...I ask this because I just finished putting head gaskets in my brother's '97 E250 van with the 4.2 (he bought this van to replace the one with the 351 that he's giving me). I had thought Ford sorted out the head gasket problems, and even though this engine had blown one even the blown gasket looked to be of high quality (compared to my old '91 T-Bird's 3.8). The whole gasket was metal, but the gasket blew out at the same place my '91 T-Bird did: #3 cylinder. The engine has 120k miles on it. BTW, I'd do a dozen T-Bird head gaskets before I'll ever do another one in a van...
And while on the subject of 4.2's, is it just my brother's luck, or are these engines absolute junk? In his 2000 F150 4X4 he blew the engine in January, and when I say blew, I mean blew into pieces. He literally blew the whole front of the engine off, and claims he was simply driving normally and it just went BANG. He gets a replacement junkyard engine, and 29 days later (just within the 30 day warranty) the replacement engine spins a bearing. And now this van blew a head gasket. I know he's not a real good one for maintenance, but this does not seem like a reliable engine to me (his van with the 351 lasted 300k miles with shiznitty maintenance and still runs great, though the tranny slips).
He also blew up his 6.5 turbodiesel (shortly after the second engine in the F150), but that's a 6.5 turbodiesel, and they need no help blowing up. The block cracked, the mains shifted, and it seized.
wow...
i thought the 4.2 where good i hope so my dad just a bought a f150 with it
tho if i had that much car problems i would just get a bike...wow
Was the vehicle with the 6.5 turbodiesel a GM?
Ford trucks used a 6.9 up till around '87, then went to the IDI 7.3, before it Became the Powerstroke 7.3 sometime around '94...
Sounds like your bro has had some shiznitty bad luck with V6's, If I was he, I'd want to avoid them, lol
my friend had a work van before his new one now that had the 4.2 and it had 205k on it with no known headgasket issues... and they beat the living hell out of those vans lol.
Yes, it's a '97 GMC G3500 cube van. Having dealership experience and several courses on that engine I warned him against it, but the van was cheap so he bought it. Turns out he didn't save so much money after all...
The 3.8L was never really a "stout" engine. Bottle necking up the exhaust, and running just some plain old headgaskets made it failure pr0ne. In 95, they revised the cooling jackets to put a little more meat between the combustion chamber and the jackets, and they used a better gasket, but that still didnt remedy the problem. I want to say that in 99, they switched to an even better headgasket, but that doesnt fix a problem where ford put the cooling jackets way too close.
If you see a Buick 3.8L head, there is a lot more meat around the chambers, which is a good reason you dont hear about those blowing out gaskets much.
So in short, they never did fix the issue, but they did bandaid it a few times.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ford_mustang.htm
http://www.foxtbirdcougarforums.com/showthread.php?t=2458
That's some bad luck. Mine never blew the gaskets in my old 3.8, but it did eat valve stem seals....
A freind of mine has a 4.2 in her Mustang she bought used with like 30k miles on it. It has some minor bolt on's: underdrives, a CAI kit, and dual exhaust. She beats on that thing and it's never had them replaced and it has like 70k miles on it now. However there's no telling if the guy who owned it before her knew about the HG's and put in better ones before he modded it.
The 4.2L is not in it self a very bad engine. However when "worked" (such has hauling and towing) issues do aries. We had a few in our fleet at work but dropped them with cooling and HG issues, to name a few. I've changed 4.2L HG once (in an F150). It blew near the rear of the drivers side (I don't know what cyl. # that is) into the water jacket, five years later the truck is still going. Tb232ci makes a good point about the inherrant flaws in the design, i guess even with high quality gaskets they tend to blow.
From what I hear from other fleet mechanics, its not one of those engines that you can work to death towing and hauling (like the 302 ford, 318 mopar, 5.4 triton, 5.9 cummins etc...).
So, you've changed gaskets on a 6.5L and you've change gaskets in a van, but have you changed 6.5L gaskets in a van?
I've done everything to 6.5's in everything, one of the disadvantages to working at a GM dealership. Ever replace the heads on a 6.5 in a motorhome? Where the engine is right smack in the middle of the chassis, and the motorhome is built around it? That is just plain WRONG!!!A!!
That sounds like torture. Honest to goodness torture.
The worst I ever had to do was heads / gaskets in a van. The engine was overheated really badly (this was pre th 1997 cooling system improvements in the 6.5L) when a rad hose blew up. But that was probably easy compared to the motor home.