I'm pretty certain mine is fine, but I'm just wanting to make sure...

When I drained the coolant out of my block last weekend to change my water pump, it looked kinda dark. I don't think it was oil, it was probably just dirty, and also because I was looking at it in a bright yellow drain pan, but anyway, what would be symptoms of a blown head gasket besides oil in the coolant? My car runs fine, idles solidly at 750 rpm, acclerates smoothly (especially now that I finally got some axles that don't vibrate), does not consume a drop of oil that I can tell on the dipstick, average 32-34 mpg, regularly get 350-370 miles or more per tank, and all 4 plugs had a normal grayish appearance when I took them out and replaced them last weekend. So what do you think, should I worry about a blown headgasket? Would it cause any of those above things I listed to suffer, like performance or fuel economy?

 

The car would run shitty and you would see an abundance of white smoke from the exhaust. The dark coolent is probably just crap from your radiator. Not to worry.

 

yeah if you had oil in ur coolant, u'd know it. don't worry too much just yet. if you really wanna be safe do a leak down test.

 

Patrick... I just blew my own head gasket about a week or two ago (not sure exactly when it happened) and I realized it this last Thursday. But, you KNEW something was wrong - from the white smoke from the exhaust, the coolant puddling in the exhaust tip ( ), crappy idle, and rough acceleration...

You can do a leakdown test and/or a compression test to be sure. A compression test was all I needed to be sure mine blew ... 30, 30, 120, 150 .

 

If you had a blown or leaking head gasket you would know it. Either oil in your coolant, coolant in your oil, burning coolant, leaking oil on the outside of the block, overheating. Probably a few other symptoms but probably nothing you just explained.

 

you wouldn't be able to drive for more than 15-20 min TOPS. Your car would overheat severly. I toasted the block in my parents' 88 caravan with a blown head gasket just drivin 3 miles from work to home.

 

On a road trip me and a friend blew the headgasket on his Jeep. We knew it right away, we were just hoping we could make it to a rest stop or something. The temp was in the red the whole time, white smoke was coming out of the tail pipe and under the hood, and it lost all performance. It only took a short while for it to go from "just a lil hot" to completely killing the car.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Sack Master &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If you had a blown or leaking head gasket you would know it. Either oil in your coolant, coolant in your oil, burning coolant, leaking oil on the outside of the block, overheating.</TD></TR></TABLE>


def. what this guy said

 

not to steal ur thread or anything patrick, but now i'm a little concerned, u said ur spark plugs were grayish, mine are brownish not too light and not too dark, just brown, so is there something wrong with my engine?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vidanator &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">not to steal ur thread or anything patrick, but now i'm a little concerned, u said ur spark plugs were grayish, mine are brownish not too light and not too dark, just brown, so is there something wrong with my engine?</TD></TR></TABLE>

No, golden brown plugs are normal.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vidanator &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">not to steal ur thread or anything patrick, but now i'm a little concerned, u said ur spark plugs were grayish, mine are brownish not too light and not too dark, just brown, so is there something wrong with my engine?</TD></TR></TABLE>

well yeah, brownish with maybe a little gray... all 4 of my plugs looked normal according to the pics in the back of the Haynes manual.

Sweet, nothing wrong with my car, gotta love Hondas.

About that Jeep, it didn't warp the block or heads did it (driving it in the red zone)?

 

Pistons were scorched pretty bad, the 1-2 cylinders(it's an I6) were starved for oil and it got roughed up pretty badly. Ended up just replacing the block/bottom end because there was a spare one laying around.

it was a jeep w/ 130,000 violent miles, it was time lol