- Is a head gasket worth it?
Yes, okay.
Yeah.
Video over.
(whooshing) (hit)
Yeah, that's right.
Head gaskets are worth it.
Some might say that your engine can't even really run
without one, but I know you've been on Craigslist
or on eBay Motors looking at cars and you find one.
It's perfect, cheap, it's got low miles.
Everything seems great until you see it, blown head gasket.
You start wondering, "Can I fix a head gasket?
What does it even take?
How hard could it really be?
How much could it actually cost?"
Well, luckily we've got the perfect lab rat
for such an experiment and it's right over there.
(car engine roaring)
This isn't the only money pit Miata in the family.
Eddie owns one too and the head gasket is blown.
On this episode of Money Pit,
can we make a video the other way around?
- Probably not.
(thunder and lightning) (upbeat music)
- Have not seen these yet. So--
- [Man] No.
Boost creeps hoodie.
Who's that handsome boy?
Man, what a good looking hoodie.
- We reworked the logo a little bit.
Now it's in yellow, really pop skins that black.
We added an arm head so you fly that donut flag.
I'm gonna rock mine all fall, all winter.
Go to donutmedia.com and get you one.
They're probably gonna sell out so I would get it sooner
than later.
(upbeat music)
- So I've had this Miata for a minute and not too long ago,
this happened.
(car engine roaring)
- [Woman] I think you might have broke something.
(laughs)
- That's normal, right bro?
So I blew the head gasket.
And generally speaking, when you do that
that's not the only thing that goes.
I also overheated it.
(whooshing)
So I figured while I was in here,
I'd go ahead and take the whole thing apart
and really go ahead and start from scratch.
So I took it to a local machine shop here in the Valley,
and then I had them basically start from zero.
(upbeat music)
- [Zach] So this is what's called an MLS
or a multilayer steel head gasket.
This is the seal that goes between the bottom of your
engine, the block and the top of your engine, the head.
And its job is to make a pressure tight seal
between the different systems
that are at play in your engine.
So we've obviously got our combustion chambers
where all the compression is happening to make power
and actually drive the car down the street.
So obviously you want that to be sealed up so that no
compression can leak out.
But we've also got our oil passages where oil goes
from the block up into the head and we need those
to be sealed off so that no oil leaks.
And there's also coolant, keeping the engine nice and cool.
And those need to be sealed as well
so that you don't get oil in your coolant,
coolant in your oil or oil in your combustion chamber
or coolant in your combustion chamber.
The fact is that this is a pretty simple thing,
and it's really not that hard to install.
And it's also not that expensive.
So why are people so afraid of them?
It's a very long and arduous process
to install a head gasket.
Let me show you.
(drum roll)
Thank you guys for watching.
I hope you had a good time.
Follow donut.
(hit)
All right, so now that we've made it sound way too easy
to replace a head gasket, let's show you
where the actual work lies which is over here.
If you're replacing a head gasket,
you're gonna have to do a lot of work to get this point.
I mean just here, Eddie's had to take off
his intake manifold, his exhaust manifold,
take off the air conditioning, take off the head
and everything attached to it.
And now we're down to the head gasket.
There's a lot of work that goes into getting us
to this point.
Basically everything that comes in this video
from this point forward, but in reverse.
Does that make sense?
You've already gotten all taken apart
to replace the head gasket.
We've got everything we need.
And you're confident about that.
- Yeah, I am 95% certain--
- I'll take that.
- That this car is gonna start today
and work on all four cylinders.
- I will take that.
That's more confident than I've been going into any episode.
- This car didn't start today,
I'm buying a new one tomorrow.
(Zach laughing)
(upbeat music)
- [Zach] Something that is paramount
to installing a head gasket is making sure
that the gasket surface is clean
or else the head gasket doesn't stand a chance
to do its job.
(upbeat music)
(chuckling)
(upbeat music)
Yup.
- [Eddie] Down (mumbles)
- Your head gasket was in there, right?
- Don't scare me like that.
(upbeat music)
- All right, so my boy, Eddie's getting the torque wrench
and we are ready to torque down the head.
But the way you do that matters,
there is a sequence and you need to follow it.
And honestly, it's really simple,
but we should talk about it.
So in this case, and in most cases, what we're gonna do
is tighten down from the center out,
just so we tighten everything down nice and evenly.
Like if we tighten down the entire intake side first
and then tighten down the exhaust side,
we'd probably warp the head.
We would forcefully warp it because one side
would be tightened down and then we would
force the other side down.
We don't wanna do that.
We wanna make things go down evenly.
So we'll start in the middle, torque these two down,
then we'll move here, then we'll move back here,
then we'll move up here, then we'll move back here.
(upbeat music)
Bro, that's not the pattern.
- Bro, unbelievable.
- All right.
So once you take an engine all the way apart
to replace the head gasket or whatever you're doing,
you're gonna have to get it back in time.
The top end, the cams need to know
where the pistons are at or else things aren't gonna run.
We've got an extension in cylinder number one,
dropped down the spark plug hole
and Eddie's gonna turn the crank with a ratchet.
Now, as we do that, the extension we've got here
will act as a visual representation of
what's going on in cylinder one.
And we're looking for top dead center,
the very top of its stroke.
And that's basically the first ingredient
to our timing recipe.
- So now that cylinder one is at top dead center,
I'm gonna go ahead and do the same to the cams.
Basically, they're these little notches on the front here
that line up perfectly with our gears.
So I just give this boy a twist right here until
that notch is facing straight at 12 o'clock.
And then once we have that there,
we know everything is in time.
(smooth upbeat music)
So if we did everything correctly and everything's in time,
we should have 19 teeth between each canned gear here.
So now we just basically gotta go ahead
and put the timing belt tensioner on and we're in time.
This is gonna be the first time she turns over.
(mimicking car engine sound)
- It's super smooth.
(upbeat music)
Hey, I like this.
- [Eddie] Yeah, what a role reversal.
(upbeat music)
- [Zach] Gorgeous.
(upbeat music)
- Now I have to take off the front wheels.
There's like a little bracket
that holds up the intake manifold
and only way to access that's from the bottom.
(upbeat music)
So basically here's the entire harness for our coil pack
and our injectors here facing to the ground
and everything we need to get our entire fuel system up
and running.
(upbeat music)
- I can't tell you guys how much I'm enjoying
today's episode.
(chuckles)
Just supervising,
offering a word of support every now and then.
Sometimes a negative word.
- Just to get me to go quicker, right?
- Mostly to hurt your feelings.
(upbeat music)
Not quite the cooling setup that we've got in the other one,
but it'll do.
(upbeat music)
- And we got the second half of the top part
of the manifold here going in.
(upbeat music)
- All right, we've made a lot of progress.
The engine itself is pretty much back together
and I feel like this thing's gonna run pretty soon.
- I mean, I don't see why it wouldn't work at this point.
- That's, those are the most frightening things you can say,
my guy.
- I know, I know.
(upbeat music)
- All right, so Eddie,
in terms of whether or not this has been worth it,
what do you think?
- With $950 basically put into this build
when it turns on it's gonna be absolutely worth it.
Yeah, if it does not turn on
after everything we've done today
and everything I've done thus far, the money, the hours,
then I would say it's 100% not worth it.
So last thing there is to do is to top it off
with just distilled water and then see if it turns over,
see if it runs.
(car engine roaring)
- All right.
(water flowing)
(water bubbling)
- If I were to go ahead and gauge the odds of
this all working here,
I'm gonna stick with my original guess.
95%.
I'm gonna say 95%.
Okay.
(beeping)
All right, here goes literally everything.
(car engine roaring)
- [Zach] Yeah baby, get that fuel pressure.
(car engine roaring)
- It turned on.
(car engine roaring)
(claps)
(car engine roaring)
- There's a slightly odd noise coming
from the engine bay though.
- [Eddie] Well, what's up?
- [Zach] I don't know.
- Should I turn it on and see what happens?
- Yeah.
(car engine roaring)
Do you hear that?
- Yeah, what's that? - I don't know.
(car engine roaring)
Listen, it sounds healthy.
Like it's probably great.
I don't know what that kind of whipping noise is.
- It's like it's idling pretty solid now.
- [Eddie] Yeah, that noise is a little suspect.
- There's probably like an idle setting process
that you need to go through.
(car engine roaring)
Yeah, that's a 1999 Mazda Miata idling on its own behind us.
(clap)
- So from here, obviously things aren't quite perfect.
- Right.
- There's a little bit of work left to be done.
It does idle but it's a little rough.
(upbeat music)
So it can be a little bit hairy to pick up somebody else's
broken project without really knowing what's going on.
You know, maybe they kept driving it after it blew up
and then the engine is toast.
The head gasket is not necessarily the only thing
that needs replacing more.
Now there is one thing to consider,
I think that is important, and it's that you broke this car.
Yeah, it's a lot different, I think,
than taking on somebody else's project
that has a blown head gasket.
So if you're thinking about it,
you really got to get in and do your research
and also understand you're taking a gamble.
Well, hey, thank you guys for watching.
I hope you enjoyed our little field trip today.
Eddie's got a car again.
So thank you so much for watching you.
You can following me on Instagram @zackjobe.
Follow Eddie @eddy_esparza.
Of course, follow donut on all social media @donutmedia.
And we'll see you guys next week.
(whooshing) (soft music)