TheGame04

What signs can i look for a blown hg... i have a mr2 turbo and it overheated the other day... and poof antifreeze started steaming up... i let it cool down and i started the engine cold... I put it in gear and when i gave it some fuel the car started bogging down...I think it is a head gasket... but can it be something else...When my honda blew a Head gasket... air was coming out the radiator cap and water was shooting out the exhaust pipe... none of that is happening to my MR2...

Carter

is your oil milky? where did the antifreeze steam up from? check your upper and lower rad. hoses first.

TheGame04

i checked lower radiator hose was leaking
but... i was thinking starting up a cold engine i would still have compression wouldn't i... why would my car bog down

Str8EJ

I think you can observe many different symptoms from a bad head gasket.
You should look for coolant in your oil, and oil in your coolant.
You should monitor the oil or coolant levels, looking for drops over short periods of time.
You should look for a cloudy deposit under your oil cap, radiator cap, radiator overflow bottle.
Whitish smoke from your exhaust could also mean you're burning coolant.
Take out your plugs and see if you notice anything unusual on the tips.
Before you screw them back in, shine a flashlight down in to each combustion chamber. Look for fluids.
You can also buy a kit from NAPA which will let you test your fluids for evidence of oil/coolant co-mingling.
If you have coolant or oil on your piston tops and you're trying to get accurate compression numbers, it won't happen. The fluids will help seal the rings against the cylinders.

Most importantly, you should try and diagnose why your head gasket blew in the first place. It can happen for many different reasons and not all of them are catastrophic. In fact, it's usually sort of a big sign that something is wrong. If your h/g is blown, and you continue to drive on it, you'll do more serious damage which will likely trash the motor entirely.

From first hand experience I can tell you - if you've lost power, you're losing coolant and/or oil and you have whitish smoke from your exhaust - your head gasket is toast.

drft240

Could be a thermostat stuck closed but most likely a hg. Like everyone else said check oil in coolant and coolant in oil first. What ever you do I wouldnt drive it until you figure out what it is first.

HatefulMechanic

why the fuck does everyone say a blown headgasket will send coolant into the oil?


of the hundreds of them i have done, only about ten have had that situation.


the engine wont run right till the cooling system is full (when the CTS has no coolant on it, the ECM thinks its uber cold, and will richen the fuck out of the mixture and cause problems like he described)

fix the coolant leak, bleed the system, and see what happens. those engines have very tough head gaskets, and i have rarely seen them pop.

onlyawd

do what he sed. fix the leek and run the car check the upper and lower coolant line. make sure thay both get hot and drive the car. if it over hets and the coolint is gone (and not still leeking) its the hg good luck

TheDarkMajestic

Wow , maybe you should of bought my car now , you sure wouldn't of had this problem. Well sure sounds like you got a hell of a deal from northern virginia. hahahahahahaha

Shive

It may not be a HG problem. Like it was stated, check the oil tto see if its got any antifreeze in it and also check all of your ignition components. They can be a big culprit when it comes to bogging like that.


And which one from Nova is this? The blue one?