Head Gasket/Spark Plugs

[Traumahawk]

Quick ?. If you have a head gasket leak would any of the spark plugs show any signs of the gasket being bad?

[sleepyalero]

No usually its oil/coolant and exhaust smell that tells the signs of a headgasket.

At least to my knowledge.

[kadawg13]

do you have the 4 cyl or the 6? my old Beretta had a 4 and I blew a few head gaskets on it and it would not start when it happened.
if you have a bad enough leak then you will not be getting good compression on that cylinder and it should throw an error code, at least I would think so.

[[ion] C2]

Yes, they could be wet, and you can look into the cylinder with a light and see puddled coolant or wet piston tops.

Take it from me, I've had 4 repairs.

[Redog]

Yes, but the 3400 is more common to mix the oil and the coolant, thru a lower intake manifold gasket leak (shortened on here to LIMG)

If you have a HG leak and you think it's in the combustion chamber, you'll see a trail of white smoke behind you as you drive down the road. Like a smoke screen. That's the coolant being "burned up" (so to speak) and exiting thru the exhaust system. My Nova did this back in the 90's :eek:

[[ion] C2]

At least on the 2.4L, mine only really smoked noticeably just before/during a major leakage. Mine barely smoked until the last second when it turned into a huge leak at once and there was a smokescreen and misfires galore while on the highway, or when I was at the track and fogged up the entire area during a run.

I did preemptively repair it once or twice though before it got to that point due to the the fact that you can smell the sweetness in the exhaust at idle, among seeing more white smoke than usual moisture in the exhaust (can be hard to tell at certain times of the year). And you could also be forcing coolant out the overflow due to the added pressure in the cooling system. That was a big indicator that the cylinder was connected to the cooling jacket.