Possible Head Gasket Leak?

[BuNcHeSs]

I have a 97 GST I had purchased a few months back after my girlfriend had totaled my GS in a snow storm. The car has a new engine and transmission both with less than 10000 miles on it and the guy had the papers to show for it. I bought it for $2000 knowing that it would need some work. I took it into my mechanics shop and had him do a look over of the car. He ran a compression test and said I was losing compression and have a leaking head gasket.

The car runs absolutely fine, no over heating, no coolant in my oil, no white smoke, etc.. The only real problem is that it will stutter when really giving it gas and not all the time but I am assuming is that a boost leak I have yet to track down is contributing to that. Which is also killing my city mpg by about 12 mpg while my highway mpg stays around 30.

 

[Dsmkauai]

Do you have a way to do a compression test yourself or what was the numbers the mechanic came up with? And sounds like you need to make a good boost leak tester and eliminate any of those problems.

 

[tomcat5157]

could be a boost leak or a vacuum leak.

 

[Zufelt]

As others have stated, do a BLT, our cars don't run very well with even the slightest leak. You can pick up a compression tester for about 40 bucks at Autozone, and do it yourself just to be sure the numbers he pulled are correct. Would be a good idea to grab one anyways as it's always one of the standard procedures you would do to diagnose a problem just like a BLT.. You can make a BLT for about 15 bucks at your local Hardware store, or you can purchase one online for a few bucks more! Hope you find out what's wrong, let us know if you have any leaks!

 

[BuNcHeSs]

Thanks for the info guys! it did turn out to be a boost leak. One of the bolts was missing on the j-pipe coming off my compressor housing. turned out the threads were stripped so I used a heli-coil and bolted her back up with some loc-tite and now im running at higher boost levels and no stutter