Sadly, once the crankcase is full of glycol and its all mixed up everything is polluted.

The lifters (internal parts) worry me as they are hard to flush the stuff out of.

The glycol and oil mix turns to a gray goooooooooooooooop

Glycol also attacks the babbitt in the bearings, and left in the engine for any amount of time will do serious damage to all bearings.


Best plan is to get the engine out on a stand and rip it apart.

If there is a good likelihood that a head gasket blew DO NOT CRANK THE ENGINE WITH THE STARTER WITHOUT REMOVING GLOW PLUGS.

A cylinder full of water will lock up and the starter will break off and fall to the ground.

ASK ME HOW I KNOW THIS

Back some years I lost a gasket in a Burb while it was running...

Got it to the house and then decided I did not like where it was parked.

Tried to restart (Bad plan) the engine came up hard and the starter bolts broke off ... clunk

Luckily the block was unhurt and bolts came right out.

Water does not compress ya know

The mainline crack/break I had was on an early 506 squirt block with large outer main bolts and large squirt nozzles.

The crack started in the "Clip" (machined nick in the lower cylinder from the squirt passage drilling) and continued into the main web, through the squirt passage and also about 2 inches up into the adjacent cylinder wall until it hit coolant.

The web was cracked completely through side to side.

This type of crack is completely different than the "normal" outer bolt hole issue that has been seen a lot.

These failures were peculiar to the early squirt blocks that had the large diameter squirters and also the stress riser (tooling nick) in the cylinders lower edge.


The only way to assess these sorts of failures is to completely tear the engine down and steam out (pressure wash) the bottom end.

Can't see squat with the rotating assembly in the engine.

Fun fun fun