okay, i thought i had a small leak in the headgasket somewhere, but wasn't really sure.

car wasn't overheating, but i'd still get some white smoke out the exhaust. no oil in the coolant, no coolant in the oil, but saw a very light film of what looked to be the milky stuff under the oil cap.

when driving the car, the smoke would go away. at idle on startup, the car would smoke a little, then go away, then smoke a little. then you could see a little water/coolant start to come out the exhaust pipe. at startup, the car would idle kinda ugly, but once a little warm, it would start to idle fine. car drove like nothing was wrong with it the one time i drove it after seeing the smoke out the exhaust. the smoke was think, pretty clear and most of it would come out at start up, like kinda a big puff, then just start to puff out until it faded away for a bit.

i noticed on one of the spark plugs, the one closes to the distributor, the tip was wet. it wasn't oil either, so i figured it was coolant. the other spark plugs looked fine on the tips, not wet. so i figured it was the small leak from the HG. i started to take things apart, i got to taking off the intake manifold tonight and when i took it off, i noticed the part of the gasket closest to the distributor was wet and so was some of the the rest of the gasket on the bottom. this is the part of the gasket where the water line comes out the intake manifold. there is a bolt right there by the water line and i remembered when i was taking off the IM, i didn't take a bolt off from there, so i guess one was never put on, don't know. i put all the bolts aside that i took off from the IM, so i counted how many i took off before i took the intake manifold off and there was only 9 bolts, but there were ten places on the IM that needed bolts put on.

so ..... do you think that since that one bolt was missing, the gasket could have eventually gotten weak or something at that spot and water started seeping into the the to that closest cyl? which would have caused the white smoke, the wet plug on that cyl, and the small film of milky looking stuff under the oil cap, in which the oil cap is right above the cyl. where the water could have been seeping into.

i just don't want to continue to take the head off if it was coolant getting in throught the intake manifold gasket.

 

also:

i looked all around the head and i don't see any signs of coolant leaking out or oil anywhere around the head.

don't know if it really matters, but my compression was 210 across

 

It's the head gasket, and might want to do a leak down test.

 

bad HG with clean coolant and oil?

i'm leaning more towards the coolant getting in through the intake manifold now that i saw the intake manifold gasket being wet and the bolt missing.

 

Why don't you try and get a bolt and put there and then see what happens.

I know there is a coolent holes at that end of the head, where the INTAKE MANIFOLD goes at.

 

yes, there is a possibility that the coolant can be coming from the IM.

if that gasket is bad, then coolant is seeping through the intake manifold, where else would the coolant go, into the head as the air is being sucked in.

you don't seem to have the symptoms of a blown headgasket, just a little coolant getting in somehow. with the IM gasket being wet and just the #4 cyl spark plug being a little wet, i bet its coming from the IM.

Change the IM gasket and the spark plugs and see what happens.