I’m sitting here with my foot burning all to hell. Working on an old truck with one of my sons, we have water in the crankcase oil. I finally got around to getting the old truck in the shop, and poured some old kerosene I had, about a quart, in the crankcase and warmed the engine up for a few minutes. The kerosene, or diesel either one, acts as tarnish remover, and helps clean up sludgy goop from your engine. Speaking of goop, Gunk ( I believe) makes a product that does exactly the same thing. I have used the Gunk product a few times, and guess what? It smells exactly like diesel, but it will cost you 5 bucks or so for a quart!

Anyway, I put the kerosene (kerosene and diesel are closely related, kerosene being a tad more refined) in the crankcase and warmed it up for close to 5 minutes, then turned it off. Time to drain the oily goopy mess. That job done, its time to pull the cylinder head, and look for a blown head gasket, which would be  best case scenario, or a cracked head, being a bad bad scenario, or worst case scenario, we have a cracked block. I figure to start in order of  gasket first, then have the head pressure tested, and if neither one of those is the culprit, the block will be the guilty party by means of elimination.

Time to remove the water hoses from the block to radiator, my son uses a flathead screwdriver to loosen the clamp on the lower radiator hose, and using an old shop rag to shield his hand tugs at the hose. It spews a little bit, nothing too surprising, then Whoosh! It blows loose with a tremendous steam fueled force, the main flow went downward, right on my left foot. Thankfully what little that spewed upwards did no real harm to either of our upper body/facial areas, but my foot took a hot bath. I was hopping on one foot, with my foot burning, all the while looking at my son, trying to determine if he was ok, and the burning in my foot instead of decreasing, kept getting worse. Once I saw he appeared safe, I took the time to yank off my shoe and sock. Safe to say, we are done for the day. Another lesson learned in life, and sadly learned the hard way. I honestly did not think the engine had been run long enough to build up that kind of heat, but I was surely mistaken…

Tomorrow is another day.