Subscribe RSS FeedI recently changed the head gasket for a friend of mine who overheated his Mitsubishi Gallant. I thought we were screwed when I started it up and it made LOTS of white smoke. I was thinking maybe the block was cracked, or I did something wrong; Which is silly because we did EVERYTHING right. We had the head rebuilt, cleaned the block, chased out the head bolt threads. Torqued the head bolts exactly by the book and even double checked the accuracy of our torque wrench, and after an anomaly even got a new set of head bolts and did it again to be sure. I let it run for a while, I rev’d it up, everything to see if the smoke would go away to no avail. It smoked for like 10 minutes. BAD too. I told my buddy the car was scrap but he insisted he would just try to get by on it. Well, the smoking stopped after his first drive. And he is driving it around now without a problem.
I think what was really wrong is that while he was trying to start it after the head gasket blew a LOT of coolant made it into the exhaust. And it just took a LONG time for all the coolant to burn out.
Two other possibilities remain. The heating, cooling, heating, cooling, heating, cooling process may have caused the head gasket to seal better, OR divine intervention… Lots of prayers were said on behalf of the car, and my buddy is a really really good guy who is deserving of any breaks he gets.