zombiereaper205

OK well my car has white smoke coming out of the exhaust indicating that coolant is mixing in the cylinder head and i want to replace the gaskets. i talked to a few guys and they said that to remove the cylinder heads i would have to disassemble them just to get to the gaskets, is there anyway i could get to the gaskets without disassembling the heads cause i don't wana mess stuff up too bad?

Rolling Thunder

well hey no worries its really not all that bad. You see you do have to loosen up the rocker arms to get to some of the head bolts but you dont really need to dissassemble the heads. Befor you go through this though make sure you actually have a head gasket leak and read up on how to do it because theres alot of little details like when dissasembleing them the bolts have to be loosened in the opposite order that there torqured when reassembleing them to prevent warping the heads and using thread sealer on the head bolts that are easily over looked if this is your first head gasket job.

jv9999

iTrader: (1)

This is a job you may want to pay someone else to do if you don't have a lot of wrenching experience. There's a lot of stuff that has to come out and there's not a lot of room in a V8 third gen.

AlkyIROC

It's not a quick or easy job. The top of the engine needs to come off to change head gaskets. Pull the intake, remove the exhaust manifolds, remove the heads is the easiest description but is far from a total description of how to pull the heads to change the head gaskets.

Viprklr

iTrader: (5)

You need to do a leakdown test to be 100% positive if it's a head gasket leak.

zombiereaper205

i was doing some extreme testing to make sure it was coolent that was burning off in the heads and after a few runs i have good news, No coolent burning but still white smoke it that also a sign of oil burn off ? or just another sighn that i still need to get the gaskets changed ? my last question is that is it urgent to get fixed or can i sit on it till i get some more cash up ? sry for all the questions but i hate to be the horses rear end. thanks for all your input

_87GTA_

Does it smoke all the time, or only at idle, under load, WoT? There are all kinds of quick fix remedies you could try to delay the change of a head gasket. Everything from thicker oil, to oil additives. How do the plugs look? Can you tell if it's oil burning, does it smell like it? Is it a large amount of smoke, or just a small amount at certain times?

Changing a head gasket is an advanced procedure. Disassembly is fairly easy, but there are a lot of things that have to be accomplished absolutely perfect on re-assembly or you end up with more problems than you started with. I would certainly pay someone to do it, if you aren't an experienced mechanic. This way, you also have someone to fall back on if it fails soon after replacement.

zombiereaper205

it smokes while im hitting the gas, it doesa lil while idle, but you know what i havent checked the spark plugs since i got the car from a kid these are one of the first things i should have done. does the spark pluge have an effect ? i dont know how it smells right now i have a cold and when i drive its a big cloud of smoke

Rolling Thunder

This may sound stupid so please dont be insulted but are you sure its not just from the weather? Being that its winter and all as steam evaporates out of the exhaust it sill show up as white smoke and in the cold weather especially on cars with glasspacks and magnaflow style mufflers that just have that sound deadening material inside they can do some strange things. Smoke from oil will hang in the air for a LONG time and have a blueish tint to it. I would run a compression test or better yet a leakdown test also my personal favorite hook up a vacuum guage. A vaccume guage will detect a very wide variety of problems and its very easy to use plus it only costs $10-$20 if you dont have one.

ljnowell

Oil additives and thicker oil wont keep coolant out ofthe cylinders. He needs to do a compression test to verify the blown head gasket.

zombiereaper205

ok thanks guys ima put her in the shop tomm, i just took her out for a drive and im getting a constant cloud of black and white smoke hopefully it isint getting too bad. thanks for all the help

_87GTA_

@LJ - Correct, I was thinking about the oil coming past the rings, since he said that he has done "extreme" testing to eliminate the fact that it could be coolant.

zombiereaper205

to clarify i say "extreme" as in ran it harder than i usally would and this time i had a spotter cause black smoke is hard to see with tinted windows lol.