To make a long story short I got a great deal on another fd, however the retard that put it together had no idea what he was doing. regardless, I pulled the motor out so I could make sure that the busted LIM hadn't dropped some pieces into the ports. Well when I pulled the exhaust manifold off there was a puddle of bright green undeluted coolant.
Now I'm wondering if there is a way to check the condition of the motor without tareing it apart. When I rotate it by hand I get an even strong wind on all faces (didn't bother using a compression checker since It wouldn't read correctly by turning by hand anyways). I'm wondering if the water pooled up from a waterjacket crack or from an outside source. The coolant didn't look deluted with oil at all, and it was a pretty big deep puddle, which kinda makes me think it got there some other way when the guy half assed put it back together.
I was hoping the motor would still be in good condition but guessed it wouldn't, and now I'm debating if I should tare it apart and rebuild it, or if I can find out if it's good enough to run till this winter (original plan for rebuild was this winter, so I could have some summer seat time).

 

If everything is still on the engine, you can/should pressure test the cooling system. If a coolant o-ring is leaking, that will show it.

 

well the engine is out and nothing is hooked up only thing still on the motor is the front cover with all the pullys and alternator. I've never tested a motor for a bad coolant ring, I'll do a search in a sec but how is that done... do you just put coolant through the system and see if it poors out the exhaust?

 

Well, it's not really like that. The coolant would go into the combustion chamber. If you crank the engine over, some would probably go into the exhaust ports. I suppose you could block off the coolant passages and then pressure test the system somehow out of the car. You might PM "RotaryResurrection" and see if he has any ideas.

Most likely, if there was coolant in the exhaust ports, it got there by way of the combustion chamber (i.e. damaged coolant o-ring).

 

yea I figured so much, I think there's a way to pressure test a bare block... right now I'm kinda iffy on doing it... I may just rebuild it now, even though I didn't really budget a rebuild this early in the year. Thanks for the help though.