Blown head gasket?

[firewalk]

The car has been siting for about 6 weeks. I went to start it to let it run for a while and when I tried to crank the starter would run for a few revolutions and then jam/stop. Tried a bit more but nothing. Checked the battery, surprisingly it was 12.6 volts, still, I connected jump starting cables to see if there was not enoigh juice, and then finally it turned, allthough it seemd to struggle very hard to turn the engine. Eventually it cranked more easily, but I could not start it. It would just keep on cranking.

I phulled the plugs and noticed they were all wet, so I dried them up and put them back in. Now the engine started right away. But I noticed sweet smelling white smoke from the tail pipe, and some strange noises from the air filter! Kind of like the sound of boubles coming up from your kitchen sink when water is pooring out the drain, like “blub…. blub”. I don’t know how to explain it.

I chedked the dipstik, and surely it was milkey white/light brown. Suspecting the head gasket was blown I performed a compression test:

Results of compression test:

Cylinder 1: 165 PSI
Cylinder 2: 162 PSI
Cylinder 3: 165 PSI
Cylinder 4: 165 PSI

Not much to go on there. So I went on to performing a leakdown test.

Results of Leakdown test:

Cylinder 1: 6% loss
Cylinder 2: 1,5% Loss
Cylinder 3: 10% Loss
Cylinder 4: 6% Loss

I was hoping the results would be a bit more definitive. They are all within the 11% margin that the BGB say is “ok”. However, the visible sympthoms is pointing at a headgasket issue.

Sympthoms:

1. White/milkey oil on dipstik. And when draining the oil, it was all just a white mixture.
2. I have white smoke from tailpipe, with a sweet smell.
3. Phulling the plugs after leting it idle a bit, they are all wet exept one (nr 2).
4. This is a weird one, there is no noticable loss of coolant.

I changed the oil and oilfilter just to see what happened, let it idle for 2 min and checked the oil again. it was white/milkey again. Pointing twards a major coolant leak. But still, I can’t see that any water is missing. With the oil beeing contaminated so quickly and the white exhaust I would expect the coolant level to drop considerably.

Some help will be apriciated. I would like to know what kind of test results a blown headgasket would normally give? I’d like to be as sure as possible and get as much info as I can before I start dismantling anything. It’s an MLS head gasket on the car btw.

I have ruled out an internal leakage inside the oil cooler because that would not cause coolant to be combusted. So the head gasket is the only thing I can think of. I guess the top could be warped also, but that should cause the compression and leakdown test to be much worse right?

Any thoughts would be apriciated!

Topic

[Lorrin Barth]

What vehicle are we talking about here?

[firewalk]

It’s a 1993 Toyota MR2 Turbo. (3S-GTE Engine) 🙂

[firewalk]

Attaching a few pictures:

The oil that came out to the right. Normal used oil to the left.

Spark plugs geting wet ater idling:

Spark plugs again:

Picture of piston, lookig down trough the spark plug well. It’s Wet, as you can see.

Attachments:

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[Lorrin Barth]

I agree, that oil looks very coolant contaminated. And the way it cranked makes me think there may have been some coolant in a cylinder. On the other hand, how would coolant stay in the cylinder and not leak through the ring gaps? Good tests on compression and no coolant missing – it is a strange result. Is it possible that you aren’t the only person working on this car?

[firewalk]

I’m the only one driving and working on the car. It’s so weird, the last time I used it it was fine. It sat for 6 weeks and when I went to fire it up this suddenly happened. It’s a turbocharged car, I always thought the boost would kill it, not idling it.. :woohoo:

The results don’t point twards a head gasket issue, I agree. The coolant contaminated oil however does. I guess it could be caused by an internal leak inside the oil cooler, contaminating the oil, but this would not cause wet spark plugs or coolant burning causing white, sweet smelling exhaust from the tail pipe ?

[Lorrin Barth]

It doesn’t take a lot of coolant to make the oil look like that but it doesn’t take a little either. I’d think you would notice the missing coolant. How much does the cooling system hold? I’m guessing quite a bit with the engine in one end and the radiator in the other.

Yeah, there is the oil cooler. I’ve had two cars with the sandwich cooler and while I never had trouble with the cooler on either car I was always a little leery of them. Anyway, are you up North where it got very cold and could maybe have froze it?

[Author]

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