water passage damage 88 SPL

[davidkockler]

This is a followup to an earlier post about '87 88 SPL overheating. <br /><br />I took the cylinder heads off and saw both head gaskets were blown. One side was more severely overheated than the other because the carbon was burned off on one bank only. Cylinder walls and pistons looked fine. On the side that still had carbon, there were chunks from the inner water passage missing in two spots, exposing the cylinder walls to cooling water. The outer cylinder walls at both spots were immaculate. One spot was near to where the head gasket failed, and the other next to one of the water diverters. They were small chunks, maybe 1/3 of the size of a $1 coin. There was no residual metal to be found anywhere in the cooling passages- so I guess this is gradual erosion damage from cooling water flow?<br /><br />I put sealant along the metal ring of the gasket in these two areas, hoping this will help maintain good compression. I don't know what else can be done. Certainly there is no hope of building up the damaged areas so that the head gasket has a nice flat surface to seal against.<br /><br />Is this anything to be concerned about? Anything that can be done next time the cylinder head is removed?<br /><br />I also replaced the thermostats. They were so overheated they were frozen in the open position. I originally assumed the thermostats never opened when the motor overheated, but obviously the overheating was caused by pluggage of some sort, probably weeds.