First start up disaster!

[chevyfan16]

Yesterday I started my first build, 355 sbc. It ran fine for the first 20 mins, shut it down to check fluids and finish up some wiring. I restarted it and dicided to take it around the block, when I got back, it was making a pinging sound, kinda like a dead cylinder. I messed with the timing a little and it stopped for a second then came back. The temp gauge was reading 210, but the valve covers were to hot to even touch! I decided to put it in the garage, but while doing that it started to smoke out the passenger side tail pipe pretty bad. It was white smoke, so today I pulled the head. Number 7 had water in it, but I dont know if that was from me loosening the head bolts? The front set of head bolts broke free very violently, while that back set broke free like normal. I am going to check the head and see if its warped.

To make matters worse, the intake valves have oil sitting on top of them on the runner side. How do I know if I installed the umbrella type valve seals correctly?

ALSO, while pulling it into the garage I was hearing an inermitent valve train rattle type of noise. It was to fast to be bottom end. The picture of the head gasket made me think the water in the heads got so hot it turned to steam which made that sludgy stuff.

Thank you for any advise in advance.

Specs- 355, summit vortec heads, 10.2:1 compression, forged flattops, felpro steel shim head gaskets, rpm performer intake, speed demon 650 carb.

 

[G_Body_Enthusiast]

looks like oil got in the coolant passages, possibly a cracked block?

coolant + oil = sludgy stuff

did you look inside the radiator? if not then do so and see if there is sludgy stuff there too.

 

[chevyfan16]

Yea it looked fine....and the water looked clean when I drained it....no oil sitting in it. Also I ran it with the valve covers of and the oil looked clean no milkshake. I haven't drained the pan yet tho, and if the head gasket was leaking that would give oil from the combustion chamber a way to get to the water jackets.

 

[monte olrac]

I would adjust the valves again to get rid of that rattling in the valve train, but you should keep in mind that your rings haven't seated yet, so if your oil is not milky i would break the motor in completely, make sure your not running extra rich also cause your rings wont seat from that either

 

[chevyfan16]

Okay im gonna make sure the head isn't warped and put it back together with a new head gasket. I should have mentioned that during assembly I torqued this head and then had to remove it and retorqued it again with the same gasket. I don't think the steel shim gaskets can be reused like that.

 

[565bbchevy]

Okay im gonna make sure the head isn't warped and put it back together with a new head gasket. I should have mentioned that during assembly I torqued this head and then had to remove it and retorqued it again with the same gasket. I don't think the steel shim gaskets can be reused like that.

I would step up to a better Fel-Pro head gasket anyways, the steel shim gaskets are really only for your most basic rebuilds and even still I would not use them.
Most likely your removal of the head and reinstall using a previously torqued gasket is your whole problem here and it probably just wouldn't seal correctly, even if the engine was not run with the head gasket the first time I would still consider it used.

 

[chevyfan16]

I used those gaskets because it gets my quench to .035! Any other gasket raises it out of the perferred quench.

 

[richp85elco]

Did you break in the cam correctly? was it flat tappet or a roller?

 

[chevyfan16]

It's a roller....where can I get a straight edge that won't break the bank?

 

[woody31]

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