blown head gasket or other?

[TX82FIAT]

Good news! Kinda! Andy at Vicks was able to see that one of the two tiny water ports to the center rear of the #4 cylinder at the edge of the fire ring on the head gasket corroded a bit and is on the fire ring now. The old head gasket shows the trail caused by the leak. After they cleaned the block and checked the cylinders, there does not appear to be any damage to the motor. No apparent scoring of the cylinder walls and no signs of detonation on the pistons. Fingers crossed, replace the head and I'm on the road again.

[So Cal Mark]

and the high oil consumption? Did they check the head for flatness? It seems odd that a motor with 3000 miles would have corroded the water passages already

[TX82FIAT]

Yes, the head was checked for flatness before the head gasket was blown. I had a slight oil leak and we checked the head at that time and put a new flepro gasket on the car. Stopped the external oil leak but continued to burn some oil. Rings looked good. who knows... when you change a lot of parts at the same time something may have been off a little. I agree that a corroded water passage on a motor with 3000 miles is odd. Since the bottom end looks good and a new head is going on the car the oil issues should..... should be fixed. I can tell you the car sounded great with the exception of driving under load during hard accelleration. A slight problem with the head or the block magnified under load could have caused all kinds of cross contamination over time as well as what appeared to be detonation. The fact that the pistons are clean and the cylinder walls are good gives me some confidence the new head will fix the issue. Unless the block itself has some unidetified issue with the many set of eyes on it to date. The head should do the trick.

[So Cal Mark]

so you're getting a new head? I can't imagine oil usage issues with the head unless the valve guides are bad. You mention a problem under hard acceleration, were you getting detonation? Detonation will destroy head gaskets along with pistons/rings if bad enough