Furlion

There is zero chance it does not have exhaust in the coolant. It reeks when you take the cap off. I will take it to get a compression test done. Thanks for the advice!

mountainmanjoe

The only place on an engine where exhaust and coolant get close and can intermix is at the head gasket.

If you see bubbles under the rad cap it's a sure sign. Why don't you try the tester kit first. It's only about $40.

ruley73

Yes. Don't do what I did. I replaced the lower intake manifold gaskets myself (and they were definitely bad), only to find out shortly thereafter the head gaskets had failed. I was kicking myself because I was just most of the way there, but wasn't willing to do it all again when I could afford to pay someone to do it for me.

​​​​Just like you, I had no obvious symptoms of a head gasket failure. The exhaust looked fine. Oil wasn't mixing with the coolant. The engine wasn't overheating. The only symptoms I had was that the coolant started having a cloudy, finely aerated appearance and it would barely bubble out of the overflow hose on the reservoir. Coolant would bubble out if I removed the cap even after sitting for a few hours and cooling off. At first, I thought I just needed to bleed the cooling system because these are notoriously difficult to bleed without vacuum filling them. However, after a few weeks of cracking the bleeder screw after I drove it, I came out to the garage one morning to find a small puddle of coolant under the driver's side. Further inspection revealed it was from the overflow tube. realized that a head gasket had probably failed, because I could never seem to bleed all the air out of it. I limped the vehicle this way for a month or so before having the head gaskets done. I would just crack the bleeder screw to relieve the pressure between drive cycles.

If you choose to do this job yourself be sure to have the heads checked by a machine shop before reinstalling them or just install remanufactured heads like I did. The reman heads only cost another $100 compared to having a machine shop go through them and risk being back at square one after paying them anyways.