Ok, I had been having a problem with pinging anywhere past half throttle for a long time now and basically stopped it by retarding timing...

Yesterday I ran the car down the road and back and when i turned off the car i noticed coolant spewing out of the overflow resevoir.

I let the car cool down a little, opened the cap to the radiator and noticed it was full of white foam. Put the cap back on felt the upper hose while running and it was pulsing somewhat.

I am getting no smoke out the back, some of the plugs show signs of running lean.

How can i determine if i actually have a blown head gasket or not, compression test seem normal, and if i do have a blown head gasket how do i determine which cylinders are affected.

BTW 88 firebird 350 swap tbi

 

Pressure test the cooling system. This happened to a buddy's car, he blew a headgasket, and it was blowing compression out into the cooling system. There's also some type of way to test the cooling system for exhaust gas.

 

I did do somewhat of a pressure test, how much psi do you normally have do pump into the cooling system to see if you're leaking?

 

just fill the radiator,leave the cap off, start the car and look for lots of bubbles coming to the radiator neck.
A quick way to test which cylinder it is would be to remove the spark plugs, get an air adaptor that screws into the plug hole, put compressed air into the cylinder (make sure the valves are closed for the one beig tested) and watch for the bubbles in the radiator again. (I just went through this 6 months ago)

 

thanks guys

 

run a compression test along with testing the cooling system

 

I took the suspected head off and took some pics, please tell me what this looks like to you guys...

 

Yep, you blew the end of the head gasket.