Renze...there is a famed old myth that you should not pour cold water on a hot engine. This comes from people taking a hot glass out of the dish washer and putting cold water in it. This would cause the glass to break. (common sense..glass is thin)
Fact is that engines are cast with hot molten iron and dunked in a pool of cold water in order for them to keep their form. When pouring water from a garden hose onto a 600 degree hot engine...it immediatly boils at about .002 before the surface and evaporates into steam. The water never has the opportunity to reach the surface of the block/head. This is like trying to spit into the sun. The only way that you could crack a block (or heads) were to dunk them in ice cold water without them being in a cast at 600 degrees. The little stream of water coming out of the garden hose does not have the physical capabilities of cracking anything. As a matter of fact, it is used to prevent the engine from siezing by not allowing the rings (which are very thin pieces of metal) from molting into the cylinder walls and the pistons, which after normal cooling would no longer allow the engine to crank because the pistons are now forged to the cylinder walls via the melted rings. At the same time it allows for minimal contraction of the cylinders so that they do not expand to the point of molting into the side of the block. This is much more difficult with engines with cylinder "sleeves". This is best done when the engine is 600 degrees and the head gasket is already blown, allowing water to seep into the cylinder chamber. If I had not used the garden hose method, I would have completely siezed this engine because the temperature was well above the 600 degrees. The reason I know this is because my exhaust pipe/muffler melted completely off of the u-joint at the exhaust manifold.
Common sense would in this case mislead you to believe that pouring small amounts of water would cause a whole thickly cast engine block to crack or a head to warp because of the hot glass with cold water as mentioned above. In my years of building engines and watching them being made...I have not seen a small garden hose ever crack a block or warp a head. Heads are warped because of the excessive heat and not the sudden contraction due to a garden hose (which is physically impossible). The heads expand past their casted dimensions and do not resume back to their orginal form during contraction (either fast or slow...doesn't matter). That is why heads will warp differently depending on the elevation and outside temperature during contraction.
My question to the engine experts: due to the excessive heat (as mentioned above), are there grounds to expect that either the heads now have warped and should I replace the rings? I do not know the size (thickness) and matter (steel/titanium?) of the rings. The engine was saved and only seems to have loss
compression. Is this due to the possibly warped heads or to the rings? How can I test compression to solidify the fact that it is the rings (diesel engines do not have spark plugs to take out in order to test compression)? I want to know BEFORE I break the seal of the
oil pan. BTW, after taking off the heads, all 3 cylinders travel prefectly to TDC/BDC...there is no possibililty of warped cylinders or connecting rods and there is no discoloration (burn marks) or "bumps" inside the cylinder walls.
Thanks,
David