This Was AWFUL.

this time on truck depth I bought myself a 2008 Pontiac Solstice with a blown head gasket and today we're going to replace it in the parking lot [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so this car is in very rough condition we got makeup all over the interior the exterior is trashed the motor has a blown head gasket there's a lot wrong with it but for 800 I feel like I could have done a lot worse but at the base of it it is a pretty cool car it's got a 2.4 liter Ecotec that makes about 170 horsepower it is rear wheel drive this one sadly is automatic but I'm not too concerned with that my main concern today is the head gasket is very bone So today we're going to swap out this head gasket in the parking lot because really I got nowhere else to do it actually I've got plenty of places to do it but we're gonna do it in the parking lot because people assume that head gasket jobs are really big and scary and uh it's not that big a deal especially on eco Tech especially on a real Drive Ecotec where everything is right out in the open so let's get started as we get into tear down I wanted to start with a disclaimer this video is for entertainment purposes only always use and follow the service manual for any vehicle you are working on especially if it's not yours or an 800 Solstice that was bound for the junkyard with that out of the way I wanted to say thanks to everyone for the frankly incredible response we got from the YouTube short we put up a few days ago something like 20 000 views in 48 hours is stunning for a channel this small and finally I wanted to talk a bit about the car it's a 2008 Pontiac Solstice scca SSB Championship Edition and what that means is after a solstice won the stock showroom B Class of the Seca Championship GM decided to milk it by offering 250 base models and 250 GXP solstices with a Graphics Pack and some lettering on the seats it's a very rare car but it's essentially meaningless the car is however very well optioned for a base Solstice sporting an LSD with 391 gears and a 6 disc CD changer with subwoofer all right so it's about it's best started and I've got the intake the exhaust and the valve cover off and after I got the valve cover off you can see really clearly that there is like a milkshake looking fluid where there should be oil so that's one of the most obvious signs of a blown head gasket is this milkshake looking stuff inside of your your head inside of the motor usually your oil will be like will show overfilled on the dipstick because the water is sitting below the oil in the oil pan if it hasn't run in a little while but uh yeah this doesn't look too terrible like it's not the worst I've ever seen the motor looks in pretty good shape aside from there being water in it obviously so we're gonna go ahead and take all this stuff off get the head off and start cleaning that up and then hopefully take the front cover off if we don't do that first I'm not really sure what order I'm gonna work in but get the front cover off so we can put new timing chains on it and uh get the head off so we can get it cleaned up and put a new head gasket in there foreign I figured I'd say it because I know someone's gonna comment it you're supposed to loosen your head bolts in a specific order or sequence I didn't hear I was really just rushing and honestly I wasn't too worried about this head thank you the weather is um starting to look pretty nasty I hope I can get this head off before it starts raining cats and dogs I might not get a shot of me getting this head off because uh it might be raining while the I'm doing it but uh yeah we're kind of in a Race Against Time now all right so it's a little bit chaotic I had to rush to pull the head off the rain is very close you can say it's within 10 to 20 minutes of absolutely pouring here so we're gonna shut it up and uh go inside and clean this head up all right so it rained quite a bit car is kind of wet now it's very humid out it doesn't look like it's gonna rain for a little while I will admit that I I cheated a bit I brought the head inside and cleaned it up yeah that doesn't look too bad I'll also admit that I broke the crap out of this thing this tensioner while I was rushing to get this head off before it started pouring out you can see down in there those two Pistons are very clean those are likely the Pistons that were getting water inside the cylinders I think all I got to do now is get the front cover off and then clean up the head put it all back together and uh we'll be good to go so it is Thursday which is you know five days away from Saturday I ran into some trouble getting the harmonic balancer off which is kind of unfortunate because it looks like it damaged the Woodruff key we got it off it's damaged I ordered a new one should be here tomorrow but for today I'm gonna go ahead and tighten down the head just to get it ready for all the timing stuff and then we can put it back together now if you're working in a parking lot you probably don't have a torque wrench so I'm gonna tighten this head without his work wrench I'm just gonna eyeball it and if it works it works if it doesn't it doesn't but I have a very high faith in myself and uh I'm using a head that I didn't even check for flatness anyway so so we got a bright new shiny head gasket from felpro here the head is from being honest is cleaned up as much as it's gonna get it's not an exact science this isn't a race car this is a throwaway 800 Solstice please don't get too offended by me doing it like this it's not the right way don't put your head gasket on upside down go ahead and put head in here oh my God it's too heavy so heavy all right heads on box brand new head bolts also from felpro I'm sure they're made all in the same Factory [Music] S4 e-torques had both that go right in the front [Music] yeah I used an electric impact for running down the head bolts if you try doing this with a ratchet it takes like longer than the formation of a star so the torque spec on this is 26 foot-pounds plus 155 degrees so we're gonna go 155 degrees 90 180. 90. hey look I actually did use a sequence for tightening the head but I went outside to inside instead of going inside to outside like you're supposed to do but either way we're doing it all wrong use a torque wrench use a torque angle meter don't be like me so it's Friday nearly a week since we started we finally got the Woodruff key out that has been the absolute bane of my existence obviously I haven't been working on it the entire week but I did have to use an angle grinder to cut that Woodruff key out so it was complete nightmare fuel but we got it out we can finally just throw this all back together like it should have been the first day when somebody and I was just hoping that it would go together but one little tiny thing can make this take an entire week all right so I got the car time everything looks okay at this point we can go ahead and throw everything back together the front cover on with the accessories on put the fan back in put the valve cover on radiator hose stuff like that and should be good to run off to change the oil add coolant to it but uh that looks pretty good this has been a nightmare went ahead and dropped a new valve cover gasket in after all the old one was hard as a rock foreign on the valve cover is super easy you just tighten the bolts down until they stop there's a standoff to keep you from crushing the gasket and uh like everything on this vehicle it was just really easy to do there's just tons of space in this engine bay you know there's no fenders there's nothing to get in your way really the exhaust the intake the fan the front cover all of that came off really easy if I didn't get kind of screwed over by that harmonic balancer this would have been an absolute walk in the park so hats off to GM engineering for how really how easy this car is to work on all right so I think I've got most of if not everything reassembled I'm gonna go ahead and lift it up and drain the oil place is an absolute mess a trash can in the passenger compartment because I don't want to litter get any gloves out in the uh open here it's a lovely environment the trunk has some random Parts vbt actuators that we replaced old head gasket I guess I'll just leave that crap in here let's throw it away eventually the uh engine cover for this crappy little Ecotec I'll be leaving that off I hate those things so yeah let's uh I'll Jack it up change the oil fill it with coolant we should be good to go I guess this is as good as time as any to remind people to always use jack stands I cannot stand when somebody doesn't use jack stands and then gets underneath the vehicle that is absolutely terrifying look how nasty that oil is [Music] so nasty it's coming out so slow oh wait I think the oil's coming through now oil runs out faster than the sludge-like water mixed oil that comes out at first but God damn it's nasty [Music] look at that nasty filter at least there isn't a lot of metal in it which is good sign the motor is in okay mechanical condition aside from me grinding literal pieces of metal off inside of it it looks okay here I'm just filling the cooling system I like having the reservoir at the highest point so bubbles will naturally travel there and I was squeezing the upper radiator hose to try to get it to pull some coolant in before starting it from what I can tell the car has a new water pump on it which was probably replaced because it leaked all the coolant out and caused it to overheat but after driving it I noticed the radiator fan also wasn't working and that probably caused the cooling system to build enough pressure to cause the water pump to leak in the first place here goes nothing I'm gonna put it in clear flood to try to fill some oil pressure before I actually get it started so it'll crank for a little while and then I'll release the gas pedal and it should start foreign foreign everything it's pretty crazy noise [Music] sounds like it take gasket leaking he really doesn't like having water poured on it but that seem to run okay pretty quiet don't hear any engine noise although that weird clicking noise was kind of odd after we got it started it smoked for a while as it was burning off coolant in the exhaust and moisture from inside of the crankcase by the time I got it home it had stopped smoking and after replacing the faulty cooling fan we could finally have a bit of fun with it [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] overall I'm really happy with it it's a bit disappointing it's automatic but that really doesn't stop me from going out of the way to take it down a windy road just like I hope you'll go out of your way to get subscribed like this video and leave a comment on what I should do next with the parking lot head gasket Solstice and who knows maybe you might see it on a future episode of tread depth foreign

Channel: Tread Depth

Views: 6,587

Keywords: pontiac, solstice, scca, ssb, ecotec head gasket, 2.4 liter, head gasket replacment, parking lot rescue, car rescue, roadster rescue, tread depth, shade tree mechanic, roadkill, saturn sky, cheap car challenge, beater car, blown head gasket, coolant in oil, head gasket, head, gasket

Id: fu2RNL9pHuk

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 28 2022