Just bought an 89 DX hatch. I noticed the coolant looks kind of oily. I know that indicates a blown head gasket. The car runs great though, so I'm wondering if maybe the head gasket was replaced but they didn't drain the coolant, just filler 'er back up. Any opinions on this?

 

NAPA sells a block tester for diagnosing a BHG. Dunno if it will give a false positive if the coolant's old, though. -scott

 

how does your oil look, any droplets of water/coolant in there? any smoke coming from the exhaust?

 

No, oil looks clean, no exhaust smoke. I'm wondering if maybe it's just old and needs to be replace. Car has 156,000 mi. on it and I don't know much about the history past the last entry in the owner's manual service log at 75,000 miles.

 

it sounds feasible to me then. i'd just flush and fill the coolant.

 

Flushing the coolant is one of the procedures in order to remove the head. I don't know why they wouldn't drain it, seems fishy to me. Even if your car runs great, this does not necessarily mean that your headgasket is sealing properly. I'd do a leak down test.

 

hey dont trust the oily coolant. does the car slowly over heat? check your oil and smell it, observe it, does it seem as if coolant is mixed with your oil? then again, how much oil is floating around in the coolant? I recently did a swap and this guy was cheap, he didnt want to buy brand new gaskets (including a head gasket). i warned him and it didnt work, after flushing his cooling system 3 times, if you pop his radiator cap you can still see the oil floating in the coolant. its a bitch to get it completed out of the radiator..... maybe that head gasket blew and oil got into the cooling system. the car would still run fine and it does. but its a pain to completely clean the system. hey lesson to be learned = some things you cant be cheap on, you have to fork out the cash and replace, so do it to save on extra work, unless your getting paid for double labor and the customer knows the consequeces.

 

"some things you cant be cheap on, you have to fork out the cash and replace, so do it to save on extra work"

Yeah, that's the direction I'm leaning. The car's in too good of shape to not go through it throughly. Just had the main relay replaced and getting ready to have a timing belt put on if I can't get a hold of the previous owner and find out for sure when it was done last. Like my mechanic said...pay me now or pay me later