Sons new car overheats

[TX82FIAT]

Sorry to hear about the leak. Just had the same thing and replaced the valve and heater core. Only the Valve was bad but I figured the car was sitting for a long period before I purchased, so while i was down there it made sence to replace the core as well. Had to pull up the carpet because of the coolant leak from the valve and then had to rust treat and do the floors in POR15.

There is a coolant passage that runs very, very close to the #4 fire ring as part of the head design, I have seen gasket failure and port corrosion in this area. In fact, this is where my head gasket blew about a year ago. I had to replace the head. Sorry, I don't have any pictures for comparison. Did you take any pictures of the top of your block with gasket on and gasket off to show folks. There are some skilled people that have seen a lot of heads and can give clues based on a picture of the head. You have outlined appropriate areas of concern. If it is a problem with the head it should continually get worse as you drive the car.

[mgbgtn]

After the car has had a couple of heat cycles, you should retorque the head bolts.Just back each one of 1/4 turn and retorque in the proper sequence used to torque the bolts the first time.

[So Cal Mark]

if water was getting into a cylinder, the piston will be very clean on top.

[TimpanogosSlim]

It could stand to be pointed out at this time that usb borescopes are available from chinese ebay vendors for <$20 if you have a couple-three weeks to wait around for it to show up. Windows and linux recognize them as a standard webcam type device. They usually have some LED lighting on the business end.

Makes it easy to pull off the carburetor and fish the thing down into the combustion chambers.

[So Cal Mark]

pretty tough to get the boroscope past the valves if you put it down the intake runner