Got them Head off, Now what...?

[mixaomode]

I am so excited that I found this group...so much info and so many people appreciative of our Jeeps...the "Libertys." My Liberty 2008 has about 180 thousand miles has always been dependable till last summer, when trans fluid was leaking, which I immediately fixed (found out that the trans fluid is on the same rad as ac, so I just by passed it, bought a big transmission radiator and installed it. BUT then it started to overheat...I did so many things to find out the cause, drove it a little, then parked for the winter. By the way coolant would mysteriously disappear. It waited all winter in the garage. Anyway... when I took the heads off, this is what I found. I see a sparkplug exploded and pieces of it scratched the head and cylinder, but I am thinking machining the head will do, those scratches are not very deep. The engine still turns and it ran (rough). I did a compression test last year before parking and it passed. Also At that time I did not notice bad spark plug, must have happened after I checked. I think the fan stopped working which caused all of this. After cleaning out the pool of water in that cylinder I noticed some scratches on the top of the cylinder. I don't mind pulling the whole engine out, but at this point I feel cleaning this up, a new head gasket + machining the heads will do...Am I on the right track here?

 

[DadOSix]

Looks like you are on the right track.

That pool of coolant says bad head gasket to me.

You will want to have the heads checked / gone over by a machine shop.

The plug that blew the ceramic out was most likely cracked. That ceramic might do some surface damage, but not enough to affect significantly. Take that with a grain of salt. If a bit lodged in the ring and scored that cylinder, it is much more work.

Your machine shop can better advise.