tehart

I haven't come to ask you why I'm losing about a quart of oil every week or two... That's pretty easy to see just by looking in the rear view mirror at the cloud of smoke when I'm pushing on the gas... I'm burning LOTS of oil. However, I'm also losing a lot of coolant. Every month or two, I'm down at least a half gallon of coolant. My uneducated educated guess would that it's a problem with the head gasket... What else could cause this? To answer a question that I know will be asked, there is no oil in my coolant... There could, however, be coolant in my oil... How do I determine if there is?

Oh, and when I get out of the car, a lot of times, I smell what smells like the coolant I use... I could never pinpoint the smell under the hood, but it's quite present... It's a kind of sweet maple syrup smell... lol That's the only thing I can compare it to... But yeah... Some help would be greatly appreciated...

98CoupeV6

I have the maple syrup smell and have had it forever...I've always assumed it's just the normal radiator smell :dunno:

I would imagine a blown head gasket if you're losing both. If it was one or the other there could be many other solutions but both is a different story. To see if there's oil in the coolant you need to drain the coolant from the block and the radiator. Have you done that? The only way to do the reverse is to drain your oil and let it sit and see if any coolant rises to the top since it's less dense.

Checked the condition of your spark plugs recently? They're a good indicator of what's happening in there.