#%@!

Well... im pretty sure i know whats wrong with my car. I blew the headgaskets again! I noticed that my exhaust was blowin out some of that infamous white smoke... so its dead. Unless it might be something else (yeah right)... any thoughts? Ive had this prob before so I know how much it costs to fix at mechanic... but how much money and time would it be to fix by myself?

A soon to be retired sc owner

Hmm...I think I mentioned in your overheating post my '89 that blew the head gaskets had similar problems to yours. I did a compression check 3 times and neither time the leak showed up. So, you might want to have a qualified shop do a leak down test as I feel the compression check is ******* worthless for the time required to do it.

Take the radiator cap off when the engine has cooled, start the engine and watch to see if the coolant comes flowing out of the radiator.

Smell the radiator overflow tank to see if it smells like exhaust.

Listen to see if the coolant overflow tank if bubbling like crazy after you shut the car off.

My car showed all those signs and finally one day it kept overheating and the overflow tank pushed all the coolant out a few seconds after the car was started. That was the last time I drove it or started it for that matter.

Well, you might want to double check some stuff first man before completely decide to replace the gaskets. I had something similar happen to me once. During winter time I turned on my car on so it could warm up and then headed back inside the house. When i came back it was making a horrible noise and a big cloud of thick white smoke was all around. I checked the car and nothing seemed wrong...no 'visual' signs of head gasket failure...(oil in cooland or vice versa). I asked some people around and they pretty much said that it was probalby the head gaskets. When I was about to take the engine appart...to supposedly fix the head gasket problem, i found that there were two spark plug wires unplugged and a third one very loose. Moral of the story...check the engine very thoroughly and check for the symptoms of head gasket failure before you determine if they are really bad, because they might not.

Im pretty sure its my headgaskets. Im not getting any heat out of my heater, oil in the coolant, white smoke, car is over heating like crazy even in park. A few other problems are the coolant is leaking from all of the hoses ( hoses are good), no pressure in system, the radiator is not heating up at all , the hose connecting to the thermostat steams at high temp. Can someone tell me how good of a chance I have that its not blown?

Aki