head gasket
 

Hello all, im new to the saturn forum and this is my first posting here.

Last year i bought my girlfriend a new car for her birthday and. . . .well, not new but new to her, and better than her old car.

I bought a 1996 SC2 from a friend (first mistake) he has a shared driveway and room for only one car and decided to sell the saturn because it was smaller than the 4dr civic.

Im not going to bore you with all the details from this quagmire but one day she was driving it and called me up crying that the check engine light was on. i popped the hood and checked everything and it was all in order except the coolant was low. I topped it off and after a little while it went down again.

Its not mixing (thank god) I took it to my mechanic to have a dye test done and he couldn't find any leaks but i have white smoke coming from the tail pipe so from what iv read it leaking into the cylinders and burning out the exhaust.

unfortunately i dont have $1500 (best case scenario) to get it fixed. so the guy at the parts store talked me into something by K&W called permanent head gasket & block repair with nanotechnology. im no expert but it looked like it might be a good product, however after i bought it i thoroughly read through the instructions and saw that there was 12 steps and an overnight wait etc, etc and i didnt have time for that bullcrap so i bought something faster from blue devil. A family emergency came up and i ran out of time to do it so i parked it for the winter and am going to give it a shot and i just want to see what the consensus is before i do anything and collect opinions on which product to use or even if i should bother.

The previous owner took very good care of the car (as good of care as a non car person could) and did tell me that he had to occasionally add coolant but never had any issue other than that. i heard from a few people that the DOHC's were good motors and i guess thats why i didnt do too much more research before purchase.

I sure hope i can get a cheap easy solution for this but with my luck it wont be. any help would be very much appreciated

P.S. my mechanic also told me that saturns are susceptible to warped heads due to overheating caused by leaky head gaskets. (crossing fingers thats not the case here)

-SPCG

I have never seen an overhaul in a can product make a permanent repair. Stop leak products sometimes can get you home but usually gum up the works.
If your car has not overheated but is only using coolant it is possible that just the headgasket needs replacement. Gaskets do deteriorate if the proper coolant maintenance has not been done.

If the white exhaust smoke smell sweet and no other leaks can be found, I would agree that it is most likely a head gasket issue.

Nip it in the bud before more of the gasket gets compromised and you start getting the coolant + oil milkshake. And do not let it overheat.

Replace the head gasket with a quality one and forget about super mega gasket blast sparkling liquid in a can. Would a GM dealer use it alone and warranty the work?

Before i knew what was wrong with it it overheated once on her when she was driving it. to the best of my knowledge thats the only time. im not sure what happened when the previous owner had it.

And as far as proper coolant maintenance? im not sure. i put standard green in it because thats what was in it when i looked in the reservoir, i didn't see any markings specifying dex. is it supposed to take dex? i know GM has a tendency to do stupid $#!t like that.

moved to S series Coupe sectiion