Hey All,

Need some tribal knowledge mixed with some blind diagnostic skills. i recently bought a 55 Belvedere. the car is beautiful and in amazing shape but the mechanicals are a bit in need. It has the original 230 L-head and a 3 speed manual.

The weekend after I bought the car i drove it about 20 miles to an orlando area mopar show (and won the Dealer's choice award). On the way back it started overheating and i may have blown the head gasket.

when i got it, the owner told me one of the cylinders was down to 30lbs and he suspected it needed an exhaust (?) valve replaced. Now, it starts and runs about as rough as it did before, but there is a ton of white smoke pouring out of the exhaust. The oil isn't milky, nor does it seem to be using a bunch of oil....but i did notice the radiator (which i had boiled and check by a radiator shop) had a bit of pressure after just running for a few minutes....certainly not hot. The smoke out of the tailpipe doesn't really smell like burning oil, more like unburned fuel....but i thought that would be blue smoke and this is definitely white smoke.

any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Garrett
Central Florida

Congrats on your score . need some basic diagnostic tools. A compression test or a radiator pressure pump tool & pump it up to 15 psi when hot & see if it holds it or one of those kits where you take off the rad cap & suck up some air above the coolant level & see if it turns the special fluid from blue to yellow iirc or an emission testing station can put their probe in the rad top & see if the air above the coolant has combustion gasses in it which is the same thing that the kit with the blue fluid checks for, but from the (described) symptoms your (new) patient needs major surgery

hey...thanks for the quick reply. Are you thinking a head gasket? I am tempted at this point to simply pull the head and examine the gasket itself. I guess i am just trying to rule out the possibility it could be a bad carburetor that is just dumping fuel through the cylinders. Or is that way off base?

-G

Quickest thing to do is pull the spark plugs and look for a real clean one. That will be your blown cylinder. The plug gets stream cleaned by the vaporized water. White smoke is water, black smoke is a rich mixture. Bluish smoke is oil.

well, that seems to make a lot of sense to me and thanks for the help. I do have one question though....if it is water in the cylinder why isn't the oil milky? Is there something about the L-head that prevents it from happening?

as i think about it, it does make perfect sense....this morning when i started the car, it ran for a minute or two but didn't smoke much.....then it quick. When i got it refired, the smoke was just pouring out...so i am guessing when there is a little heat in the motor and head, the blown head gasket becomes more severe with expansion.

*bump*

Sure does sound like a head gasket..be sure to have the head surfaced while you have it off..as I remember they had a habit of cracking in the block ( valve seat ) right under an exhaust valve,,Sounds like you have a real nice '55...how about some pictures ??

something runs in my [tiny] mind about a waterpump tube...... here it is :
water distribution tube powerflow 6
"the water distribution tube should be replaced whenever the engine is completely overhauled. if the tube becomes rusted or corroded, overheating may occur due to failure of the water to circulate properly through the cylinder block."
this is from my 55 fsm. this could possibly explain the original overheating problem, then the headgasket failed after. just a thought.

do you have a diagram or something of where that little [Edited by Moparts - Family Friendly Site - Keep it clean] is located?

I will post a picture today of my new baby.

Here is a picture for you guys......thanks for all the help.

Hey mods, i see you edited my post, i don't remember what word i used....could you pm it to me so i know what mistake i made....thanks.

and another

Well, honestly......i am keeping my eyes open for a wrecked 5.7 hemi car to do a complete swap. hopefully by summer.

You probably cracked the exh seat into a water jacket... If it had a bad one.
Way cool ride BTW... I think I'd just find a complete good L6 and play with that or maybe swap in an early Hemi. but that's me...

here is flathead info

http://www.merc583.addr.com/mopar/framesets/techtipframeset.html

The water distribution tube is covered about half way down.
That alone will make it run hot, but you popped something. Either the head gasket (fairly easy and cheap) or something in the block or head (more money!)

Out of curiosity, is the 230 a bad engine? In the book We Were the Ramchargers, it mentions that Troy Simonsen had a 1950 Dodge Wayfarer with a hot 230 with an Isky Cam and 250 valves with the O.D. ground a bit. It also had a sidedraft carb package, using 7 inch tuned length from the plenum. Fluid Drive. Block(?) bored 1/8 th inch as well as the head. Jahn's pistons (custom) It appears that Chrysler had a lot of research into that engine and it was documented. The limiting factor was the siamesed intake ports. The motor later wound up in a 33 Plymouth and ran 14.8 at 90MPH!
Is it feasible (today) to build or would it be astronomical and cost prohibitive?

Sounds like a really cool build and would be neat to see today.

Thanks for the info

Hey guys,

As always, thanks for all of the responses. I have had a very busy month and have had little time to work on Ol' Red but I took a few minutes the other day and pulled the plugs as was suggested earlier in the thread. Going from front to rear (since I didn't bother to look up the cylinder numbers) cylinders 1 & 2 (closest to the radiator) have the same issue: they look black and oily but it the wetness isn't oil, it is coolant. cylinders 3-6 all look very normal for plug wear.

Does this turn a light on for anyone? Does that seem more likely to be a head gasket or do i still have a good possibility of having cracked something?

I've always heard those motors are hard to hurt. I'd bet on a headgasket.

Nice Plymouth, but EVERY 55 Plymouth I see the new owner's wanting to put a new motor in them. Find a 277 Hy-Fire and have it "tweaked". But I'm old school.