what are the sure fire ways of knowing you have a blown head gasket?

 

Car overheating, lots of white smoke coming out of the exhaust, oil in the coolant or coolant under the oil cap.

 

compression test followed by a leak down test.

oil in cyl/on spark plugs.

 

well, the car is overheating speradically, when im on the highway it seems fine, but when I idle for a long time it becomes real hot. I thought it may be the thermostat, but I went to change that last night, was draining all the coolant, and noticed there wasnt hardly anything to be drained out. Thought to myself that was a little strange. I did the swap myself about 3 1/2 weeks ago, so I know that the coolant and all fluids were completely topped off.

Well, today, when i was driving, I stopped and there was coolant all over by the alternator looking like it was coming from between the head and the block. Not a good sign in my opinion. I havent been able to do a compression test yet, will be doing that tonight once I get off work...

Any opinions would be grateful...thanks in advance.

 

When a car overheats it will usually do it in stop and go traffic as there is alot of stress on the engine at that time. On the highway it will drop back down.

Sounds like it probably is your headgasket.

I was gonna tell you to check your rad cap. Rad caps hold a certain amount of pressure so if the rubber gasket on it gets old and worn the coolant will escape out of there as vapour and you will notice you have little to no coolant left after topping it off and not much driving.

Since you can see the coolant I'm ruling that out but maybe check the hoses to see if there is a crack or cut in them.

 

good idea about checking the hoses...another thing to check on my list...would there be any oil in the coolant I drain out of the radiator?

 

check your fan and make sure it kicks on when the heat rises, if not the water starts to boil and you will lose water because it has to go somewere when it expands. if your car has white smoke coming out of the exhaust its a headgasket. to me it sounds more like the fan wont kick in

 

in the case of the fan not working...how would i get coolant on the outside of the motor?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Sleek98 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">in the case of the fan not working...how would i get coolant on the outside of the motor?</TD></TR></TABLE>when it heats up it expands and goes into the overflow tank. look at the radiator cap, there is a tube on its neck to make sure that it wont get over pressurized cuz then you go BOOM

 

well, I did the compression test and all 4 cylinders are above 180...i just don't know what the deal is, is it possible for a blown head gasket to not have any kind of pressure loss in the cylinders?

 

check if your coolant and oil is mixed