[s-cars] Now Blown head gasket - was : stumble and smoke at idle

[djdawson2 at aol.com]

 Yeah...

But don't get stuck in "over analysis paralysis."  If you've got sweet smelling steam coming out the tailpipe when you fire it up, your head gasket is shot.  No need to spend another bunch of hours and effort doing compression and/or leakdown tests.

Vittorio's failure was the tougher of various gasket failure scenarios to troubleshoot... a failure between adjacent cylinders.  Yours sounds like the more "normal" failure between a cylinder and the coolant passages, where coolant is either going to get sucked into the cylinder, or combustion pressure is going to be forced through the cooling system.

Good luck,

Dave

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bares, Vittorio <Vittorio.Bares at nuance.com>
To: Andrew B <andrew.sb at gmail.com>; jjssmccarthy at yahoo.com; s-car-list at audifans.com
Sent: Tue, Dec 15, 2009 8:39 am
Subject: Re: [s-cars] Now Blown head gasket - was : stumble and smoke at idle


I've also recently gone through the HG failure adventure. I did both the
compression and leak-down tests. Compression is a pretty simple test if
you can find someone to lend you the tool. Leak-down is the next step to
get a better idea of where the problem may be - but the Compression test
is quick and easy and will at least tell you if you need to look
further. Leak-down will give you more info and confidence that pulling
the head is a good idea.

Vittorio -

-----Original Message-----
From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
[mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com] On Behalf Of Andrew B
Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2009 9:10 AM
To: jjssmccarthy at yahoo.com; s-car-list at audifans.com
Subject: Re: [s-cars] Now Blown head gasket - was : stumble and smoke at
idle

Jamie,
Sorry to hear that.  I went through almost exactly the same symptoms
recently, and it turned out to a warped (beyond repair) head.

Stumble at start up, went away with a flick of the throttle.
Significant white smoke, but honestly not an exceptional amount.  Mine
started with a "coolant volcano" though and bloomed from there.
Coolant got darker, leaked out the top, bubbles in the coolant, all
that fun stuff.

I paid to have a guy check it out, and he confirmed it for me.  Might
be worth taking it to a good local shop if you can/don't want to do
the tests yourself/don't mind paying.  I didn't have access to that
kind of equipment.

Good luck...here's hoping it's something stupid like a loose hose
clamp or whatever!

-Andrew
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