I'm not 100% sure but I'm possibly facing a head gasket issue on my 95. First of all..what car is doing. There's 152K miles on car but it's on the 2nd engine. I dont know when it was installed but it's not the original. While driving a 20 mile round trip earlier this week to pick up the "new to us 90", my car started getting warmer than normal. It wasnt in the red but was getting close. It would cool down a tiny bit on the way there but still stayed warmer than I want it to be.

Before leaving there I had an antifreeze jug in the back and we filled the reserve tank back up. There wasn't any water leaking on the drive way. On the way home it cooled back down to normal. The next day I checked in the radiator and it was low. Low to the point that you couldn't see anything in it. It smelled like gas in there to me and it looked nasty on the top. I dont recall the "look" but I wiped it out lol.

So after reading about that one symptom (losing coolant), I just assume a gasket. It's something we've never dealt with.

So upon talking to my husband about that, he would rather put another engine entirely in it. I've looked at the price of a new one and my first instant is hell no! I can't make myself spend twice as much for what we paid for the car on the engine.

Thoughts? Opinions?

 

get yourself a and check to see if you have any combustion gasses in the coolant. (a positive test is defiantly a blown head gasket) as for replacing its really easy with nothing more than some basic hand tools and a torque wrench.

first things first when/if you need to do the heads take a ton of pictures and label all your vac lines (you can label the electrical too but it will fall pretty close to where it goes and no 2 plugs are the same) first thing to do is pull the cooling system and the accessories, than move on to the intake. (it will help A LOT to put a jack under the subframe and unbolt the 6 18mm bolts that hold it in place, than you can lower the engine 6 inches or so and provide a lot of room) after the upper intake is off pull the fuel rail. next is the valve covers (make sure you dont lose the pieces that go under the bolts or youll have leaks when you put it back together) now you can pull the lower intake. next pull the exhaust manifolds. now you can start unbolting the heads. i suggest you get an impact socket for this, ive broken so many sockets trying to unbolt headbolts. once you get the heads off clean them up good (you may also want to bring them to a machine shop to make sure there straight) replace the gaskets and GET NEW HEADBOLTS these bolts are torque to yield, meaning once there tightened down the threads stretch to hold the compression in. when reinstalling the heads you need to use a specific torque method along with a pattern. its first pass 44 ft/lbs than a second pass turning the bolts another 95*

heres the pattern



now just reinstall the exhaust manifolds, lower intake, valve covers, fuel rail, upper intake, the accessories, the coolant system, and the wiring/vac lines.

or if you want you can bring the car up to me and ill do it for you for 350$ parts and labor.

heres some pics when i did my 3.4L

 

do you remember how many miles were on your 3.4 when you took off the manifolds? did any of the bolts break?

 

i did my headgaskets at 115XXX miles and no nothing broke. i had a really nice car, garage kept never seen a winter (it was a NY car so lots of road salt), very low miles, well maintained.

 

So if it's the HG, you would fix it and not replace the whole engine? That's what I'd rather do but when I bought the car going on 2 years ago, I bought it in mind of replacing as much on it as possible because I can never see myself getting rid of it, wrecking it maybe, can never predict that. My husband doesn't think I need to keep putting money in the motor if in the end it was cheaper to put a new or rebuilt one in. I keep telling him the motor in it isn't THAT old because it's not original.

 

i was hoping you would say something closer to my cars mileage, 212,xxx. its got a leaky exhaust manifold gasket and i doubt the bolts will be so nice.

 

if theres nothing wrong with the engine than ya if it were my car id just fix it.

 

Like BC said, it's easier (and cheaper) to just replace the head gaskets than to buy a whole new engine if there's nothing else wrong with the current one which is something you want to check. Check the oil using either dipstick or drain some out and see what it looks like. If it's milky, you defiantly have a blown head gasket and I would get that oil out as fast as possible.

 

defiantly, coolant will destroy the engine.

 

$350 parts and labor for a head gasket? I'd take that deal.