V8 help

[Tomm1468]

Sooo, I'm basically a dumb dumb and when I put my 5.0 together, I filled the radiator with regular water and thought nothing more of it. Over the past few days the temps here have been in the negatives and, needless to say, all the water froze. luckily, I think damage to the engine is minimal, a freeze plug got popped out, and that's all. I am however having trouble with it starting and running. on a fresh cold start up, it starts up every time, but when its been running, but not quite all the way to running temp, if I try to start it, it sits and cranks for ten years or so. also, when it is warm, it now starts rough, really rough, and kind of sounds like a diesel engine on the top drivers side. I am planning on taking the top off to look directly at the pistons, heads and to make sure that I have a head gasket that works. on the other hand, I was thinking, my drive belt it squealing like crazy now, and I've been on here trying to figure out my low MPG issue for a while, I think my ac condenser may be on its way to being seized up, I never filled it with oil or Freon, since I never had time to replace the o rings in the lines. it squealed for a while and then didn't make too much noise, now I think that's whats squealing again. it seems like that would be a good reason why I cant figure out why im getting bad mpg, because I never considered the compressor before.
anyway, any thoughts on why the engine would be tough to start up, and sounding like a loud diesel for about 5 seconds on start up, then runs mostly smooth?
thanks for any thoughts.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Did you start it while frozen? Check the water pump impeller.
Not sure about the other stuff.

 

[Uncle Gump]

Is it EFI or carb'd?

You only forget anti freeze once....

 

[Uncle Gump]

Did you start it while frozen? Check the water pump impeller.
Not sure about the other stuff.

Great point...

If fired up while frozen... that water pump is likely done for. Seen that happen several times.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

The freeze plugs are not really freeze plugs.

They are so they can get the sand out of the water jackets from after they cast the block.

Freezing a block... usually is a one and done thing. You are lucky you are not externally leaking or mixing fluids.

 

[JoshT]

Dad called me earlier today (or yesterday?) to remind me to check the new donor Explorer's coolant for this very reason. This part of Georgia is normally safe these days, rarely below freezing more than a few hours, but we potentially have a hard freeze comming up this/next week. Glad he thought about it, I'd had other things on mind (like being sick with the flu) and per the tester is was practicaly straight dirty water in there. Pulled the lower rad hose this afternoon and let it all drain out.

After he mentioned my thought went to (likely already weak) freeze plugs. He reminded me about an old ford truck he had that broke heads and block because it froze and didn't touch the plugs. Was a sad situation that should have been avoided, IIRC he was out of town and had actually asked someone drain it, they forgot.

Like 85 said, they ain't reeally freeze plugs. They are washout ports for block casting and more proper name for what goes in them would be core plugs.

Hope that the worst didn't happen. If it did, maybe this could be used as an opportunity for upgrades.

 

[Josh B]

I think you sadly goofed man, in Spokane and you used plain water coolant ?

 

[Tomm1468]

its from a 00 mountaineer, so its EFI. And I did start it up while frozen, to very horrific noises. Y'all's and my thoughts are exactly the same on this it seems. I thought at best the water pump is shot, at worst the block is cracked and my life is over. I'm able to get it running, and it runs pretty smooth, other than that weird noise at start up (sometimes). I checked to see if the water pump was shot, and it seems to still be pumping coolant through the system, evidenced by all the fresh coolant that I poured into the radiator, only to be dumped out the freeze plug hole later. And yes, I realize "freeze plugs" are for casting purposes only, but still can sometimes do the trick to save your frozen engine if you're a moron like me. I have a new pump and replacement freeze plug in the mail rn, though, I'm not sure I'll do the pump until I'm sure the first one is shot. Second, I did do a glove test to the radiator to see if I'm getting puffs from a broken seal somewhere, it was negative, but doesn't really seem like it'll mean much until I get that plug hole plugged back up. I checked my oil, it needs a change, but otherwise seems fine, and I checked for milkiness (water mixture in this case) under the oil cap, to which I found none. I'm debating on whether to strip it down to the cylinders and check the heads and what not, since I literally just built this engine last summer, just to be safe. Then just put in all new gaskets and oil real quick. I've done that job a million times so it'll only take me a day, I think. I'm thinking I might have avoided the worst case scenario, but I don't to get my hopes up too high. At the moment, I'm waiting to confirm everything, then rejoice, or cry.

 

[JoshT]

If a plug pushed out, the coolant system isn't going to build enough pressure for the glove test to do anything. That won't be a conclusive test until the hole in the block is sealed.

No milkshake is good, but it usually takes a warm running engine to create the milkshake. Doesn't sound like it's run much since this happened. If it were mine I might be tempted to drain oil to make sure there's no non-mixed water in there either. I'm sure someone will chime in on the validity of that thought.

I'd probably want to see about borrowing an inspection camera, and pulling some sparkplugs. Check for coolant that might be entering a cylinder either through a cracked block, head, or head gasket. Be quicker than pulling the heads and probably tell you enough.

 

[Tomm1468]

funny enough I actually just thought about that. I recently bought a small inspection camera because I needed to align a new cam synchronizer with TDC, but couldn’t do it without seeing the cylinder (obviously). So I’ll probably do that, if I see nothing, I’ll plug the hole, try the glove test, if still nothing, I’ll dump the oil and check that, still if I can’t figure out why my truck is having trouble I’ll pull the valve covers and look at the valve train. And then, still if nothing, I’ll pull it all apart and thoroughly inspect.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

The oil will sit on top of any water. So the first thing out when draining will be water, if any. If you're ready with the plug, you could save the oil...

I'll almost gaurantee the impeller is off the shaft and making the start up noise. Fluid flow regardless.

 

[19Walt93]

Antifreeze isn't just for freeze protection, it retards rust and actually raises the boiling point of the coolant. It's standard practice here to mix it 50/50 for a -35 freeze point, you could probably go closer to -20 if you wanted. Before you panic, get it thoroughly thawed out and replace the blown out plug. If the blown out plug is in a tight spot there are plugs that have a nut in the center so you can slip them in the hole and tighten the nut to expand the plug. I suspect your water pump is probably done for unless the belt was slipping enough to save it.
Diagnose it first and panic later if needed, generally nothing is as good as you hoped or as bad as you feared.

 

[Uncle Gump]

I'm gonna agree... I've seen a couple survive a frozen episode.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Personal experience with a 91 4.0...
Froze the block.
Popped a plug. Pulled motor to check. Replaced all plugs because rust was eating them away.
Never thought about water pump... But impeller was off shaft, as in not connected properly. The impeller was probably still spinning but engine would overheat when worked hard. There was flow.
I don't remember noise tho.

 

[Tomm1468]

Sweet. I have a plan then. And yes the freeze plug I got was one with the nut in the middle because it is in an extremely tight spot. So I’ll take care of that, drain some oil and go ahead and just replace the water pump anyway then, it’s not too hard of a job, just a b***** to get the fan off, even with the fan remover tools.

as for my thoughts about my ac compressor starting to seize up and being a big parasidic drag on the engine, since I never really added any oil to it after I built the engine. Will I be able to tell by just by trying to spin it by hand while my belt and everything is off for the water pump replacement ?