95 3.4 Camaro. My bud bought the car from someone and Ive been trying to get it running for him so I looked the car over and decided to start with the overheating problem. Opened rad cap to find coolant/mud so flushed with hose and refilled. I have a funnel that can be attached to the radiator to allow air to bubble out. Car ran for about 30 min and was still bubbling, but ran out of time so i capped it and shipped it. He calls me next day saying car is overheating, temp gauge maxed out, and car was sputtering. Looked at the car again tonight and realized fans never kick on unless jumped. With relay jumped car never overheats but temp sweeps from 190-240 back and forth randomly while driving with some white smoke. Besides the fans not working, which i think is a seperate problem, Does this sound like a blown headgasket? I feel that would explain the temp rising and falling due to combustion temps reaching coolant. Thanks in advance for any ideas. PS sorry for choppy sentences, wanted to give situation with least amount of wording possible.

 

Yeah I would say the head gasket is blown especially if he said the temp gauge maxed out that will kill a head gasket if he bought the car with overheating problems chances are that it already had blown head gaskets.

 

I had a 95 3.4 way back and the radiator fan did burn out on me ( actually swapped whole fan motor for something like $50 at the parts house, but think it was a connection) and that was an easy fix . Now for the head gasket issue I would think you would notice other issues than just overheating i.e. probably expect to see changed performance with misfire or whatnot... and would expect it to be more like milk than sludge

personally I'd start by fixing that fan as you know its bad and then if that doesn't fix the issue I'd start looking at the other possibilities. Also , before driving the car again I’d drain out a little of the oil to see if coolant in there just to play it safe…. but that’s just my 0.2