FastZinTennessee

Oh man, this car is killing me, freakin killing me! As some of you may remember a while ago my radiator decided it was time to sh*t the bed, and caused a few overheating incidents before I could identify the problem as the radiator and replace it. Anyway, that was fairly soon after I put the heads/cam in.

About a week and a half ago I started my car up in the morning and noticed an unusually large plume of smoke behind it. It was so bad that when I was backing up I couldn't see So anyway, I pulled back into the driveway and let the car sit at idle and warm up. It kept smoking, and I could have sworn the exhaust smelled sweet, the same sweet that antifreeze smells like.

The next day I decided that I was rather upset with my car, so blown headgasket or not I was going to drive it to work. Once again, more smoke than usual, but about ten minutes after I started the car up and left, it just quit smoking! Since then when I have started it it has smoked no more normal small puffs on a cold day. Well then I decided to get on it a little last night on the way home. I only gave about 3/4 throttle. The car felt fine, pulled smooth, not bucking/backfiring/acting a fool. I get in it today and start it up and got the biggest smoke show yet! It was so bad the people behind me were swerving out of the way of my smoke cloud!! It was pretty funny actually. Then, about ten minutes into the commute it just stopped. Oh this car is killing me, did I mention that? I should also mention the coolant level is low, but the car does not overheat at all. Also I haven't added any coolant yet

I think I'm planning on getting a beater, and letting the camaro sit until I have enough money for a complete rebuild, and a few new tricks

POS headgaskets!

slopokrodrigez

Sorry to hear about your problems. What a shame after doing that work and you can't enjoy it. When you installed the replacement head gaskets, did you check the deck for flatness?

FastZinTennessee

When I installed the new gaskets I had the heads milled, but did no checking on the block. I didn't have the time or money to get machine work done on the block anyway. I'm almost positive when the radiator clogged and the motor overheated it did the damage that led to the problem I am having now. Just weird how it took this long to finally pop!

On a side now I now have a low RPM/medium load stumble too

joeSS97

Its possible the stumble is related to the head gasket problem.

FastZinTennessee

Very possible that it is.

I also don't understand why my car is not smoking constantly A couple of days it smoked so bad that I couldn't see the cars behind me, since then it has not smoked at all.......

ChevyIron

I hope there isn't too much down time on the Z,What you planning on doing to it?As Eiestein said "you mod you break shi-"best of luck on whatever you do.

Fastbird93

Are you positive it's a head gasket?? Would a head gasket problem just show up/disappear like that??? Is it possible you've got a coolant line, something like th crossover line on the back of the heads or something, that's not tight enough and every now and then dumping coolant on to an exhaust pipe?? Just food for thought,

FastZinTennessee

I don't have any leaks, and the smoke is definitely coming out of the tailpipe. I can't begin to imagine how it would smoke like a freakin train really bad and then all of a sudden stop.

Like the other day when it was smoking so bad people were swerving around my smoke cloud, ten minutes later it just stopped smoking. I even pulled over to look at the tailpipe and there was no smoke at all! I just don't get it.

Eliminator

You sure your car isnt Christine???

FastZinTennessee

Yea, I should have named her Christine!

Well if anyone has any ideas please enlighten me. I'm going to the bank on monday to see about getting a small personal loan and buying a car that I can drive around every day. A beater of sorts. Obviously if I don't have blown headgasket(s) I don't want to go in debt for another car. I don't see how tons of white smoke coming from the tailpipe and low coolant could be anything other than a blown headgasket, but on the other hand I don't see how it can smoke like a freight train and then the next instant stop smoking entirely. I saw a place where I spliced a coolant hose that showed signs of leakage, that could accoutn for a loss of coolant over time I suppose. The car really isn't running hotter than normal and there are no signs of coolant in the oil. Then again I had a blown headgasket before, it smoked all the time but not as much as this, no coolant in oil and no overheating there.

Ace_437

Why don't you just put on a new set of head gaskets?

FastZinTennessee

Because last time I pulled the heads off with them in the car I nearly lost my mind! I have never been so frustrated in my whole life.

Basically- the motor has 135k miles and if this is the second time the head gaskets are blown which is likely I really need to have the deck machined on the block. If I do that it means rebuild time. I want to pull the motor, tear it down, rebuild it and do some things to squeeze some more power out of it. I might be able to get away with just throwing some new gaskets on there but between not really wanting to work on it with the motor in the engine bay again and not being confident on the deck surface being true I am reluctant to do it.

GreenDemon

Well I say you might as well rebuild it and do some fun stuff while you're in there.

And I think a leaky head gasket could very well be triggered by temperature and load, and variations in temperature. I let my car get up into the red once (just a little) because the fans just quit, and after hearing the horror stories on here, I'm cutting that engine off the second it makes it over 3/4...