Valve Cover Gasket Replacement Turns into Nightmare

What are the odds my engine is toast?

I made the mistake of crossing my coolant line with my vacuum line on the IAC under the throttle body. Tore down my upper intake and yep... coolant puddled in the lower plenum and some in the pistons.

I am putting off the rest until tomorrow, but it spun freely with no plugs and I didn't hear loud knocking. Really hoping it didn't suck in enough water to bend my rods, though it did idle rough and stall. (Then cranked over after)

 

You're ok, it takes a lot of water to wreck an engine, usually its being forced in. Just crank the engine with no plugs, blow it all out, do an oil change and you're good.

 

Yikes! Only one way to find out. Put it back together and start it.

 

Yep, I know this is the real answer. I was just trying to make myself feel better until I know for sure haha.
I will report back tomorrow with my findings.

Hopefully for anyone doing this job in the future, they don't rush in the home stretch of getting it all back together and do this.

 

you'll be fine.

 

I need to replace the VCGs as well. They were done once before (not by me) back in 2014. Of course they're leaking again. I'm at the tail end of swapping to 4WD and about to put the transmission back in. I considered doing the valve cover gaskets myself since I am doing so much work now but I think I'll put it off for a little bit longer until I wrap this current project. Don't want to rush with too many items on the to-do list and up because I got ahead of myself.

Hope it works out for you.

 

It's likely fine, if you wanna be Uber safe, take the plugs out and crank it to get all the water out.

 

So as an update, all seems well with my 3.4! I honestly think it runs better now than when before I tore it down, though I attribute that to new spark plugs replacing ones that had at least 60k miles on them.

What I did to correct it is removed and dried the intake, and vacuumed the standing coolant out of each cylinder. This was achieved by taping small diameter fuel line to a shop vac hose and fishing it through the spark plug hole. Simply cranking it over wasn't enough to expel the coolant out through the spark plug tubes.

I would have been seriously upset had I ruined a 5VZ with 135k miles.

 

Did it steam a lot when you first fired it up? Some of the coolant/water must have gotten into the catalytic converters. Glad you got it fixed!