[lwhitetrash88l]

hey guys, so today the unthinkable happened. My car....out of nowhere just decides it wants to start smoking like CRAZY out the exhaust and start running really really rough!!! when i turned the car off and started examining it, i found half my anti freeze is draining out of my exhaust and i cant get any coolant to stay in the radiator. it drains out the exhaust within like 2 mins of running the car......help?

Rich

[Onemanzu]

blown head gasket sorry bro thats a pain in the ass

[lwhitetrash88l]

you have any suggestions?

[lwhitetrash88l]

should i buy thegasket and do it myself? take it to a shop? get rid of the car?

[Onemanzu]

replace the gasket... its a bit tricky cuz you have to take the engine apart almost... its kinda a long procedure and would take a few days to do it if you do it at home ... or cost you a grand to take it somewhere... so idk its a big deal dude... sorry about that

[lwhitetrash88l]

how much does it usually cost to do on your own? and do you think your average 18 year old like me can handle it?

[lwhitetrash88l]

also, how do i know which head gasket it is?

[Texan_Stud]

Originally Posted by lwhitetrash88l how much does it usually cost to do on your own? and do you think your average 18 year old like me can handle it?

question is do you think if you have to ask "can i handle it" can you handle it? lol i mean you didnt know what happend =D not hating just let the pros do it.. go get quotes from ATLEAST 4 shops ask family friends if they know anyone who can hook it up

[lwhitetrash88l]

well.....as for me taking it to a shop....highly unlikely due to the fact that i make a lil more than minimum wage and have no parents to help me out wiht money

[Texan_Stud]

Originally Posted by lwhitetrash88l well.....as for me taking it to a shop....highly unlikely due to the fact that i make a lil more than minimum wage and have no parents to help me out wiht money

=[ i personally dont know how to do it.. ill hit some people up to see if they can give me any info, try to get pics of the damage

[Vision.Pro]

Well considering the fact that you didn't know that it was a blown head gasket to begin with, leads me to believe that you probably shouldn't be taking apart the engine. It's a real pain in the ass and most likely something will wind up screwed up on reassembly. How many miles are on the car? If there's alot of miles, but you still want to keep the car, getting a new engine may be the better way to go.

If you want to figure out which gasket is blown in the mean time, remove all the spark plugs. Get a cooling system pressure tester and pressurize the cooling system to specification, normally about 20 PSI. Leave the system pressurized for a few hours. Now lay down some clean paper towel along the cylinder heads where the spark plugs were. Crank the engine over for a few seconds. Since the spark plugs are not in place any antifreeze that leaked into the cylinder will be blown out onto the clean paper towel. Examine the paper towel for the telltale signs of antifreeze and you will be able to tell which is the guilty cylinder.

You can also look at the condition of the spark plugs. Any spark plug that looks different from the rest should be suspect. Of course if you can see antifreeze on a plug then you know that is the bad guy. If the plug looks cleaner than the rest or has a white powder on it then suspect that one.

My father just went through all of this with his Blazer, after all was said an done he just decided to get another engine

[lwhitetrash88l]

well see i kind of figured it was a head gasket cuz ive had it happen to me before on another car...

[02ponypackage]

if you dont know enough about cars or are comfortable u dont wanna take things apart and not know where they go back....

[stephen]

What year is the car? Earlier 3.8L V6 engines used a composition gasket and had major head gasket problems, while later engines used a multilayer steel (MLS) gasket which is much better.

How many miles on the engine? One issue is that doing a valve job on a high mileage engine can be a problem if the rings are worn.

I would remove both heads and have them checked out by a machine shop and they need to be surfaced to the proper finish for an MLS gasket. Also better get a valve job done at the same time and have new stem seals installed.

On a 99 Mustang the machine work on both heads including the above plus replacing the exhaust valve guides and a Victor gasket set and new head bolts cost about $480. Without the guide work it might be closer to $300.

I would definately recommend that you not try this without getting a factory shop manual and carefully reading the procedures especially the procedures for torqueing the heads. Also be sure the block gasket surfaces are very clean and check for warpage and remove excess carbon from the pistons.

Is there water in the oil? i.e. brown milky color. If so be sure to do an oil change after it is reassembled or you will destroy the short block.

Good luck!

[stephen]

One tip.

The factory shop manual says to discharge the air conditioning before removing the compressor, but this isn't necessary. It can be unbolted and tied aside.

It is quite expensive to recharge it.

[RichM]

well, I just went through the second half of this between Sunday and tonight. I can understand you wanting to save the money. I think whether you can do it yourself or not is something only you can answer though. Are you mechanical at all? Do you have a good memory? Can you usually figure out how to put things together? Do you own a good set of sockets, preferably 1/2" drive, short and deep sockets (or can you buy a set)? Can you follow directions? Do you have a good place to work (i.e. a garage with some horizontal workspace to lay parts out on)? If you answer yes to those questions, then you can probably do it. IMHO this is not the kind of job that you need to be an experienced mechanic to do. The 3 toughest things you will likely run into are: 1) frozen bolts, 2) difficult-to-get-to bolts, and 3) getting things taken off in the right order and put back in the right order (and remembering where things went).

I would not attempt it without a digital camera. Take pictures of everything from several angles, and make sure you can see stuff clearly in the pictures. Pay special attention to connectors, bolts that have flat heads and those that have studs, and which ones go where, and where the wiring harness goes - it's a mess between the upper and lower intake manifolds. Get lots of good pics as you disassemble.

So first off, get a Haynes. $19.95 at AutoZone (I don't work there, I just got my stuff there). Second, rent, buy, or borrow a 1/2 " drive torque wrench. You will need to torque things back a maximum of about 40 ft lbs, but some of the stuff is as light as 4 ft lbs (expressed in inch lbs). You'll need to go 37 ft lbs + 180 degrees for the head bolts, so you'll want a long breaker bar probably, that 180 degrees is work without one. Sockets I used included: 10mm, 13 mm, and 15 mm. I needed 13 and 15 mm box wrenches. Some of the exhaust manifold bolts are tough to get to, so a few different lengths of extensions are helpful, as would be a universal adapter. You'll need pliers for hose clamps, penetrating oil, wire brushes, carb cleaner, steel wool or scotch brite (something to scrub but not remove metal, to clean the mating surfaces for the gaskets), and a gasket scraper. You will also need a spring connector tool (which I found at Advance Auto Parts for ~$7.00) to disconnect the fuel lines from the injector rails.

As I recall, if all you need to do is replace the blown head gasket, here are the parts you'll need:
Head Gaskets
Valve cover gasket set (includes o-rings for the grommets)
Exhaust gaskets
Intake manifold gasket set (includes both lower and upper gaskets, and o-rings for injectors)
The parts above cost me about $90 from AutoZone.
You'll also need two sets of head bolts (2 heads, duh), because the bolts are stretch bolts. They ran me $20 each, so $40 (had to go to 2 different stores to get them).

While you're at it, you might as well do some cleaning since you're in there, you'll need oil and coolant, and you might as well change the spark plugs too.

When you remove the heads, you should take them somewhere to have them looked at. You may have warped a head or cracked one, leading to the blown gasket. If so, you might not see it yourself, and you'll put it back together to have it fail again. Plus you can get someone to clean them up while you're at it, if you like.

You'll also be near the timing chain, you'll have most of the engine bay empty at this point so anything else you can check, you might as well do while it's accessible.

Well, that should give you an idea what's involved. Oh - another resource, cheaper than the factory manual, is alldatadiy.com. For $24.95 you can buy access to one vehicle's info for a year. It's better and more detailed than haynes, so if you get stuck, it's a good resource. The shop manual is going to cost between $60 and $150...

If you get to business, you can probably do it in a weekend. Try to do your work when stores are open, so if you need to go get a replacement hose for the one you had to cut off to remove, you can do so.

Rich

[RichM]

oh almost forgot to add... there's a heater tube that goes across the lower intake manifold. be careful with it, it's tricky to remove. the guy who disassembled mine bent it, and a "helper" tried to force it back on... and it bent more. I could only find it at a Ford dealer, and it's a $125 part. On the other hand, the small hose that broke in my hands only cost $2 to replace

[mustang1072]

Originally Posted by Onemanzu blown head gasket sorry bro thats a pain in the ass

4 sure the same thing happened to my pickup... major pain in the ass!!! +1

[lwhitetrash88l]

how do you suggest i position the car? just leave it on flat ground? or like up on jackstands/ramps?

[97TunedMustang]

Originally Posted by lwhitetrash88l how do you suggest i position the car? just leave it on flat ground? or like up on jackstands/ramps?

You can just leave it on flat ground. everything you need to get to really is going to be accesible from the top. aside from draining what radiator fluid is left out of it