Time for a new headgasket?

[5280DSM]

Alright so im starting to notice some peticular things going on with my car. For one, whenever i get done driving the car for more than 15 highway miles and park the car, about 5 minutes later coolant starts pouring from my overflow. It stops after a while but the fact that it still does it bugs me. Two, my coolant looks like it might have a good hint of brown...fak...headgasket right? And the car likes to have a random miss everynow and then or major hesitation under even light acceleration (but only sometimes..very tempermental). Im not blowing any white smoke out the back and my exhaust smells like im running a little lean. Im slowly loosing oil but i have some decent oil leaks going on and my oil smells like oil and doesnt look milky at all. Am i just paranoid or is there something more going on?

 

[1997_GSX]

Compression Numbers? How many miles on the engine?

 

[g4ebguy90]

A easy test, is to pop off the radiator cap, start the engine, and see if bubbles, steam or just tons of coolant come out. Those are sure signs of blown headgasket.

I had a civic with a blown headgasket it ate tons of coolant. Never smoked or anything. But it did shoot steam out the radiator fill cap.

 

[Dhan]

It'll boil out of the overflow even if it's just a bad thermostat or expired radiator cap. That's what it's supposed to do.

Tell tale HG issue is a "milkshake" like froth, because the oil and water are being whipped up together. And of course overheating. What's the temp gauge showing? Do the fans come one?

Some compression numbers on a cold engine will shine some light on the problem. Do you have a C-tester?

 

[5280DSM]

I did a comp test when i got the car and it was 120 across the board at operating temp but i forgot to hold the throttle at wide open so i dunno. I will try the cap off trick tomorrow and hopefully shine some light in that area.

 

[obsidian]

There are several types of headgaskets failures.

You have three things the headgasket seals.
1. Oil.
2. Coolant (antifreeze)
3. Exhaust gases and combustion pressure.

All three of these can leak to the other system.

You can be leaking combustion gasses into the coolant system (my truck has this exact symptom right now) and this causes a bad thing because the gasses get into the coolant and the air in that system and that stops the cooling process from happening. This can cause bad things quickly.

The coolant can be leaking into the oil which is where you get the "Chocolate milk" symptom and this is a immediate failure of the headgasket and if not caught quickly enough (we're talking seconds to minutes) then a complete failure of the engine is imminent.

The oil can be leaking into the coolant which causes the oil film on top of the coolant in the cooling system. This is considered a "minimal" failure and doesn't cause too much damage but can lead to serious damage if left unchecked. Normally a headgasket change and a cooling system flush fixes this and no serious long term damage is found.

The oil/coolant can leak into the combustion chamber. This causes the white/blue smoke that you sometimes see. If this happens while the car is not running then a "hydraulic seizure" can happen and serious damage can occur. This is not normally the case.

Finally, the coolant/oil seal can just fail on the outside portion and you'll see that liquid coming from that seal and it's normally not a serious problem but can turn into something serious if left unchecked. I had this happen to me on a old car of mine and I ran it like this for a month while I collected the parts/seals needed to do it.