so my friend brought me his LS to work on.. he said it was running funny and constantly overheating and losing coolant... he couldn't give me many details of his symptoms besides that... so im thinking it might be a head gasket... i pulled all the plugs except 1 because its stuck inside the head because a wire melted inside lol... anyways, i don't see coolant inside the combustion chamber (looking through the spark plug tubes) on the first 3 cylinders because i can;t access the 4th at this time... anyways, so now the car won't even turn over... luckily it made it to my house... im thinking its distributor related, but the over heating would still be an issue... the oil looks fine... not sure what the problem is... i assumed a head gasket at first because he said he doesn't see any coolant leaking anywhere it just disappears... maybe a small leak in the head gasket, or the heater core? well any info will be appreciated if someone has had a similar issue... i will be renting a radiator pressure tester tomorrow to see if i can find the leak...

 

you wouldnt be able to see coolant on your cylinders by looking through the spark plug tubes. if it was that severe already then yeah theres a problem. check for spark and fuel since the car is dead and make sure that those arent causing the car not to start. it also elminates things down. and i would also do a compression test and a leakdown test. if he's loosing coolant without any visible notices then most likely he is burning coolant, maybe not alot but a little at a time. also check his coolant level.

 

got air, fuel, and spark... gonna go ahead and do the headgasket and check the head out as well... when i look thru the spark plug hols, cyl 4 is alot cleaner than the rest which means water is gettin in... the car overheated numerous times so might be some problems with the head as well...

 

do yourself a favor when you do that head gasket and have the head resurfaced.