360 Coolant found in Spark Plug Ope

If there's none in the cylinder and none going in from the top, it's gotta be a crack in the head. If it's out of warranty, and it were mine, and I didn't have to worry about what others thought, and I was in my garage alone, and I had had a couple of beers, and I wasn't flush with spendable cash, and nobody was looking, I might pour in some of "Ye Olde Stoppe Leeke" and see if it quit.

 

Yes...my first thought is get a proper coolant system tester. If the cap is a 15+ lbs cap and you put 15 in from the other end which is not the way it was designed why do you think you will get 15lbs in the cooling system? Real coolant system testers have a pump and a guage and you can watch for pressure bleed off. Second thought is that sometimes you can pass a cold coolant pressure test and fail still the cylinderhead leakdown test. That is "the" definative test. 100psi is > 15psi no surprise there. Third thought is I'm pretty sure coolant is still full of silicone and phosporus compounds that will kill an O2 sensor and your cats. So after you rectify the problems don't be surprised if you have new yet to be diagnosed downstream problems.


So if you fail the leakdown the heads come off and you check for things like flat deck/head, cracked head, cracked liner, blown head gasket

 

lol - yes I hate those stop leak things, but I would also be willing to make an exception for a situation such as this. Getting the head welded or replaced is another and better (but more involved) option.
Still, you might want to speak with Ferrari first since this is most likely a manufacturing defect.

 

Certainly a cracked something.

That miss you are having is the cylinder filling with coolant and not allowing that spark plug to fire.

Those stop leak products work REALLY well. **wink wink**

As much as it pains me using it, it does work well and I have used it countless times.

Sometimes to get owners out of trouble, the others times because the owners of the cars cannot afford to spend the dollars to repair properly.

I have seen the same cars come in many years later without any issues from the 'stop leak' product we used.

You already know it's a big job, even if you did the work yourself.

Perhaps try some stop leak product and see what happens.

We use the product "Car-go seal up". It is a water like solution with fine looking orange metal particles in it. You shake it up and put it in the cooling system.

If you can get your hands on some of that, give it a shot. Get two bottles.

Edit-Here ya go, for sale in the UK. It is cheaper here in Oz, around AU $10 a bottle.

http://www.motorshop1.co.uk/sealup.htm
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Damn,

they have that snake oil down under too ?

 

Doesn't sound good buddy. I can't make out from your video - where are you seeing the coolant? Is it through the spark plug hole and into the cylinder?

I would steer well clear of those stop leak products and try to find the exact cause of the issue and repair properly.

 

Apart from welding it or replacing the head, another solution could be to 'sleeve' the hole with a thin-walled piece of stainless pipe; if the leak is through the side, this could be a solution. Could you see with the pressure test where the leak is?

Be careful though, if you mess around too much you might break something. Be sure not to let coolant run into the cylinder (potential hydrolock), those catalytic converters aren't cheap either, and running the engine with a misfire will wreak havoc on that cylinder because the petrol isn't burned and washes the oil away. So you'd better make sure a repair actually works...

 

I didn't see that you had checked the oil for coolant contamination in there. This might rule out a head gasket issue. I vote for the best case scenario - that it's a crack up top on the coolant side and the stop leak will do the trick. Now, I am wondering where such a crack came from... Hmm. It's not like that area is under stress.

Okay, here's a possibility, remote, but possible because ... it happended to me! It is possible that a well meaning, but ham-handed mechanic performed some maintenance in the area causing the small crack in the thin area of the head casting. In my case, it was a spark plug that had not been tightened at the dealership very well and had worked its way loose. It eventually sawed its way through the threads and blew out of the head, taking a couple of coils with it. The repair was to carefully helicoil the spark plug hole, which, unfortunately, caused a crack very similar to what you see. My ultimate repair (later on) was a new head (!!!), but that was an unrelated circumstance (overrevved engine, BMW M3 and mechanic wouldn't touch the repair with the damaged head).

So, are you aware of any work in that area that might have caused this?

 

Thanks for the extra info - I think I understand what you can see. It sounds like the cooling circuit in the head has been compromised. I would be getting the head off and having it inspected properly - can you x-ray heads?

My concern with using a stop leak product is that it is concealing a major problem - that is until something catastrophic happens. But it's your car and only you can decide what course of action to take.

Good luck and keep us informed!

 

There are a few systems for stop-leak, some of them mostly clog the cooling system, (and the leak by accident as well), others are a little more intelligent. I have also seen a system that used a very small container with a kind of metal flakes (looked like aluminium flakes suspended in fluid), but that was years ago. Since then I grew up in the automotive repair sense so I never became an expert in this field
You might want to investigate that a little.

Of course sleeving or welding is still the preferable way to go. It could be as simple as a casting or machining error in the #8 spark plug hole area, where tolerances in the production ended up working against you to result in the wall of the hole being very thin and finally giving way.

The misfire you experience is probably because of the #8 plug being fouled with fuel/carbon, as you didn't mention replacing it?

 

No problem - as I said it's your car and only you can make the call. If you think I can help in any way drop me a line.

 

Of course he doesn't, his sole business relies on repairing, machining and building engines.

The man wants to take your money to repair your cracked head. Pure and simple.

The stop leak products he talks of existed 20-30 years ago. Different product these days and when used correctly there is not a problem.

And I just remembered today, I put two bottles of Car-go into my Mum's car because I could not find this pesky/annoying coolant leak.

I pressure tested the cooling system at least 20+ times over the last 12-18 months and could not find this bloody leak.

I put it down to a cracked head, leaking into the cylinders and burning off. But I found NO obvious signs of that, plug was good, no smoke, no overheating etc.etc.

I started to think someone was playing tricks on me, taking out around 1L of coolant/water every week for 12-18 months.

I eventually bit the bullet and put in two bottles of Car-go and had instant results. The car used to use around 1L of water/coolant every week or so, but not anymore.

I used the product Xmas last year. I checked it again a few weeks ago for her and the radiator and overflow bottle are still full.

Im not selling or promoting the product, im just telling you how it is. It has worked for me countless times, so I wouldnt be affraid to use it in a $10,000 car or my $100,000 348.

I would give it a shot mate. $40 as opposed to $4000 in repairs. It may work, it may not.

 

Agree. I use it all the time as well, in our international work trucks. It definately works more then it doesn't, but it also depends on the size of the hole, or crack. smaller the leak the better the results!

 

Greg,

Not quite in the 360 performance range.......but!

I am in Dublin and have a 308 Dino, a few years ago before a rebuild I had a very slow leak of coolant into one cylinder under pressure/ temp.

Used an off the shelf leak stopper cannot recall the brand, got it in Halfords for memory.

Stopped the issue dead, no more problems, drove the car around for 5 years after the fact before I decided a rebuild was due...... never had a leak again.

I flushed the collant circuit after a couple of days of using the stuff just in case...

I would go for it, those engines are no where near limits and worst case is it doesn't work..... how is that an different from your current situation.... you would still have to do something about it...

You only need to put a small amount of the stuff in, not a full bottle, it will find the problem area itself.

If you want a second opinion drop me a PM and I will give you my contact details.

Rgds

Tom

 

Why are you guys guessing? Stop leak is a pretty good way to encourage cylinder wash and destruction of O2 sensors and cat.. You already got bad running you are just encouraging destruction that gives these cars a bad name. Repair, even use of stop leak, only comes after proper diagnosis.

"Hope" is not an auto repair solution.

 

IMHO, don't do the stop leak. As the mechanic told you, that stuff goes everywhere in the engine, not just into the crack. You have a very specific problem right now. Why risk further engine damage? You'll end up throwing good money after bad, with a much larger repair bill. It sounds like the racing mechanic you spoke to has a pretty good handle on the problem and has seen it before. Based on what you have seen, it makes sense that the steel sleeve would be the source of the problem. And if you are pushing that much fluid out at 1 bar, there's a pretty good likelihood that stop leak won't seal that big a gap, at least not for long.

If it were my car, I'd have it fixed properly, or I'd put the car away for a while until I could afford to have it fixed correctly. A stop-gap measure like stop leak is not going to resolve the issue, and the risks of greater damage, in my mind, outweigh a temporary fix to the problem. YMMV, but that's my perspective. We are not talking about a cheap "beater" daily driver here with a 150,000 miles on it. A 360 is a high end car that deserves to be treated properly.

 

Using stop leak, rad weld etc. will make you an honorary member of the stooge club!


Where's Ernie when you need him???