You may remember a few weeks ago I had the radiator overflow bottle return line nipple crack during a 5 hour drive home from my MIL's Thanksgiving weekend.


Temp guage never got above the normal spot, got a new bottle. filled up and all is well.


The car has been running rough in the early cold morning's here in Ohio, and I have never replaced the intake gaskets. I have them (bought them about 10 months ago) just haven't replaced them yet.


The wife tells me the check engine light came on during her drive home last week, and the car ran really rough for a while until it warmed up. After it warmed up it ran better, I attributed that to the intake gaskets. But, she said she smelled a gawd awful burning smell for a few miles?


OK, so this weekend, I watched all the video's I could about replacing the gaskets. Read everything here I could find. Got the gaskets, got new plugs, I'm ready!


First, could not separate the Air box from the tubes that go to the front of the car. Are they glued? wt?/


But, pull the big vacuum hose (the one that always collapses). Crap. White milky oil. Thick. stick my finger in there, pure white. (forgot to take a picture). Here's one of the inside of the hose.


The new radiator overflow bottle is FULL (w??) Dip my finger in it. I 'think' I smell gas, but not sure.


Check oil. VERY LOW. Crap.


Do I have blown head gasket? engine? Am I looking for a new car? This is a 2003 2.5 auto with 125K miles. That needs struts and shocks and the Lower Control Arm bushings. Crap. I am looking for a new car this weekend?


I have the gaskets. Should I pray to some Car god and just do the gaskets and hope it runs well enough to get a decent trade?


Thoughts?


Doogie

 

Doogie, do not worry about the color of oil inside the big vacuum line. The purpose of that line is to pull any moisture that may get into the oil pan out and also to collect any oil vapor. As long as the oil on the dipstick is still a normal color, all is good. The oil in the vacuum line can become milky if you are in a humid area and are not getting a lot of oil passing through the PCV valve.

As for smelling gas in the overflow bottle, the best advice that I can tell you there is with the engine cold, remove the cap and then start up the car and let it come up to temp. Watch the inside of the bottle and see if you are getting gas bubbles out it then. The true teller will be doing a compression check of the cylinders. If you have a bad head gasket, you will have 1 or 2 cylinders that will be significantly lower than the rest. That may be something you want to add to your list when you do the plugs since doing the compression check will only add about 30 minutes (if that) to the job. Then you will have a firm answer as to what the status of the motor is. The numbers that you are looking for is under ideal conditions, all the cylinders will be up around 150-165 psi. But, the bigger thing to keep in mind is that all the cylinders are reading about the same (within 10% is a normal number, or within about 15 psi of the highest and lowest cylinders). If on your engine you are right there at 15 psi difference or even a little outside of that, I would call it good and you don't have an issue. If you have a bad head gasket, you are going to see like a 50+ psi difference.

The other check that you can do is to get the engine to roll so you can get each cylinder to its top dead center position (ie, piston all the way up, both valves shut). From there, you can make a test adapter to screw into the plug hole. At that point, you can pressurize the cylinder up to about 90 psi with air and then look in the overflow bottle for bubbles, listen into the oil cap for a sound of hissing air, and into the exhaust pipes for hissing air. If you hear air, then that tells you where your leak is and the associated joint is bad/needs further evaluation. A bit more informative, but then you need to have an air compressor and some know how on making the adapter to make it work. Most people take an old spark plug, weld some 1/8" wall tubing into the metal end of the plug (after removing all the ceramic portion) and then on the other end of the tubing, welding on a 1/4" air hose connector. But, not everyone has a welder in their garage.

If you need more help, let me know. Gave you a few ideas of what needs to be done.

 

Thanks! feel like I just got talked off the edge! :-) It does seem weird that the car runs better after warming up. PRetty sure a blown head gasket does not run better after it's warmed up. Rubber O-rings and gaskets maybe, not head gaskets!


Yes, the oil on the dip stick was perfectly black, no white/yellow stuff. It has been very humid here in recent weeks, so perhaps that's all it is.


I'm tackling this first light sunday morning so I can get it done and take it for a nice long test drive before all this snow gets here. The wife and and actually went out to dinner so we could discuss buying a new car in case my worse fears were realized. Then I checked your post 1/2 way through dinner and felt pretty relieved. She loves that car, as do I. Don't want to buy anything right now.


Thanks again, I'll let you know how it works out!


Doogie

 

Just an idea... You could try that Bars Leak head gasket repair. It's supposed to have carbon fiber in it to seal the leaks. Might be worth a shot.

 

I am far from an expert on these sorts of things, but have been on this forum over 5 years now. Before you get too worked up best thing first off is have the codes read and report back here or do a search of them. It might be as simple as a vacuum leak or a new MAF. Stuff like that can get magnified quite a bit in the cold.

One thing that did concern me is you mention the oil as being low and perfectly black. When was the last time the oil was changed? Just because it was very dark in color doesn't necessarily mean it is old, but with the level being low look into that right away to make sure you don't have any leaks other than maybe the annoying oil pan gasket. And I personally wouldn't put anything like Bars Leak in there unless it was an absolute emergency to help get you off the road or home safely. Right now you do not know if the head gasket is even bad.

So, take a breath and report back. You have a lot of brothers here to help diagnose and at the very worst sympathize with you IF it would be a head gasket. Just make sure this gets addressed right away. You run to long with a misfire or lean condition and it could mess up your catalytic converters and then you really will have a problem. Hang in there!

 

OOps. Which gasket is upper and which is lower? I have the six gaskets for upper and lower, they are different part numbers and set is thinner than the other. Anybody happen to know which is which? ...feeling like an idiot... Doogie


I "Think" the upper is XR843536006. These are the thicker of the two..


tia,


Doogie

 

The oval ones are for the top and the weird shaped ones are for the bottom. I just changed all my gaskets and plugs myself a couple days ago and now my Jag is running alot better. I was having problems with it starting up in the cold morning and now it starts up perfectly in any weather.

I found that an air leak causes alot of problems, so if you have one, get it fixed asap. I was also getting the p0174 and p0171 codes and after my new gaskets were put in, it cleared those codes.

Its also good to change your oil, oil filter, air filter, and fuel filter when you change your gaskets. I have never done this type of work myself to a car, but it wasn't very hard and it saved me a ton of money compared to taking it to a shop.

 

Thanks for the tip. for some reason I thought they were both the same shape. 2 minutes after I left that posting I saw they were different shapes!


I got everything done easily. Took my time, cleaned everything well, and went step by step thanks to the postings on this subject on the forums.


The car started right up, and the brake boost was evident immediately! Took the kitty out for a spin and the CAT IS BACK! WOO-HOO! I had hard starts, hesitation, sputtering, CEL, "Cruise Control not available, etc" in the cold.


This thing feels great now! I still have an oil leak that I suspect is the oil pan, but I have a friend who has a lift and I will attend to that soon. I was AMAZED at how much oil was in the intake manifold! I laid it upside down while I worked on the gaskets, and was shocked to see oil streaming for a few drips when I put it right side up.


The Spark Plugs were done for sure also. (see pic). all in all, I am thrilled! Actually looking forward to tomorrow mornings cold weather (yeah , really cold, like -5 in the morning) to see how she does!


The CEL light was one when I test drove it, (and from the last time my wife drove it) so I scanned the codes:


P0300 Randon - Multiple Misfire Detected
P0302 Cylinder 2 Misfire Detected
P0303 Cylinder 3 Misfire Detected
P0304 Cylinder 4 Misfire Detected
P0306 Cylinder 6 Misfire detected
P1314 No DTC Definition Found - Check Repair manual
P1316 No DTC Definition Found - Check Repair manual
P1111 No DTC Definition Found - Check Repair manual


So after the initial test drive I cleared the codes and the CEL was off, so I took it on a 'fun' little 20 mile drive, returning home with no CEL and a very satisfied feeling.


Thanks everyone!

 

Thanks AlfaDude! after today's work I am feeling a LOT better! I think the milky white oil in the big vacuum hose can be attributed a lot to very very very high humidity around here lately. The oil being black is somewhat concerning, but being low is more concerning. I had to add 2.5 quarts! Ouch, I gotta keep a closer eye on that! This thing has had a 'drip' for years. I'll get the oil changed this week to start fresh on. how hard is the oil pan gasket? something I can do ?

 

Doogie, doing the oil pan can be a little complicated because one of the bolts is underneath the transfer case and it requires you to be creative when accessing this bolt. It would possibly involve dropping the transfer case to get to this bolt. As you can imagine, that would be quite the job (hence why some people get hit with a $1600 bill for this). Some people have had a hole drilled in the one structural support for the transfer case which allows access to the bolt. But, as you can imagine, some people do not like the idea of having the hole there. The 3rd option that some have gone with is to back the bolt out some and then cut the head off of the bolt to give them enough room to slide the rest of the bolt out. Then, when they go to reassemble everything, they install a shorter bolt to keep everything together (this works since the oil pan does not see large loads).

So, whether you can do it or not is a question of how mechanically inclined are you and what tools you have available.

 

What a difference a day makes. Looks like you have it sorted now. Glad it worked out.