Test your skills....i dare you! need help

Check your spark plugs to see if one looks exceptionally cleaner than the others. If you have one like this, it means coolant has been burning in that cylinder, as it basically steam cleans the tips of the plugs.

Check your service manual to see if the head bolts are reuseable. They are not on a lot of engines. You can have a blown headgasket without any of those symptoms. Another indication is gas/air bubbles coming up in the radiator. The gas bubbles push the coolant out the overflow.

If the torque spec for the head bolts was a torque angle spec, i.e torque plus x number of degrees, then the bolts are not reuseable.

Thanks…this will be my work today.
wow. lots of great suggestions

OK…update. Checked the spark plugs. They are all equal in colour, a light tan. While bleeding through the bleeder valve air bubbles are constantly escaping from the bleeder valve. Whats next??? The mating surface for the radiator cap is good.

Keep adding coolant and bleeding until the bubbles stop.

Read this short article and I think your next step will be clear.

http://www.xmission.com/~kd7olf/torque.html

Those bubbles could well be combustion gases that blew through the breech in a blownheadgasket and are migrating through the system until they come to the highest point where they escape. That’s exactly how a blown headgasket would manifest itself.

I strongly urge a leakdown test, especiallly when combined with the other symptoms. The other thing combustion gasses blowing through a headgasket breech will do is add heat to the coolant beyond it’s ability to dissipate it. The gasses are far hotter than the heat that normally is dissipated through the cylinder walls. If the headgasket were intact, most of that heat would be going out through the exhaust valve.

PROBLEM SOLVED AND REPAIRED…(WE THINK)
You all will not believe this…it was a faulty fuse for the coolant fan.

You all provided excellent knowledge and suggestions for us to check so many other things out that since replacing the fuse, the car appears to be running in tip top shape. We will monitor over the next couple of weeks to see what happens. Keith and the same, thank you for your ending suggestions. we will explore them if we need further addressing.

I’m glad the problem is fixed.
I personally will consider this a learning experience: Check the simple things first. I should repeat this to myself every morning before I set upon my day.

Enjoy.

We did and did again… Only assuming that it may have originally been the thermostat that blew but also the fuse…as we were fixing or checking other things it blew or tripped. It is the simple things and thank God the inexpensive ones as well.