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Old 07-14-2005, 06:51 PM
63pig 63pig is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Greenwood, Nova Scotia, Canada
Posts: 72
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I have some experience with blown headgaskets, having just done the same thing to my 400 about 3 weeks ago.

Normally, when you blow a head gasket, the first clue is that your car runs like its bogged down, loses a great deal of its power, and starts to spew white smoke (its more like thick steam and smells sweet of coolant) out of the exhaust as the coolant is getting into the cylinders. Your Temp guage will start to rise as you car starts to eat the coolant and at that point its time to call the tow truck.

A quick way to isolate the cylinder(s) affected is to pull the spark plugs...if one plug looks obviously cleaner than the rest, or it has white powder on it or anti-freeze...then you can likely determine the cylinder.

Budget is everything. I decided to pull my engine and rebuild it completely, only because it was the right time for me. I could have simply pulled the heads and replaced the gaskets, but I did not know the history of repairs to the engine, and opted for the complete rebuild.

In your case, if the motor is cooked, it may be cheaper to replace the engine with a good used one. Of course, if its the original motor and the car is in great shape, then I'd keep and rebuild the original.

Good Luck with it!