1957 Ford Fairlane

That looks great.

It's also worth mentioning that the boxing in of the speakers looks very promising from a sound point of view.
I glued in a separating baffle, and the PVA sealing seems to have taken a fair bit of the hollowness out. The main help though was two pieces of the sound deadening material stuck to each side!

Here endeth my productive streak.

Back to regular f***ing things up. I was doing so well!

I decided that seeing as tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day I would take it to work, first outing of the year. I got everything off the car, sorted out the inside a bit, fired it up and got out to the driveway. Pumped up the tyres and blew off some of the dust even!

I have had a slow but persistent water leak, the level kept dropping and it took me a while to find it was coming from here, under the thermostat housing.



Dez had mentioned it was a pig to seal, so I had bought a really fancy (expensive, really expensive) gasket, touted to solve miracles



So I thought to myself; this would be a great time to fit the gasket, whip off the thermostat housing, swap gaskets, problem solved. Road test tomorrow!



The hose routing and inline radiator switch mean this is a total ****

Grubby parts and goop to seal





I cleaned up the surfaces slipped in the new gasket, remembered to fit the thermostat, bolted it up (also a massive **** due to zero spanner room) and filled it up.

The water fell out

Naturally I had decided to do coolant system work IN the garage, AGAIN. So I had to deal with two litres of water on the floor. Luckily we pet-sat some hamsters not long ago and had some bedding left over...

Anyway, I can't see why it's falling out, unless I'm missing something?

Thermostat goes into the housing like so?



Then gasket like so, then bolt to inlet manifold?



So basically I rendered my working car completely unusable the night before it's first trip of the year, yay me.

Any ford v8 gurus (metalshapes blackpopracing and anyone else I've missed) please feel free to weigh in!

Yeah that was definitely where it was originally dripping from.
I cleaned up both surfaces when it was apart and the gasket is supposed to tolerate "surface imperfections" but the new leak was a proper stream...
I wondered if I had the thermostat seated badly, i.e. not in the recess, but it was so hard to assemble I couldn't really check.

I've got it apart again, so will check the housing for flatness and try to remove and refit the hoses last

I agree with Dez. get a sheet of sandpaper on a really flat surface and keep rubbing it till its shiny all over.
If you are able to get a very flat sanding block (peice of planed wood) on the engine surface then do that as well.

A thin smear of Hylomar on each surface - let dry before assembly - as well as the gasket 'should' render it leak free.

Bit more, at the 4 o'clock position into the triangle needs to be more flat to not leak.

Over time the pits will gather water and corrode, pushing the seal out.

Would also move to 800 grit from there.

Yes the stat should be slightly proud, the bulge pressed into the metal of the stat frame is springy and designed to make a seal against the block.

I really appreciate everyone's help on this, exactly what a good forum is all about.

I had another sand of the housing, then when I got home this afternoon a lick with some 600 wet and dry. I also gave the inlet manifold the same, using a block of planed wood as suggested.
See the results below, note the inlet pic is blurry which makes it looked really warped.






I reassembled the housing, thermostat and gasket before attaching the hoses and everything felt tight, I couldn't get a finger nail between anything underneath.

I made sure I got the car outside this time! You can see the aftermath of last time here



So the moment of truth! Well, I'm back to a drip which I suppose is some level of success...

Here's a video, apologies for going upside down, only way I could get the camera in close enough.



From that it looks like it's coming from the housing side of the gasket...

Now I can get it all apart quicker, the plan is to take it apart, try without the thermostat and give the manifold a bit more attention while it's in pieces.
I've ordered a new housing from rockauto and some hylomar yesterday, so I can try all of that if the first attempt doesn't work.

I'm happy to drive it as is and top up every journey, so that's a small victory I'm happy to take

Some thoughts to add.

When I did a thermostat change on my mine I ended up with a big leak. The reason was the thermostat dropped out of its groove when I bolted it back. I was more cautious the second time and it sealed fine. I think its easy for this to happen because the mount is vertical and you can't support the thermostat in its groove as the housing goes on.

As mentioned previous the thermostat sits slightly proud of the mating surface but as everyone and their aunt seems to have sanded and filed yours flat maybe you've lost that tolerence?

How tight are you doing the thermostat housing bolts?
In these situations we tend to wrench on the fixing bolts more and more chasing a seal. This can be counter productive and can make the situation worse as it starts to over compress gaskets and warp components making the leak worse.
The factory torque rating on the two housing bolts is only 12-15 ft/lbs.

Hi, mylittletony , sorry for the slow response.

As a test I'd put the neck on the intake without the thermostat.

Not to run it that way, but to check that the surfaces that are supposed to seal do seal ( it looks like your super gasket is reusable).
If there are no leaks, then there is a clearance issue with the thermostat.