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It must be something in the air or water, as there seems to be quite a bit of head gasket / coolant leak issues of late.
It all started with a cylinder 5 mis-fire that cropped up a few days ago. Replaced the coil pack, and while the code (for now) seems to have disappeared, I noticed that my resevoir bottle was a tad low. By ‘a tad low’ I mean bone dry. Coolant in the radiator, so no overheating.
The previous owner had, I believed, put stop-leak through it as there was this brown goop caked to the bottom of the radiator cap. Not a lot, as I’d flushed it out several times since getting the truck, but enough to be noticed.
The oil was fine, so the coolant wasn’t going into the lubrication system.
Decided to not let up on this… I HATE not knowing how my fluids left my truck! Went to a local auto parts store and rented the block tester. The results were… inconclusive. The fluid didn’t turn that neon-yellow I’ve seen in some of the videos. It DID turn from Smurf-blue to a jade color with a smidge of a yellow tint. (No, I didn’t suck up any coolant. Made that mistake before!)
I don’t really care for ambiguity, so I started yanking spark plugs. Here, I found something interesting.
Ford orders it’s plugs with 1-3 on the passenger side of the engine and 4-6 on the driver’s side.
ALL plugs on the passenger side had a clean white insulator base (where the electrode comes out) and only a light dusting on the ground electrode.
The passenger side is where the ‘magic’ seemed to happen. Each of them had a reddish powder deposited on the ceramic base and both the firing electrode as well as ground. It seemed to be worse on plug 5, which coincidentally is the same cylinder as had the mis-fire originally.
I’d kinda like a logic check, here, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.
Assumptions of mine that may be faulty:
1) The head gasket can fail in such a way as to leak into the cylinder and not the oil.
2) Burning coolant will account for that powdery coating on plugs 4-6.
3) The leak can be small enough to not blow volumes of white smoke out the back.
4) The code induced by the coolant leak (theoretically) could be tended to temporarily by the introduction of a much stronger spark. The original coil pack WAS 14 years old, after all.Does that make sense? Are my assumptions plausible, or are they off-base?
If they’re not off-base, then I’ve got to decide if I want to have the heads done, replace the engine with a Jasper rebuilt, seeing as the engine currently has over 170k on the clock… or if it’s time to trade it in on something a little less long in the tooth.
Anyone have any thoughts on the above?
Cheers!
-Hinoki
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Test your leak fist whit a oil engine dye. Then you will pin point the leak where is come from.
Misfire can occur whit a leak. The coolant soak the spar-plug and crate no spark time to time.And also, whit this car symptoms is look like a leaking head gasket.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDtjlT6LsD4[/video]
A must have tool to find cylinder leak and val leak
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgrfT0LFMhc[/video]
You might also synchronism you valve spring in the same time after 140 000 Kilometer
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7wI4EtZSaA[/video][video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WHBskK_F3o[/video]
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEJ51BJ23yk[/video]
Well, it’s confirmed to be a head gasket leak.
The compression is low in 4 and 5. The leak isn’t that bad now, but it’s getting worse. Fairly sure there’s a bad valve in there somewhere, too.
Looked into machine shops and at least here, it costs almost as much to machine it down as it does to REPLACE the heads. Go figure.
Anyway, it’s off to the shop. I know my limits, and as this is my only transportation.. and thus can’t afford to have it down several days whilst I muddle my way through the process, I’ll let the shop do it. New heads, new head gaskets, and since the exhaust manifolds are rusted and corroded on, those might get replaced too if a few studs snap.
Peace, all… I’ll get dirty on the next project that comes up. This one is outta my league.. for now.
-Hinoki
Thank you for the update ! 🙂
By the way, It’s less expensive to repair then buy a brand new car and also you know your car It’s fixed not true in second hand car.Yeah. was thinking about getting something that wasn’t a hobby and primary transportation in the same package. 😉
The truck, like me, is old, battered, with a few chunks taken out of it for good measure. With a bit of maintenance, we’ll both make it around the block a few more times.
The truck heads to the shop on Friday, ought to have it back by Sunday afternoon. Here’s hoping things go smoothly and we don’t find any gremlins along the way.
Cheers!
-Hinoki
Honestly I don’t agree with your diagnosis. A powdery substance on spark plugs usually indicates oil fouling caused by combustion leakage or stuck oil control rings. The plugs on a cylinder that has a bad head gasket are clean as can be. In fact, they look too clean. The water has a cleaning effect inside the cylinder. You would also notice on an engine with a head gasket failure that the cylinder itself is free of carbon and sticks out like a sore thumb.
The low compression is probably due to worn rings NOT a head gasket failure. To be honest a head gasket problem would be easier to deal with. The only real way to know is to do a leak down test. With this test you can put this issue to bed.
Leak down testing
Finding TDC
I don’t know what could be causing your problem but I do sugget that if you have one of those clicking type radiator/coolant reservoir caps THROW IT AWAY! They are junk and most of the time don’t hold any pressure, get a $5 replacement from any autoparts store.
As a side note, that could also cause a loss of coolant.
Oscar.
You know after rereading your post I’m going to revise my statement. If the block tester changers color at ALL it usually means combustion gasses in the coolant. After reading a second time I would have said your head gasket leak was on the passenger side as clean white plugs might indicate coolant getting into a cylinder. When the water gets into the cylinder it tends to steam clean everything so if you see a nice clean cylinder after cylinder head removal that is where your coolant leak is. Clean white spark plugs can sometimes be a window into this.
So with that revised statement have you made any progress?
Sadly, yes… there has been progress.
The progress made you squirm in your chair the whole time, as this thread was the predecessor to the one about the coolant looking funny after a head gasket job.
Let’s end this one and pick it up over on the other; I think my truck is not long for this world.
-Hinoki
well you might try SealSteel the permanent head gasket and engine crack repair on your truck before you put It to the trash. When you use SealSteel, you need to have no extended life add to your coolant or you can use water to in your radiator for the fix. You put all the bottle in (made for 4,6 and 8 cylinders) and run your car at idle for 30 mins and the fix is done.
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