I was changing the stupid FPR hose the other day on my truck and was trying to press the nipple on the back of my FAST intake (car intake conversion) and my stupid heater hose connecter snapped off, coolant started seeping and wrapped it up in paper towels for a few min until it stopped. Sat it up and put some more paper towels around it. Nobody had the part around town, so I went to lowes and bought a connecter and clamped them together. Got home and coolant had seeped all over the back of the intake, got most up with paper towels. Before I clamped them together I filled up each end with coolant, at first it needed more and more until I realized I needed to unscrew the coolant cap, then all was fine. Started it up and idled kinda rough then smoothed out. Took it around the block a few times, temp shoot up fast, but never overheated. I kept stopping and unscrewing the cap slowly and squeezing the lines trying to work out any air bubbles. The
temp stayed stable, punched it out on the highway and revved slower than usual and had less power. Drove it to work today and power was down even more, didn't go more than half throttle, it didn't go past 200* the whole time either. Checked the coolant when I got home, looked fine, checked oil and it looked milky and didn't have any strong odors. Started to get under the truck to change the oil and oil was all over the bottom back half of the motor on the driver side. At first I thought it was the rear seal, pulled the plate and looked through inspection hole and it was dry. The oil seemed watery also. Drained the oil and put the flashlight on it and it looked milky, caught some in a cup when it first started draining. Smells burnt and looks like dark coffee, but not black if that makes sense. The oil seems to be at the exact level of the head gasket on the back few cylinders. Truck has over heated a few times in the past, most recently when I left it running getting a snowcone (a/c on high and one of the fan relays burnt up when I was in line) got to 245ish for about 10 min. Sorry for the long post, just freaking out, cause I'm broke and it's my DD. Hoping it's a blown head gasket and a quick fix. Any previous experiences, opinions, advice, etc. are appreciated! Thanks

 

You have warped heads. Take them off and get them machined, you'll also need new headgaskets. A machining job should be about $200 to get the heads right.

Throwing another set of headgaskets on it and praying for the best is guaranteed to be a waste of time at this point, considering how badly the engine is leaking. Headgaskets aren't exactly a quick fix either, so do it right and don't waste your time and money. (headgaskets are one time torque only)

 

How can you possibly know that the heads are warped?

To the OP, it does sound like a head gasket problem. It is also possible that the heads are warped, or cracked. Who knows, it's been overheated. I'd recommend having them checked by a machine shop while they are off. Let them know the history of overheating, and have them pressure checked, as well as checked for warping. After they have been checked, they should be able to give you a price of repairing anything needed.

 

245*+ for 10 minutes, multiple times. Coolant in Oil, Oil on Engine. No power, no compression. Been driven till it started dying. I'd stake money on the heads being warped. If it was just consuming coolant and spewing white coolant smoke, I'd go with just bad head gaskets. But leaking like that?

I see a lot of cars come through with warped heads, all of them aluminum and most of them driven till they dropped.

Edit: Ok, that might have looked like the know it all ******* approach, so I'm sorry if it came off like that. I'm just not really good at buttering up stuff to make it more palatable. I'm not terribly into the maybe this, maybe that approach. The heads need to go to a machine shop reqardless of their being in spec of not, to be determined if they are in spec.

 

To the op ..I think its time to hit up craigs list and buy a cheap $4-600 5.3
Why? Because by the time you send the heads to be checked and reworked say
$250 if needed and buy head gaskets and head bolts your at $350-400 total

I say a replacement motor would be best seems like you have abused yours one to many times,even if you fixed yours i say it wouldnt be at full potential.You could have possibly hurt bearings with water/oil mix also being it got so hot no telling waht is hurt.
BUT you could always slap a head gasket on it and be fine.....ITS A GAMBLE!!

SUBURBAZINE... i really like how you try n play the part of a expert yet you cant even keep your own truck together!
Forgetting to torque heads correctly skipping step wondering why you had a coolant leak.
Sueing ALL DATA for your own mistake of breaking oil pan bolts.
Cam swap took you over a week and you had to go back in 2/3 times to fix things.

Dont give expert advise if you are not capable of doing it yourself!

 

I never sued alldata for their specs being 4ft/lbs too loose (didn't break any bolts either???). I also had to go back in for unpredictable items, ie bad timing chain and that hellishly irritating oil pump seal Oh, that coolant leak? it was a bad seal on the rear coolant crossover.

FYI, my truck is still together. Version 95.102 as of today.

 

I had a few hours to start the tear-down today, down to removing the intake is as far as I got. Found some interesting things though. The header flanges look very slightly warped and had a few tiny burnt oil dots around where the primaries meet the flange, this was on both sides on just a few places. Needless to say they won't be reused.
Next was oil stains around carols parts of the FAST intake. The inside of the intake is completely covered in oil sludge.
Weirdest part was when taking the injector connections loose, one injector connection had oil inside the connection!
The intake ports are covered in a greenish oil sludge and what looks like maybe little gas puddles sitting on top of the valves that are closed.
Looks like a major fuel problem! Looks like the injectors dumping way too much fuel and at least one totally shot injector (the one with oil in the connection). No signs of coolant or cracks so far, but I've barely scratched the surface. Either way, I'm pretty sure my rings are toast as well as the bearings from all the gas I see.
I'm hoping the crank, rods, and pistons are ok. Keeping my fingers crossed. It's a 98' block, so I think I'm screwed because the bore is already 3.903" and I've read numerous sources that that is the max on that year block. Especially with the 4.000" stroke.
Any thoughts? Thanks

 

to the OP, you mentioned you had oil all over the back of the engine, but not in the spection hole of the trans to where you can see the rear seal, i bet your valve covers are bad on whichever side ( leaking ), when you broke the nipple off the coolant line i bet coolant seeped through the valve cover causing the oil look slightly milky, id pull the valve covers inspect everything while there off drain the oil, then put new valve covers and oil back in and go from there... ive seen ls motors get way hotter than 245, and shutdown on heating issues and never seen a head warp, not saying it cant happen just saying i hadnt seen one.. do the easy stuff first then go from there..

 

I'm with Skeet on this one. If you're sure that you want to tear down this motor versus grabbing a new one and starting over. I wouldn't assume that the heads are warped, but at the same time, I wouldn't assume that they're not either, probably best to just have them looked over if you're going to tear the motor down anyway. One time I had the same thing happen while my truck was idling at my uncle's house, blew the fuse that runs my fans and it got to 260+, (I didn't know the message center had "Engine Overheated" in red until that day. I actually climbed in the cab and realized what was going on as soon as that came on, ran it down the highway and got the temps back down. No warped heads, no coolant or oil leaks.

 

Skeet knows his chit.