Do I need to pull my engine and rebuild??

[Bigred*]

So I'm sure some of you saw me posting on here alot about my engine build and all the questions I had and you guys were a great help, well I'm back, and I'll just tell you what happened.
So the car was driving great and I was just trying to get some miles on it for the engine break in. Well the other night was driving out to my buddies house and when I parked it, it was hissing, popped the hood and sure enough blew a coolant hose, and of course the one hose I didn't replace! It was the hose going to the heater core, and was the one hose I couldn't get local because I bought all new hose for it local. It was hissing from the clamp, a little tiny pin hole.. So I stayed at my buddies house let it cool off for the night, filled it up with water, loaded a bunch more water in my car and made the long drive home.. I tried to readjust the clamp ontop of the leak to slow it down, well that did nothing and soon I was out of water. Stopped at the auto store, got more clamps and more water. Triple clamped it and filled it back up with water thinking the 3 clamps would hold it the last few miles. Well started driving and i thought everything was great, wasn't seeing any water on the ground behind me and my coolant gauge was staying right in the center and wasnt over heating, or so I thought.. All of a sudden instead of water I started seeing large puffs of blue smoke behind me on the freeway when I closed the throttle, so high vacuum.. Went to get off the next exit to check things and when I pushed in the clutch the car died.. Well I was on the freeway during morning rush hour and needed to move, went to crank the car and it started cranking super slow, after some cranking it started to pick up speed and after I alot of cranking it finally went fast enough to start up, now I'm getting a lot of smoke out the exhaust, blue smoke, limped down the off ramp and went to pull off the road, barely made it in a little parking lot and it died for good, tried to start it again to try and get in a parking stall and this time it wouldn't even try to start and now there's a white odorless smoke coming from my under my hood, hard to pin point because it was coming from low, and all over the right side of my engine.. so I called a buddy and had him drag me home.. I should also say up to the point it died everything was reading good, coolant normal, oil pressure good, no dash lights.. So my buddy comes to get me, about 30 mins later, as he's pulling me home, I have my key on engine off, look down, and now all of a sudden my coolant temp is maxed!! As hot as it'll go!!

OK now I'm home, car has cooled off, filled it back up with water and try to start it to see how bad the damage is. Well it starts right up!? There's a very noisy lifter but other wise, no smoke, and revs ok. So I change the oil and filter, and the oil looks normal, but smells way bad, don't know how to describe it, it smelled burnt, but didn't smell like burning oil if that makes sense, similar to a bad auto transmission if you know what that smells like.. So put new fluid in there and start it, noisy lifter has gone away and everything sounds normal and good.. Ive probably put about 10 miles on it today with the various driving and these were the results. I blew my cheapo radiator cap off once, but i think i put it on wrong.. Put it on right and it blew off again and disappeared. Put my old cap back on and it never blew off, but after some driving, when I parked it it would be hissing, im going to check it tomorrow and see how much it's holding and probably get a new one..

The 2 concerning things are it doesn't seem to be pulling as hard, especially in 2nd and 3rd gear.. And also when I got home from my longest drive today, when I turned it off, I was getting some white smoke under my hood on the right side of the engine similar to when everything went wrong the first time?? It's pretty odorless and i cant see where it's coming from.. Other then that everything seems normal, which I don't know if it should, zero smoke out my exhaust under load or high vacuum, engine sounds great and healthy, revs smooth with a good idle..

Ive kind of given up for today and I'm debating if i need to take my heads off cuz i really really don't wanna do that.. I dont think i blew a head gasket but i worry that I warped my heads and things aren't sealing up very well..

I did a compression test when I first got home after over heating, which wasn't good, all 6 cylinders were 70-80 psi!! I haven't done one since I've been driving, so I don't know, but it starts right up and has good low end power, only on the stock 7psi waste gates or what ever is on the auto turbos, will still chirp my tires in first gear but the rest don't seem to pull is strong.. Also going to run a boost leak test tomorrow and make sure I didn't blow anything else.. Sorry for the long winded post

[Bigred*]

Well just as an update if anyone did read this post, ran a few more things today, my buddy couldn't stay to long so I wasn't able to finish a leak down test, but i ran a leak down test on bank 2,because bank 2 is the side where this mysterious white odorless smoke is coming from.. Leak down test showed, that everything was good.. Which I guess is good, on cylinder 6 we thought we found the problem cuz it was leaking 50%, but we could hear air out the exhaust, turned out we didn't have TDC, ran it again and cylinders 2,4 and 6 were all leaking at 20% which is new engine quality.. The strange part is even though they're registering good on leak down test, only getting 70 psi on compression test?? Which being that it start up fine, makes me think i have a Nad gauge.. and then I ran a compression test on my dirt bike which fires right up yet also only came to 70 psi on the gauge, i think i have some faulty habor freight crap..

Anyways the other test!
So I also put a dye in the coolant to see if I could find the leak with a black light, and what I found is it looks like most of my coolant leak is coming out my filler cap, which is brand new, so something is pressurized it enough to cause it to overflow, which it is possible that the coolant is spilling out while im driving and spraying back on the exhaust, where it's getting steamed up?
Then ran a compression test on the coolant system, which seems to be the problem. Pumped it up to about 17 psi and it wasn't holding.. But it was a very slow leak, after about 3 mins it was down around 14 psi.. But it's small enough that I couldn't hear hissing from anywhere so I was starting to think maybe just maybe my engine is OK and i just have a coolant leak

Today though while driving I was noticing very faint smoke behind me, which looked white, with as little was there, it was most noticable when I got on it pretty good to over take someone on a very steep hill.. But i really think that smoke was coming from my engine bay and not my exhaust because when I popped the hood, enough coolant came out of the cap to spray up on my hood where it then decided to go and drip across the top of my whole engine.. The cap wasn't blown off though, just hissing.

So if anyone wants to pitch in, I thank you for putting up with me, im more or less thinking out loud here.. Something is causing my coolant system to become too pressurized, whether that be because it's getting to hot or exhaust gasses or getting in there.. Im going to have my oil tested on Monday to see if there's any glycol in it.

[DCaff300ZX]

LOTS of stuff to test, the OSM has good tests and well laid out so I'd suggest using that to check things.
The glycol test should also be a good idea whether or not you have any internal issues.

You obviously have an issue with overheating that so far you have checked pretty thoroughly, except for one thing- have you bled the system for air?
ANY air in the cooling system such as in the heater core (regarding your previous issue) and you will get that type of overheating.
To correctly bleed the air out of your cooling system you must fill it as best you can, with the car warm but not hot start the engine with cap off and idling, turn on your heater to max volume and max heat, run the engine for awhile but not too long (gets too hot) and keep the rad full.
When full and coolant circulating smoothly (air out of block) remove the bleeder screw on the left of the rad, and replace the main cap. Keep the engine idling and with maybe a few small throttle blips (heater on full hot all the time) pinch the top coolant hose so that coolant is, or is about to come out of the bleeder hole and hold that for 10 seconds, then replace the bleeder screw trying to allow NO air in there as you replace the screw- having the coolant overflowing slightly to JUST about to ensures this, and barring a leak elsewhere, an air-free cooling system.
Burping or surging coolant can make this procedure difficult to do, and hints at other issues to test for such as the turbos and the heater core.

[jslew]

Since you put dye in your coolant, just drain some oil out and check it with a black light. Any coolant will sink to the bottom of the case and should theoretically come out first. It will be obvious if it's there.
x2 on the make sure it's bled correctly. I use a vacuum bleeder... then you know if you have any leaks. When you're done, you're done - no guesswork.

[Bigred*]

Hey guys thank you so much for reading through all that and pitching in, and i have good news, and better news! So I found the culprit that caused the entire situation, and sadly I wasnt thorough enough to catch it and this was bound to happen sooner or later..
I sat there leaning on my car looking into my open radiator trying to figure out what to do when I noticed something, my overflow hole was above the point where my cap sealed to the radiator which made me beg the question, how does the overflow work if it's above the seal? So I started digging into it and found out I have no idea really how the overflow bottle on a radiator actually works.. Then I found out that radiator caps have 3 seals and 2 one way valves! I never knew those little things were that fancy.. I'll just explain it, pressure builds up as the engine warms, that pressure pushes past the first spring loaded seal and into the over flow, then as it cools and contracts, creates a vacuum and suck back from the over flow bottle through that little silver one way valve cap on the bottom of the radiator cap, that simple! I went through the whole system a millions times, made sure I had fluid in my over flow bottle and was clueless. All this time, I never thought of pulling that overflow line off and blowing through it.. Sure enough it was plugged solid inside there, which explains everything!

System got hot, couldn't expand to the tank so the weakest link went which was my heater core hose, which gave me the coolant leak, and over heating problem. Once that was all repaired the next weakest point was the cap (which is kind of a relief) which is why it was hissing out 2 brand new caps.

Now for the smoking problem I was getting under my hood, that was a whole concoction of different things which is why I couldn't identify the smell. 90% of the smell was all the coolant spraying out the cap blowing back on the exhaust manifold and steaming up, which at the time was 95% filtered water with a little coolant and coolant cleaner.. The other part of the smell was, and I'm not sure if this is related to when I over heated or not, but my valve cover gasket gave out and then was dripping a little oil on the exhaust right there as well. So tomorrow I'm pulling that, scraping off the ultra grey and gonna try the ultra black.. Or other way around, I can't remember what color I put on there.
Coolant is all fixed up and working a marvelous job, the car starts right up and drives great, I'm at my 500 mile marker so I'm getting a little more into boost (7psi), just got done from a 60 mile Canyon drive with lots of high vacuum deceleration on the steep roads and its driving awesome! And pulling great! Sounds amazing too.. Going to keep driving it for a little bit but this is such great news as I was already pricing out everything I was going to need once I pulled the engine and this is just such a relief, fingers crossed things stay good!
Dcaff thanks for the excellent little write up on how to bleed the system, im gonna flush it, run another cleaner through it and then fill it up and I'd much rather do it your way, the right way rather then how I've been jacking up the front of the car to put the rad cap as the highest point and slowly filling it that way.
Through out this Canyon drive I stopped and checked on things to make sure they were doing OK, and i dont know if it was because it was like 40° in the mountains or what but the radiator was cool to the touch, it was cooling it so well that my water wasn't getting hot enough to get my heater hot, just kind of warm.. Which could be air pockets I'm aware, I will bleed it ^^ still planning on getting my oil checked, will probably just drain it all and check for dye, but i dont think ill see any.
Thanks again for all the help and support, hoping this is the last time I come here broken down needing help and that from here on out I can help others from everything I've learned on this.
Thanks!

[NolimitZ32]

If your car ate a bunch of coolant in all cylinders you could have easily bent all the rods but that would have to be catastrophic HG failure, this however would result in very low compression numbers but with a decent leakdown result. I have my fingers crossed fro you that it was in fact a faulty compression gauge you were using, otherwise you may as well get a whole new engine.

[DCaff300ZX]

Good news, and good luck with everything else....like NoLimit, I was a bit worried for you...