Clean Piston Head question

[Jcornaglia]

My 98 Montana was blowing white smoke and burning oil like a fog machine. my mechanic told me my head gasket's are shot and it was too big a job for him to do and not worth it. I've taken the project on myself and have my heads off but am puzzled by the fact that the #2 cylinder (piston head) is spotless. No carbon build up or black at all. Anyone have an idea as to why this one looks brand new when the vehicle has over 100,000 miles on it? Car ran fine all the other times so I assume all 6 cylinders were always firing.

Head Gaskets - There were no tears or breaches that I could see and they looked ok to me. So maybe my problems are somewhere else. I left the block in the car and don't see any visual cracks where the piston walls meet the block. Is there anything else I should check since I am this far in?

 

[melsg5]

It's probably clean because that's the cylinder that was burning the antifreeze. Are you aware that there also was a problem with the intake manifold gaskets on those engines causing burning of antifreeze which may have been the cause in your case.

 

[Jcornaglia]

I was not aware of that but those "appeared" to be ok when I took them off but will be replacing those as well.

Thanks

 

[chance91]

Replace the intake manifold gaskets with metal ones witout a doubt. Don't do the plastic ones they will fail. Also don't use dexcool use traditional antifreeze. There is a class action lawsuit against gms dexcool stuff. It also blows.


The clean cylinder was burning antifreeze\water mix. Just like using methanol\water injection. It flashes to steam and removes carbon over time.

If you want to do this on a well running car you can add a gallon of tolulene to the gas (a ain't thinner aromatic hydrocarbon, about 114 octane) every month or so, or spray a light mist of water right into the throttle body with the engine revvd up for a bit.