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Somehow, many years ago, I forgot to drain our old VAC, and it froze with water in it. We discovered that it had happened when it wouldn't hold water anymore. There was a split in the bottom of the radiator, which had to be fixed by a radiator shop and there was some water in the oil pan. The tractor would run, but sounded like it might have a blown head gasket. When I took the head off, the whole top of the block was cracked between the cylinders, and we thought the engine was ruined. But I wanted to try to fix it, so I got a new head gasket and heavily coated it with aluminum paint--4 or 5 coats, as an extra sealant. Then I used the gasket to reinstall the head, torqued it carefully, reassembled the rest of it and started it. Without any water in it, I only ran it a couple of minutes, but got the engine fairly warm. It sounded just fine. Then I retorqued the head and finished putting it back together. I filled the cooling system with water, but it still was leaking some into the oil. I added a big package of heavy duty stop leak. The water level stabilized and after an oil change, I no longer saw evidence of moisture in the oil, so I drained the water and replaced it with antifreeze solution. We used that tractor for at least 10 years after that and never had any trouble at all with coolant leaking. And it continued to run OK. I used water to test for leaks, since I was worried about the real bad effects of antifreeze in the oil, but that was in summer when there was no danger of it freezing again. If you have a place to put the Case inside where it could not freeze, I would try draining out all the antifreeze and using water to try to get some stop leak to do its job. Of course, the stop leak only will work if the engine is running. I was totally amazed that our VAC engine would still work OK and that it would continue to work OK for years and years. The cracks between the cylinders were very visible and open in the deck between all of the cylinders. I never did figure out where it was leaking internally, but the stop leak found the opening/crack and blocked it successfully. Maybe I just got lucky, but maybe you might have the same experience. Good luck!
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