Check HG at 175,000 km???

Check HG at 175,000 km???

All this talk about head gaskets blowing is making me nervous. My 93 stock SC has (I believe) the original head gaskets and the motor has about 175000 km (I bought her at 98000km). I don't seem to have any problems with the car. Should I go somewhere and have them checked out/replaced? If so do you guys know of a place around the GTA I can go where my car will get the right attention? Other than FORD of course.

Re: Check HG at 175,000 km???

176,000km on the Cougar and so far so good. There really isn't much anyone can check in terms of impending HG failure. If your not loosing coolant, no wild temperature fluctuations, no cooalnt showing up in your oil or oil in your overflow, and if you don't have that sickening sweet smell of anitfreeze in your exhaust...then not much you can do.
Sean had absolutley no symptoms whatsoever ahead of time, and they just up and went.

Re: Check HG at 175,000 km???

The only thing I would suggest is put the car up on a hoist and check all around the heads where they meet the block,now espeacially around the drivers side middle and last cylinder,due to the fact this is where they are known to fail first,but I was lucky when the mechanic put my car up on the hoist he saw antifreeze slightly dripping out between the head and block onto the manifolds. If your lucky your antifreeze will leak toward the manifolds instead of going towards the piston.

My STRONG recomendation for those who change head gaskets is to order head studs!!!! If you dont,make sure you order new torque to yield bolts,and if you dont,,well get used to doing them becase you'll be doing them again shortly.

Re: Check HG at 175,000 km???

I have talked to many people regarding the head gaskets on these cars and they say that usually the head gaskets go around 80K or so. Not sure how true this is but you could be the one of the lucky ones where you never have a HG failure. I know when i bought my SC, i did them at 190K and they had most definitley been done before because they were put on backwards which in turn blocked off one of the cooling ports to the head which also caused the head to crack...if I could only find that moron who did them last!!!