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Characteristics of Head Gasket Leak

John W

John W

Bronze Level Sponsor
If a head gasket is broken and leaks water into the oil, will it stop if you change the oil? And if so, is is possible to drive the car (Series V-1725) hundreds of miles with no problems, only to park it and have the head gasket leak again? :confused: As always, thanks for the support here.
 
alpine_64

alpine_64

Donation Time
If the head gasket is leaking changing oil wont do anything to help. You need to stop the gasket leaking. Depending how bad it is.. you can run something like bars stop leak though the cooling system which can seal the gasket .. but its a short term fix (though some people get away with it for a long time) .

You really want to replace the gasket before it blows in a big way and compression locks the motor.
 
B

beamdream

Gold Level Sponsor
As Michael says once the oil is contaminated its game over, you are just as likely to finish up with a bigger problem than you already have if you continue to drive it.

Stop leak cures are really not worth the effort as they usually come back to haunt you with cooling system problems.
 
JonPiz

JonPiz

Donation Time
re head

with the ali heads it is probably worth having it skimmed as well as change the gasket as if there is any corrosion around the combustion chamber edges then your gasket will have a shorter life.
 
B

bmohr

Gold Level Sponsor
John,
I agree with all the comments about game over once the head gasket leaks. In reading your question, I think you may be describing a different scenario. I would say you could not have driven hundreds of miles with a leaking head gasket and not have evidence. Driving would make it leak far worse than parking it. If you are seeing water in the oil, it could be condensation depending on the amount. While I would not advocate driving hundreds of miles with a suspect head gasket, you might change the oil and start the car. Once the engine is hot and running see if you have any water vapor in you exhaust. Stop it and see if you have coolant in your oil or oil in your coolant. If you are using coolant, it should be more obvious IMHO than plain water. Of course if the engine is running rough as mine was when I got it with a blown gasket -- you don't want to run it for long or as well explained above, there's potential to do a lot more damage.

Since you live in a pretty humid state, water could come from condensation. One reason they have the 3 month / 3,000 mile saying is because of the breakdown of the additives that help deal with water condensation. That is aggravated by short trip driving where the oil never gets hot enough to fully vaporize and remove the water.

HTH, YMMV, and any other suitable acronym
 
RootesRooter

RootesRooter

Donation Time
John W said:
If a head gasket is broken and leaks water into the oil, will it stop if you change the oil? And if so, is is possible to drive the car (Series V-1725) hundreds of miles with no problems, only to park it and have the head gasket leak again? :confused: As always, thanks for the support here.
Click to expand...


Just to be sure, describe the symptoms. Is the Alpine just losing water to an unknown location? Are you seeing water droplets on the dipstick? Is it running rough?
 
alpine_64

alpine_64

Donation Time
John,

I assumed when you said you had water in the oil that you meant in the sump.. and you were getting milky residue on the dipstick. I guess I should have asked you where you were finding the water?

If you do lots of short trips sometimes you can get some condensation on the inside of the oil filler cap and in the spout there, It's not a great sign if that is happening.. but doesn't mean you have a gasket failure It can be that you are not heating the motor up enough to burn any moisture off.

if you have water on the dip stick you have a leaking head gasket (or worse you could have a cracked block.. but much less likely) and any chem set fix will be somewhat short term, as i previously mentioned.. (I did use that once on my dads car and it solved the problem.. drove it for the next 3 months without issue.. but we tore it down to fix it properly before it could happen again and also sent the radiator off to get cleaned out after and get rid of any of the sealant residue)

So where is the water showing up? Are you loosing any water without an obvious leak? Have you done any head gasket tests.. ie: compression test, started the car with radiator cap off and look for bubbling in the water felt for cold exhaust gases at the tail.
 
RootesRooter

RootesRooter

Donation Time
Old advice: Try to find a radiator pressure tester (radiator shop?). That will tell you in less than a minute if you have a leak or not.
 
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John W

John W

Bronze Level Sponsor
I don't have a head gasket leak. A low life vandal poured water into my oil spout to make me think I had a head gasket leak and the guy at "Precision Tune" told me that a head gasket would leak while the car was sitting and not while it was running. Can't blame the guy for trying to make a little money on a head gasket job. If I catch the vandal, I'll be nice and polite and try to "understand" him.
 
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R

RootesRacer

Donation Time
John W said:
I don't have a head gasket leak. A low life vandal poured water into my oil spout to make me think I had a head gasket leak and the guy at "Precision Tune" told me that a head gasket would leak while the car was sitting and not while it was running. Can't blame the guy for trying to make a little money on a head gasket job. If I catch the vandal, I'll be nice and polite and try to "understand" him.
Click to expand...

Or your leak is intermittent, something that happens from time to time.
The leakage often occurs when the engine is very hot and the differential of expansion of the head/block allows water to get past the gasket.

There are 3 types of common gasket failures, combustion ring failure, oil to water (not applicable since the head has not HP oil passages) and water to crankcase.
Water to crank case is a common failure that can show intermittent.
Corroded crescents and leakage into the oil drainback passages are where this one comes from.

So I would still keep an eye on things.
 
John W

John W

Bronze Level Sponsor
Drove really hard for an hour or so and parked for about 4 hours, then drove around town, stopping, parking, getting on and off the interstate system, and never once letting the car get out of my sight and the oil is still clean as new. From "immediate" milkshake white oil, always overnight or when I leave the car alone somewhere, again and again, to clean as new and the only difference is I never let the car out of my sight or it's guarded with non-detectable cameras in a different location. I don't think I have a head gasket leak; but I do think there's a "bad head" somewhere.
 
C

chazza

Donation Time
Interesting thoughts in your last post!

However, the symptoms you describe are consistent with a cold engine developing the problem, which makes me think that it is a small and slow leak of water into the crankcase by some route.

To eliminate this do the following checks;
1. Pressure test the cooling system as suggested earlier; if the needle drops at all over 5 minutes there is a leak somewhere and if you can't see it, it might be internal, such as a head gasket; crack in the head or block; or corrosion. How is your anti-freeze?
2. Observe the header tank with the cap off and the engine running; if there is a persistent bubbling in the coolant, gas is getting in from the combustion chamber. Remove head to inspect.
3. Get a workshop to analyse your coolant for exhaust gases.

Chemi-weld http://www.goss.com.au/products/13A seals cracks permanently and is very good, but it won't seal leaks, but for about 14 dollars a bottle it is a cheap way to eliminate the crack hypothesis,

Cheers Charlie
 
John W

John W

Bronze Level Sponsor
Thanks Charlie.

There is indeed an almost constant bubbling when the engine warms up and I'd previously dismissed it as a result of the 15 bottles of flush I've ran through the radiator trying to get this persistent clay substance out.

Before vandals added clay, the heat gauge hardly ever registered, but since the clay, the water pump leaks sometimes and sometimes not, and the engine seems hot as heck even when the gauge isn't.

This clay is some nasty stuff that sticks to everything, including the rubber hoses, and will rust concrete if not washed off.

Rick at SS says water pumps won't be available for six more weeks-I think a man in a wooden boat is rowing them here from Asia, or something like that.

A vandal's inability to express himself really stinks. Clay is just one of the things I've had done to my car, but perhaps the worst. It also makes me think of vandalism when anything else goes wrong.
 
R

RootesRacer

Donation Time
If the bubbles are not air, there is a simple combustion gasses tester where you suck the gases from the radiator through a special fluid.
The gasses will change the fluid color in the presence of CO2, which will only exist if there is a leakage of combustion gasses into the cooling system.

Tester can be bought on ebay.

Look for "combustion gas tester".
 
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