We Went a Little Too Hard.. Tearing Down LSXcalade's 427 To Find The Problem (Cutting it Close)

well guys we got a problem here Escalade lifted ahead course the head gasket something head gasket gone not [Music] happy I don't know if you saw that in the end of my one of my last videos where we roll racing a Circuit of the Americas if you're a real G and you watched the whole video you would see that we messed that up but there weren't a whole lot of comments about it so I'm kind of thinking that not everybody watches to the end which if you don't you're missing stuff cuz that's a big a big component to this today I'm starting to tear down on this my my goal is I need to get the bad head off tonight because we don't have much time before we have to get it back together and be able to hit the road to Florida next week we got to make a couple stops along the way so there's really only a couple days to do this Adrian had to go back to Memphis to get some stuff so he's not here right now he will be maybe tomorrow night I think he's going to come back tomorrow night but for me right now I'm solo and I got to tear this thing apart I have never taken the heads off this motor I have never touched this motor uh a guy named Mark Vincent built it back in Pittsburgh he builds all Jeff Lutz's Motors he put this thing together in from between like a April to June of 2018 haven't touched it since then since the first time this thing got laid in there I have not touched the head bolts not touched the intake manifold Valley cover heck even that that header driver side header hasn't come off since 2018 so this is going to be a little bit of a learning experience for me cuz I haven't really messed with any of this stuff I haven't even I haven't even touched the Rockers like I don't know where the bolts are to get them off I mean I'll figure it out but I'm just saying I've personally never done it before so you can into my own motor is this is going to be a new sight for me which is kind of cool so first I got to move this thing over a little bit so I'm not right next to the dyno while I'm tearing it apart but then we're going to have to pick it up get the wheels off down pipes out the headers are going to have to come off too but just because I spent a lot of time with the inter Fender I'm going to attack the intake manifold first just because I want something new to do basically I I just want to start with something fresh I've had the down pipes in and out a bazillion freaking times I'm I'm really excited to take the intake manifold off just cuz I've never done it before how about that all right I'm talking too much I'm procrastinating Because deep down inside I really don't want to do this but I'm pretending like I am cuz I need to do it so I'm going to get it done right now I'm kind of an idiot cuz I jacked this thing up to get the wheels off and down pipes and all that stuff then you know like I said before Oh I'm going to do the intake manal first well now I'm standing on this flimsy pallet and I can't reach that the stuff I'm trying to do but am I going to lower it no cuz I'm going to to pick it back up so I'm just going to suffer and do all this the hard way that's just me but got the charge pipe pulled out unplug all this stuff um I got to undo these aend lines here get that off and there's do the two on the back I have those labeled so I'll know where they go bolts here throttle cable and then once I pick that up there's going to be a hose that connects the manifold reference Port right here to the underside and that should be that and before you say do the time lapse or where a head cam this is time sensitive I got to get it done so I'm doing my best to make a video while I'm doing it but it's not going to be a high production cuz this needs to get done I can't afford to take the time to do this I even almost forgot to film this now just bear with me I'm doing the best I can I promise you seeing a time lapse of me undoing an A in fitting is not nearly going to be as cool as what I'm going to do with this thing once it's done and in Florida so just trust me all right I've never had to unplug these either but I labeled them all with a marker paint pen because the whole harness is kind of hidden under here so you'll get to see more of this if I can get it apart you'll get to see more of how I put this thing together as I'm taking it apart be pretty cool cuz I I'm be completely honest there's going to be things that I did that I forgot it's been so long since I put this together but um it's almost like going into a time capsule here to sort of ReDiscover oh this is why I put that under there or oh this is I remember doing this now okay like this thing was a big part of my life when I was building it and I've kind of forgotten the little details a lot of little details are in and around this intake manifold when it came to tucking everything in here and making it nice so these are all disconnected now this is tight this was super hard to get together cuz this is such a tight thing here but after a while it kind of molds to it so I'm going to have to pick this up like this is loose you can see It'll click yeah it's just really tight so whenever I put pick this up it'll come out and when I put it back down I'm going to have to kind of set that in there so it'll be tight cuz it's a heck of a lot easier to do it here than it is to get this to connect with that angle so like this little bracket here I made that too we'll show you that later when I get to there but now I got to get an allen to get these bolts out of here and they are dang Tight cuz they have not been touched in two years all right let's get this thing off of here I I think I got everything disconnected except this never mind yep all right there we forign a lot of these have hose clamps on the man manifold side that are impossible to reach with the manifold on so I have to clamp these on on the manifold side and then install it and do the actual um fastening on the other end of the hose this one here okay I think that's good boy all right that's a lot of stuff Dale so you see here um why does my engine bay look so clean well it's cuz there's all this other stuff that's all under here and you know makes it really hard to work on but it looks good when stun though case vent line the whole steam crossover all the injector harness all that runs under here second branch of the harness fuel whe return um it's good time to check these there's any chafing either all the O2 sensors connect back here the coil pack extensions like oh well there's so much room in here everybody says that I'm just like oh it's like that Meme of Homer Simpson whenever in the front he looks go but behind him is is all the crap like just so you can't see it that's that's what this is right here I'll show you what's going on with the intake manifold so you got i8 sensor back here this is where the brake booster goes onto you can see the stop clamp is still on here I got a C regular hose clamp there cuz the first time I ever had this out and turned with the Boost even past like 12 lb was atct Bristol the very first one I went to and I still had this Factory clamp on here well I turned the boost up and the first thing that happened was just blew this right off so me and my friend Justin had to go to Walmart and get a hose clamp that came with some like Prestone coolant flesh kit we was bought it just for the host clamp there's actually a video on that if you scroll back on my channel to August I believe yeah about mid August there's one is like from The Archives first time out street car Take Over Bristol that video is the very first time this thing ever came out and you can see some of this goofing around and how this ended up like that we fixed it on the side of the road and that's how this Factory clamp ended up up staying on there just kind of for fun one of those bolts end up staying in here cuz this this boss here makes it hard to get it out I had to drill and tap the manifold for an extra Port down there for that part and I made that throttle return bracket drilled and tap that and uh thread sealed those so they are nice and leak free and I turned the Holly rails inside out so all transparency I talked to Holly first about putting a system on this back in 2018 or no 2017 and they were into it the guy never picked up the phone he gave me his card was like yeah let's do something never picked up the phone I must have called him once a week for two months nothing couldn't get a call back couldn't get an email nothing you know who did call me back ms3 super cool guys so that's why this is on there and when I got the Holly rails I flipped them inside out cuz you know I don't want it to say Holly on there I didn't at the time so that's why that's like that I was irritated and spiteful but you know I got nothing against Hol it uh I do have something against people who say oh yeah give me a call here's my card and then never call you back don't give me your card if you're not going to call me back just saying this lighting is terrible I think next step is to get the down pipes and the headers off and then we can start getting to the valve covers and rockers and those things 2018 watch me drop it and ruin it okay look at that that's my whole hot side right there it the first set of headers I ever made right there this primary was the first tube I ever cut no no joke that's honest to God truth little dirty from uh lots of Street miles on this thing now this was the very first turbo kit I ever built and aside from the down pipes that were made out of material I knew was too thin to begin with but didn't have enough time to get the thicker stuff to redo it before drag week Crossing that off I've had one issue with it and that is right here on this piece it's cracked it's cracked right now and it cracked right there a year ago I fixed it a year ago just kind of rewelded over it I didn't put any gusset in there I just welded over it and it lasted me a whole another year which is great that side has not had a problem because on that one I just welded it but this side the Gap the fit up was a little bit different there might have been a gap or a step or something so I welded it waited for it to cool and then I went back over it and kind of weaved it through just as a to smooth it out but what I actually did is made it stronger cuz it hasn't done it on this side you can see it here how I zigzagged the whole way up through here that's why it's staying together I think I did the same thing on the bottom side too yeah I did that's it the collectors came pre pre-done but everything else I made all this and that if I had to do these again the difference would be there would be no straight pieces see I didn't quite understand that concept back then is that if I were to do this again this straight piece these two welds right here would not one of them would not be there it would either be this would be a one piece or this piece right here would be one piece same with this this would be one piece or this would be one piece but I remember I had a couple issues this was the entire length of the bend it wasn't long enough to make this all one thing and I may have had to cheat this a little bit to make it work I don't know it's just something that only if you're a fabricator and a good one at that where it'll bother you not about bother you but it's on your mind when you're making stuff to use the least amount of pieces as possible CU it looks the cleanest that way if you can use the least amount of pieces it shows your skill your problem solving skill to get it done because that's why I don't like pie cuts because you can take Pie cuts just Build It Up however you want there's infinite adjustability and in an application where it does not need to be there when you do not have a really really tight radius where you have to use Pie cuts I think people who use Pie cuts are just unable to do what I was just talking about is the fit tube in a clean fashion so they just take the easy way out and build it out of pie cuts there I said it say what you want in the comments that's how I think about it if you're a fabricator I feel like you'll probably agree with me unless you're one of those lazy Fabricators then maybe you won't but I'm a little bit fired up right now about this I'm speaking honestly I don't care there's no facade here it's just me that's how I feel this valve cover off here so you can see these awesome rockers oh dang that is why this motor could spin eight grand and not care let it be known that the valve covers and the turbos used to be way cooler looking see how that's kind of got like this metallic to it and even that it started to go away back here it's it's like hazing the clear from too much heat this is just straight up orange there's nothing it I think the place of powder C has messed them up cuz they've never metallic what the turbos used to be and now it's totally just Bland old pumpkin orange and I hate it I really it sucks man this engine bay looks so freaking cool when it was all fresh but powder just can't hang I would part of the revamp of this thing is I'd really like to get all that stuff for sand blasted and just paint it paint it like uh probably like Chevy Inferno Orange I really like that color it kind of reminds me of like GM engine block orange but with some more Pizzazz you know I'm kind of a weird it's weird explanation but that's how I feel about it that's what I'd like that to be not this Bland old traffic cone pumpkin orange now we're about to get into Parts some more that I've never actually seen before so I got the steam crossover system off I actually made this out of red horse components with the Earl's ends instead of buying one uh but yeah little bracket I had for the Press regular bolted right there Just sh in the valley cover bolts you can see it's just a piece of regular old bar stock and I bent it up and it works great pretty simple it's like a Fel pressure cheesus like looks like a person I'm an idiot before I get to put it back in too normally I'd label these bags but I know I know this vehicle well enough I don't want to put them all in the same Community box that's just a pain I could I know what they're for but it would take too long to dig them out I'll put them in bags I don't have to label the bags cuz I know what they're for I don't need to make them for General specific bols of specific things it's kind of like a general area or process organization wise like the valley bolts and the steam crossover stuff is in here cuz I thought was kind of like Valley area stuff this just how I do it if this was something I had never touched before had no idea what I was doing then every type of bull for every specific thing would go into its own bag and and I would label the bag you ready oh my god look nothing not very eventful into the orange pile I'm going to start with the ones on the underside of the head first cuz those are a pain I've never actually done them before but I can tell they're going to be a pain cuz they're like under here like under there I don't know how to go about those I don't know what the best way to do that is I might have to fire off the old gazole it's Google that's an interesting point that I need to make use search engines before you ask somebody a basic question like I could ask any number of people oh it's the best way to get these off I'm going to Google it first cuz I have respect for their time if I can't find it on Google then I will ask somebody but I feel like a lot of people um I had to learned this lesson myself is that you don't always have to bother people with questions that you can figure out yourself you have a phone you have you have all the resources to figure out anything the palm of your hand you can at least try before you ask somebody something that you could do yourself probably took me half an hour to get those four bolts out or four nuts off the stud you can't get a ratchet wrench in there I can get in with a regular wrench break it loose and then it's like too slippery too tight turn my fingers so I take the the open end and just poke the edge of the 12 point until until it spins around and then it falls and I got to scoop it out through the oil but even then it's just like a until four times all the way through then you got to get the the knut out and the washer it's not fun I did the hardest ones first now we're just doing the surface ones so I'm going to buzz those off we're going to lift this thing up and see what's going on think I can do this onehanded is this a good idea no drip tray drip TR drip tring mess we got ourselves problem well I see two things one my timeline for Florida may not be the same as it was if it is the same as it was then I may not have the Escalade with me to do it cuz this is not good you ready do you see the problem all right well first these are all black this one's not most importantly wow that's not supposed to be like that not good not good at all we torched it Dale you picked it up and you torched it this is my first engine problem I'm so proud of myself I'm learning now to figure out why this happened it's one thing I'm wondering if the carbon the lack of carbon is just from that engine pulling in coolant and burning it out and kind of cleaning the carbon off after the fact of the issue or if the lack of carbon is related to lack of fuel and it got lean got hot and blew out that way I don't know but I can tell you one thing that happened for some specific reason to be determined Captain Obvious here let's take a look at the Block does anybody want that head gasket could do a giveaway or something something stupid like I don't know I'll come up with a question and you're going to go on my website buy a shirt and leave your answer in the customer notes box and if you get it right then I'll send you the torch head gasket to hang on your wall or pet your dog with I don't know what you would do with it but be yours I don't know what to do about the head gasket but for real you should go buy a shirt from my website I've never even said anything about it before really just kind of mentioned it in comment form but I don't think I've ever actually talked about it I do have a website Stapleton autoworks.com you can buy these Escalade shirts here they're pretty nice you know high quality materials and whatnot it's on there uh and it's not blown up on the shirt graphic and the shirt graphic is a functioning vehicle so there's that too this is the OG Escalade shirt that's the very first one I got a new style on the way so this one may never come back again it's going to be like the Legacy shirt if you got one of those then well you know the deal cuz you do maybe the last load of these I ever do so if you want one hop on over there get one put something funny in the customer notes box and maybe I'll give you a sticker or right suck it on your envelope or something I don't know I like to have fun with it so you should do that that'll uh that'll help put diesel in my tank if I could sell more shirts I can destroy more things and learn you some stuff when I got to fix it so see you tomorrow