blown head gasket. So if you're thinking about it, you really got to get
in and do your research and also understand
you're taking a gamble. Well, hey, thank you guys for watching. I hope you enjoyed our
little field trip today. Eddie's got a car again. So thank you so much for watching you. You can following me
on Instagram @zackjobe. Follow Eddie @eddy_esparza. Of course, follow donut on
all social media @donutmedia. And we'll see you guys next week. (whooshing)
(soft music)
