302 5.0 head gasket not torqued right

[Danger4x4Ranger]

As title says I have a 5.0L '88-'93 rough estimate in my 1985 Ranger. Found a week ago the HG blew due to oil in coolant but not vice versa and have went through disassembling the top end of the engine. Cannot see any warping or cracks on the block or head surfaces nor inside the cylinders. The internal head bolts under the covers weren't torqued properly (easily broke them loose with a 1/2 drive ratchet with hardly any resistance or need of breaker bar). What is the possibility that due to whoever rebuilt this engine before me just didn't torque correctly and there is no issues internally besides a loose gasket and bolts and nothing major as far as cracks or other issues? What else to look for that may be an underlying issue? Looking to just clean block/head marriage areas and bolt holes and replace gaskets and bolts as that is all I can find to be at fault. All valves seat flush, lift rods straight and clean, same for rockers and springs and orig cast iron heads look to be machined to limit but again no warps/lows/high spots. May get new heads but budget is trying to stay around 5-700 for hopefully easy fix with no other issues. Thanks in advance for replies and comments, just making sure I'm not missing anything else that can be a returning issue for this.

 

[Tedybear]

It's not what you can SEE!!

One of the reasons machine shops charge as much as they can, is the test gear they get to use. Unless it's grossly warped or cracked, you'll never see it with the naked eye.

That being said: Sounds like if this engine uses TTY head bolts. (Torque To Yield) These bolts are single use ONLY!! They can not be reused. If your shop manual states to tighten down in several stages, and then says "Turn 'x' amount of degrees"? Then you have TTY bolts.

Be sure to spend the extra money on new head bolts. If nothing else it's a good safe guard. If it turns out these are TTY? (I am not 100% sure on a 5.0) And the last guy to work on it recycled head bolts-- That's a recipe for blown head gasket.

It might be wise to have a machine shop do at least a basic check for flatness (yes there is a spec for that) and check for cracks. This is one job you'd rather not have to do twice.

S-

 

[Angie]

One other thing to do is to check and make sure no oil or water is in the bolt holes before you place the head bolts back in and start tightening.

Take shop towel or good paper towel and tear into long strips, then roll into tight cylinder style rolls and stick them into the bolt holes to make sure it is dry in there. Let them sit for a few minutes to suck up anything that may be in there. If there is oil or water in the holes before you tighten down the heads they will never be 100% torqued to proper LBS.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

My '87 302 did not use TTY bolts. I replaced them anyway when I changed heads but they were plain bolts, not TTY.

 

[Danger4x4Ranger]

Do not believe the bolts I have are TTYs they look pretty stock as ford would have mfgd when the engine was on the assembly line. They were mostly rusted out and don't feel safe putting rusty bolts inside an engine making so much power and heat just sounds stupid to me. Mainly trying to make sure that if these bolts were basically crap and the gasket wasn't seated correctly that these were the fault in me overheating and having oil in coolant passages, pump, radiator. Again took apart crank case no sign of coolant in there so appears to be top end only as far as travel goes. Trying to find possibility of this being the issue I cannot find low or high spots there is no warp or crack, had this truck towed to a shop and they did not see anything out of norm. So before I rebuild just seeing if I do all around new gaskets, hoses I had to cut off due to age, and new bolts and run myself a 2-300 dollar ticket to fix. Would this happen again soon? I used to do a lot with Chevy 350s so I know about torque seq, seals, dowel pins, rebuilding engines etc but never saw where nobody could find an actual issue besides possibly just not proply torqued bolt/gasket.