head gasket or oil ring

[91stang]

Hi my name is Luke George... i'm a member of the club. yall might remember my dad (the one with the SVT focus that ran with yall up in Danville?)

well i got a 91 stang and i've had some problems with it...

so i think i blew a head gasket but not sure. when it happened i did like a 5 second burnout and then drove home which was 20 mintues away. when i drove home i didn't notice anything wrong with the car. the next morning when i cranked it back up it was running like ****... half the power sluggish and a bunch of white smoke coming out the back (my friend said there was some bluw smoke in there but i don't remember seeing any) so i parked since. me and my friend started to work on it the other day and we pulled the spark plugs but these spark plugs are new since May and we found one that was a little darker than the others and the others were completely fine. this motor has 220,000 miles on it and no record of it burning oil but i have had to put more coolant in it atleast once a week depending on how i drive it that week.

so oil ring or head gasket??:burnout:

http://photos-373.ak.facebook.com/ip002/v55/234/3/36610157/n36610157_31412373_685.jpg

here's a picture (sorry for the bad quality) of the darker one compared to the other ones

thanks for your help

[jnatale3]

Looks more like an oil ring to me. The head gasket would allow small mixture of coolant plus the oil to saturate the plug. Very possible that particular cylinder lost it's compression and that explains the loss of power. Could the head gasket be blown in a certain area causing a bit of **** by too, sure. I would put my $$$ on the oil ring though.

As for adding coolant frequently, that sounds like a leak somewhere where coolant is needed, ie. the cyclinder head gasket. Try a compresssion test in each hole just for giggles. If all else fails, throw in a new 302! Good luck, you'll get it figured out.:grinking:
-Joe

[jnatale3]

Well, from what he is saying, I would guess a head gasket is the "main" problem.

[SM94Cobra]

You need to do a leak down test and that will tell you what the issue is. Sure sounds like a head gaskets with the whote smoke coming from the exhaust. Becareful cause if it gets bad enough you could warp something with the heat or possible hydro-lock the motor.

[droptopsnake01]

head gasket.

[jnatale3]

+1 Head gasket.