# White Smoking Coming From Head - Head Gasket?



## PhxJosh (Jun 27, 2009)

I posted a few weeks ago about some smoke coming from my car, I thought I fixed the problem by tightening down the head, but there is smoke coming from below the head again and now it smells sweet. 

How do I know for sure if it's a blown head gasket, or just a bad thermo leaking coolant onto my engine block? 

I can't really see in past the heat sheild and under the head, any suggestions? 

The car runs fine, but is overheating now.


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## Jopet (Aug 10, 2009)

Hi there. If I read the posts right you have the gxe that is you beater but you need it running? You actually will get better response if you added this question to the original post. Anyway,

You tightened the valve cover and not the head. I don't think you should be tightening heads as there is a specific torque for those screws. If you have a blown cylinder head gasket you will have weak or no heater. I believe you will also have weaker cylinder pressure as well.

For coolant leaks, you will need to visually take a look at all connections. The fluids in the engine have specific colors to distinguish which one is leaking. For areas you cannot see but reach with your hands, get a paper towel and dab it on the area you might have leak. You should see the color of the fluid if its leaking. I believe a coolant leak is also your reason for overheating. If its a blown head gasket, then the leak may be internal and you burning the coolant.


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## PhxJosh (Jun 27, 2009)

Jopet said:


> Hi there. If I read the posts right you have the gxe that is you beater but you need it running? You actually will get better response if you added this question to the original post. Anyway,
> 
> You tightened the valve cover and not the head. I don't think you should be tightening heads as there is a specific torque for those screws. If you have a blown cylinder head gasket you will have weak or no heater. I believe you will also have weaker cylinder pressure as well.
> 
> For coolant leaks, you will need to visually take a look at all connections. The fluids in the engine have specific colors to distinguish which one is leaking. For areas you cannot see but reach with your hands, get a paper towel and dab it on the area you might have leak. You should see the color of the fluid if its leaking. I believe a coolant leak is also your reason for overheating. If its a blown head gasket, then the leak may be internal and you burning the coolant.


I don't really see how it's relevant, but yeah it's just my "other" car for emergency. I plan on selling it once I get it running again. 

And you're right, I tightened the valve cover, which stopped the smoke for about a week. 

I will try to search for leaks today, and see what I can find. Thanks


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## jdg (Aug 27, 2009)

PhxJosh said:


> And you're right, I tightened the valve cover, which stopped the smoke for about a week.


Which won't do anything for any kind of water leak, unless you've got a cracked head and are leaking water into the actual valve cover itself. You can NOT tightened up the head/head-gasket without pulling the cams out. What you did was probably tightened the valve covers which tightened up an oil leak that was running down onto the exhaust manifolds, and now that you've over-tightened the gasket, it's leaking again.
But you said the engine is overheating now. Get a compression gauge and do a compression check. All sorts of ideas for you to try. And a quick search would've gotten most of them. Get a radiator pressure tester (not a radiator cap tester) and pump up the cooling system. Check your exhaust with the engine running and see how much water is coming out of it and what it smells like. Pop the radiator cap, start the engine, and watch the bubbles in the water. Look for an oily smear on the top of the water. Pull the oil dipstick and oil fill cap and look for a milky sludge on either one. Pop the valve covers and look for the same sort of crap. Pull the spark plugs out and see if any of them are 'sparkly clean' compared to the rest of them.


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## PhxJosh (Jun 27, 2009)

jdg said:


> Which won't do anything for any kind of water leak, unless you've got a cracked head and are leaking water into the actual valve cover itself. You can NOT tightened up the head/head-gasket without pulling the cams out. What you did was probably tightened the valve covers which tightened up an oil leak that was running down onto the exhaust manifolds, and now that you've over-tightened the gasket, it's leaking again.
> But you said the engine is overheating now. Get a compression gauge and do a compression check. All sorts of ideas for you to try. And a quick search would've gotten most of them. Get a radiator pressure tester (not a radiator cap tester) and pump up the cooling system. Check your exhaust with the engine running and see how much water is coming out of it and what it smells like. Pop the radiator cap, start the engine, and watch the bubbles in the water. Look for an oily smear on the top of the water. Pull the oil dipstick and oil fill cap and look for a milky sludge on either one. Pop the valve covers and look for the same sort of crap. Pull the spark plugs out and see if any of them are 'sparkly clean' compared to the rest of them.


Thanks for the reply, I did search but found nothing relating to this. I noticed the oil was a little milky today when I checked, so there is coolant in the oil. 

I will go through this list tomorrow morning and see what I can do.


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## jdg (Aug 27, 2009)

PhxJosh said:


> Thanks for the reply, I did search but found nothing relating to this. I noticed the oil was a little milky today when I checked, so there is coolant in the oil.
> 
> I will go through this list tomorrow morning and see what I can do.


A bit of "milk" on the dipstick doesn't ALWAYS mean there's water in the oil. Could be the case that the last few drives weren't long enough to get the engine hot enough to boil off the condensation in the oil. But if the stuff looks like thick chocolate milk, ya, it's done...


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## PhxJosh (Jun 27, 2009)

Good to know, I haven't really ran it for more than a few minutes at a time every few days over the last month, no real driving. I am going over everything in the morning, thanks again.


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