I have a 97 firebird with 3.8L and it has a blown head gasket that leaks coolant down the side of the engine, none seems to be in the oil. Has anybody actually had success with head gasket repair stuff
Never heard of a successful application, but what it is very good at is gunking up the radiator and generally interfering with the operation of the cooling system as a whole.
If you’ve blown the head gasket so as to leak coolant outside the engine, it must really be running poorly. Do the job the right way and replace the gasket.
thanks, the car isn’t running badly at all, just looses a LOT of water/coolant
Dump some black pepper into the radiator. See if that stops the leak.
I had a Chevy that had a external head gasket leak, and the pepper gave me an extra year before I finally had to replace the head gasket.
Tester
Get a Haynes manual and start turning wrenches 
What are you looking for? If you want to sell it to some dumb guy who doesn’t recognize the leak marks, I won’t help you. If you are keeping the car, then you WILL replace the gasket soon enough no matter what you try. So buy the gasket, buy the manual, get some sockets and go to work. It’s never going to be cheaper.
how big was your leak, and how much pepper?
I want to keep the car, it’s silver with t-tops, tinted windows and rims, and really clean. nicest car i’ve had yet, and i have a problem with being honest so i don’t think i could just dump it on somebody else without telling them what was up with it.
Any “success” you have using the repair goop:
1: will be the exception rather than the rule.
2: will only be temporary.
3: will very likely cause you cooling system problems (aka expenses) that you don’t currently have.
As others have stated, steer away from this stuff and fix it correctly.
Tester’s reply is the only one I’ve ever heard of who has gone that far on a temporary fix like that. The much more common experiences are “It didn’t work”, or “It also plugged up my radiator and heater core.”
I’d park it and fix it before I found myself driving it and overheating the motor . . . turning it into a junk motor. If you’re gonna keep it anyway . . . buy the parts and fix it. No temporary fix ever held up for me . . . except 100 mph duct tape (not on head gaskets) . . . good luck fixing the head gasket. Rocketman
If you need it to drive and want it to keep going til you find time for a headgasket job I recommend Justice Brother’s Radiator Stop Leak. It’s flax seeds suspended in some weird goop. I used it on my truck once and it held for like 3,000 miles no problem til I found a long weekend to pull the head and do a gasket. Don’t use the aluminum powder stop leak, it screws up heatercores and other things. JB Stop Leak is the only one I’ve ever found that works. A bit hard to find, I’ve never seen it in PepBoys. Only local places.
But, yeah, as soon as you can you’ll need to replace that gasket. And you oughta have the head checked for flatness before you put it back on, unless you wanna do it again.
The leak was large enough where I had to fill the coolant reservior every fifty miles. You could see exactly where the head gasket was leaking and the coolant was running down the side of the block. Add a tablespoon of pepper to the coolant to see if it stops the leak.
Tester