Head gasket in a bottle?
 

My buddys daughters 2000 cavalier with a 2.2 blew a head gasket. I offered to help him replace the gasket but he bought this. Sounds kinda hokie to me, has anyone had any personal experiance with it?

http://www.steelseal.com/how.asp

ive heard of some of that stuff working as temperary fix....but its still gong to need to be fixed the right way

I would not have a lot of faith in that. Temporary at best. Many moons ago someone tried something similar in a Toyota 22R... didn't work, I replaced the motor.

I used BlueDevil on someones car. Argued with them about it because I didn't want to use it. Not long after that we replaced 4 water pumps and eventually the leak from the head gasket cemented itself over the lifters. Looked like someone poured JB-Weld over 2 of the lifters.

Fix it rite the first time. I will never put any type of stop leak in any of my cars.

i cant imagine it even being very hard to do a head gasket on that lil engine... compared to say an LT1 lol

I think that's the same company that sells ocean front property in AZ too, lol.

There's no such thing as permenant fix in a bottle. These products have Sodium Silicate in them, which if that word may ring a bell, was the product used to seize the engines in the cash for clunkers deal. So think of it this way, as your waiting for this stuff to seal, it's bypassing the bad head gasket, gettting into your engine, in bearings, in pumps, and tight tolerances.....it may temporarily fix it, but in the long run, youll be replacing more then just the head gasket. If it doesnt seal the head gasket at all, now ALL of the sodium silicate is in the engine, which sounds like a couple of the stories above this post.

My .02, send your buddy on a wild goose chase for a day while you fix it like a real human being with at least both lobes of your brain lol.

I printed out the all-data on it and its crazy how extensive the proccedure is written vs. how I would do it at home.

IMO, that stuff probably works great at turning a head gasket job into a full rebuild.

Heres my experience with any head gasket fix. If the gasket isnt bad it will work excellent for a few months. Great thing to use if you wanna dump the car off on some unsuspecting innocent idiots :D

I know this from experience because a customer had this **** pulled on them. Was an early 2000s saturn, the used car dealership (one of those shoddy places where the office is 15x15ft shack) decided to try to dump the car. Well I get the call from my customer, he tells me his sons car seems like it needs a headgasket and the motor is starting to sound loud. I tell him not to drive it and go over with my partner.

We start it up and its got the typical white smoke from exhaust and the valvetrain sounds strangely loud. Tell him yep, car has the typical signs of needing a head gasket. Overheating, white smoke, bubbles in rad, etc.

So we start tearing it down, pull the valve cover and go huh thats a little funky its got quite alot of gunk ontop of the cam etc. Figure that the headgasket must be pretty darn bad. Fask forward an hour and the head is coming off. We yank it and the coolant passages start using what seemed like dark green instant make jello pudding!

It was friggin bad, like really bad. So we call the guy and ask how far he drove with the car spitting smoke and running hot. O not far just the 25miles home.... :rofl:

So I tell the guy I dont feel comfortable replacing just the headgasket with the condition of the **** in the oil/coolant passages and that a junkyard pull motor may save him both money and a headache down the road if the car develops a knock...

Turns out the guy bought the car 4 months earlier at a dealership. They told him the headgasket was "fixed" and there as nothing else wrong with the car. Well the guy went back there f'ing livid. Tour them apart and started questioning how "fixed" the headgasket was, went off on them about how theres a good possibility the motor is or could be shot. Well turns out they used bluedevil lol. Told the guy there was nothing they could do and it was done by the shop they always use and is a legitimate fix.

Couple days later full of lots of threats and the dealership paid to have the car hooked and a junkyard motor put in it. The guy we worked for was a nice guy but you didnt want to be on his bad side :)

Don't do it! Swap in a new gasket.

dont do it. those headgaskets are really easy to do on the little 2.2 motors.

All I know, is I sell that stuff like candy. So far, no negative feedback.

:lol:

only one I have ever seen that worked was I beleive called silver solder. it was a small container, looked like it was a bunch of aluminum shavings. Seen it work 2 times a bunch of years ago, don't even know if they sell it anymore.

I cant keep Blue Devil in stock. 60 bucks, and its gone. I could charge 90 and it still would fly off my shelf.
I have several guys that swear by it. None are actually my accounts, just our normal group of "mechanics" that come in and buy things.

fixed

Soooo why don't you? More monies!

It doesn't say "Big Al's Auto Parts" on the outside of the building.

Yea it says "Big Fails Auto parts"

i know a guy that used to work at a dealer and cavaliers 2.2 are known for this issue. They would use the head gasket in a bottle and it would work on most of the cars. what happens is the head warps and leaks this fills those gaps. would i put it in one of my engines, no. will it work prob for a while.

That's just really really scary.

Although a good conversation I am still curiouls if anybody has had any personal experiance with this paticular product?