Head Gasket? Inlet Manifold Gasket ? which one ?

[Hydrobollox]

Decided to give my a car a service prior going down south for the weekend. Including flushing out radiator and adding new coolant. Drive down south fine, spent the weekend driving around until on the way back, I lost coolant car overheated etc. Managed to crawl it into town where a local mechanic reckons it was the head. Threw some stop leak in the car which got me home. Took it to Nat rad to get them to check it out and from their testing they are saying im still getting water coming out the exhaust. I'm not using any oil, theres no water in my oil, a few small droplets of oil in the radiator and the overfill bottle was pretty sludgey.

Whats the best course of action to take ? From what i hear it more likely to be the inlet manifold gasket rather than the head or head gasket ? Just after some opinions on which way to go, before i start ripping off heads and so forth.

Thanks

[ari666]

i am having the same fun with mine ATM. the answer is how long is a piece of string?

there are so many different aspects to your cooling system it isnt funny, and its so hit and miss. you could pressure test it, find out there is a leak in the system, go and replace the head gasket and it turns out to be a degraded heater hose. my car sounds very similar to yours. not leaking (visibly). no milky stuff in the oil, no oil in the water.

the process of elimination so far on mine has been

1. radiator cap
2. hoses and hose clamps
3. thermostat
4. water pump
5. unblock radiator

so far it hasnt been fixed. so now i am up to the 'taking off my heads and replacing head gaskets' stage, which is not fun.
my advice would be to do the cheapest option first. so if you are committed to either inlet gasket or head, i would say inlet.

[chez00]

Put a pressure tester on the cooling system and see where the coolant is leaking from.

[1SIKR8]

mate if shes over heated theres a good chance your heads way be warped =( i'd check to make sure they arn't ... oil in coolent can only really happen in the head .. so i'd really go there first mate .. it may be going big first but ... its a 90% chance thats where your problem is .... when you say water out the exhaust ... what do u mean ? like when u drive water sometimes come out or wha ? ....

[Hydrobollox]

Thanks for the replies guys.

1FATVT - When the guys at natrad tested the system (so i could see if the stop leak actually fixed the problem...) they let it run for quite a while then took it for a drive, came back and they said to me there is water coming from the exhaust. While I didnt get the time that day to check exactly what was going on myself I can only go on what they said. When i get back from work next week I might have another look and see.

But yeh with everything else, the radiator is clean, radiator cap is good,hoses and clamps are fine. When it initially happened there was some serious bubbling in the radiator when we checked it, I dont know if its a sure sign of head gasket, head or intake gasket. Either way though I might just bite the bullet replace both gaskets and get the heads pressure tested and while I'm there get em serviced.

Just in regards to the head gasket I had a quick look on pricing. Whats the difference in getting just the left and right gasket in regards to the head gasket "kit" does anyone know what comes in the kit as the dude in coventrys had no idea.

[vxcalais_01]

You only do 2 at a time, not just one. We had this conversation on here not too long ago, where someone did the same thing. After all that work, it turned out the other head gasket was leaking as well. Some workshops do the wand test where they search for exhaust gas into the radiator. Which stop leak did you use ? Did you try the Bars stop leak ? Chuck it back in and see how it goes. It might seal some of the leaks. Water leak to intake area, the product clots and dries to seal, water into combustion chamber, product chars and seals it. It does work on some leaks, i use the Holden Pellets as a preventative, same stuff that is in the Bars Stop leak.

You will need a gasket kit, with head gaskets plus intake gasket. Try to get some heads from the wreckers if you don't want to wait, while you send your ones off to get cleaned and decked.

[TI3VOM]

I put my car into Nat Rad in Fyshwick and there was a lot of bubbles in my radiator the guy couldn't diagnose the problem but if the car does not overheat within a few kilometers it may not be the head gasket (most likely not) with that said my water pump shat it's self plus the heater core check to see it your car has a weird smell when the heater is on something like coolant or cat piss also check the front of the water pump for leaks + check underneath your bonnet as water from the water pump will usually get onto the drive belt and fly up there and leave a white mark.

[Hydrobollox]

I'm pretty sure the brand of stop leak I used was CarGo Seal up. Which was only used to get me home again. I'd rather find the problem and fix it properly rather than using stop leak. If I do take the heads off I will be doing both for sure. But to explain what I meant by the gaskets was, to buy a left and a right gasket it was going to cost me about $150 the supposed "kit" you could buy was $270 a hell of a lot more. Which just made me wonder what other gaskets would you get with it.. and if I only do the heads I can't imagine what other gaskets I would need.

[vxcalais_01]

Head gaskets, intake manifold gasket, for certain, might have thermostat housing gasket, rocker cover gaskets etc.

[0081]

if you taking the heads off you should change

* There will be 4 gaskets in the lower intake manifold
* 2 head gaskets
* 8 head bolts, the upper and lower ones are different sizes
* 12 rocker bolts
* any sealents and lock tight you need and im unsure about the exhaust gaskets

[chrisdoesitbetter]

as mentioned above, do a cooling system pressure test, then a compression test. compression test will show if its the head and the cooling system test will show if its the inlet manifold. if the inlet manifold was that far gone, you would have alot of condensation (white,sweet smelling smoke) and if your head gasket was gone you may have bubbles in the coolant and a noticable drop in power along with crap idle etc.

happy wrenching