I have a 1998 Chevy Blazer with 150,000 miles and just had the intake manifold gasket replaced. Within a week, the engine blew. The mechanic said that the engine blew because the v shrunk and that the blazer had too many miles. Is the mechanic right?
what do you mean the V shrunk ? is this the vacuum ? I think like myself it was just old. one problem that could cause the engine to blow up\ you could get anti freeze into oil with this leak and anti freeze will kill the bearings. we never ran anti freeze in race engine for this reason.
It is the vacuum. I have kept up with the repairs and maintenance of the vehicle and asssumed it should have lasted for another 50,000 to 100,000 longer. I guess I was wrong!
There is clearly some miscommunication here. How exactly can vacuum shrink???
Perhaps the engine was damaged by running it with coolant in the oil before the gaskets were replaced, which will destroy the bearings as boxwrench stated. It doesn’t take much coolant or many miles for significant damage to be done.
A week before I brought the blazer in, I had changed the oil and did not see any signs of coolant and no signs of oil in the coolant. My guess is that they put the gasket in wrong. When the engine blew, I checked the oil and there was no oil in the resevoir.
Whenver an intake manifold gasket or head gasket is changed the engine oil and filter should be changed at the same time.
Often it is not.
I don’t understand the “v shrunk” part of this but if oil did not leave its mark on the dipstick then lack of oil is what blew it up.
As to the lack of oil I have no idea what the story is behind that. It needs to be known if the oil level was full when you took it in, if the vehicle was burning oil before you took it in, and the story behind the shop changing or not changing the engine oil.
The oil was fill when we recieved the vehicle back but after the engine blew the mechanic claims that it was 5 quarts overfull because I added oil because I thought it was out of oil. However, if the mechanic claimed it was overful, where did the oil go before I added the oil?.
I am not exactly sure what they mean by the v shrunk either. I am assuming that is what caused the engine to blow.
If this is a V-type engine the intake manifold sits in the valley between the 2 cylinder banks. Could he have meant the dimensions of the valley shrunk so as not to mate properly with the manifold? No offense, but how do you know there was no oil in the resevoir? By resevoir do you mean the oil pan? If there was none on the dipstick it still could have 3 QTs at least.