Techinfo Article 38 coming up.

99% chance you can save this and never have to do a headgasket. Off to get the link

Here you go

http://www.bonnevilleclub.com/forum/...e=article&k=38

Read this and get the oil and water out of it quick.. then pull all the plugs, crank it over a while to get the water out of the cylinders.

Then it'* time to start changing the upper intake manifold (most likely it has a hole in it) and also change your lower intake manifold gaskets as they should be done also. When you change them, use aluminum frame LIM gaskets from a dealer.

well this past weekend there was an oil change done, replaced uim and lim gaskets and valve cover gaskets, also the elbow was replaced. now is there a for certain way to determine if its the head gasket vs the intake since they pretty much have the same doggone symptoms. i guess im making progress now with the car.

The first way is to read that link posted. 99% of all Series 2 3800'* have or will have this failure. Please feel free to search in the 92-99 section. You will find that out of all the possibles...maybe once was a head gasket with different symptoms. They simply don't ever seem to go bad on the 3800'* .

Plus..to get at the head. you need to pull the upper intake. I'll bet you that if you go pull your TB off..you'll find that all your missing coolant is in your intake. Your car heated up..because you had no coolant in the radiator.. if you refill...and drown the motor further you'll find the engine stays cool while it has coolant.

True...having a steel block and steel heads, and assuming everything is torqued right from tghe get go I'd think it would be nearly impossible to blow the head gasket. if one or the other was aluminum we would probably have this problem on these cars.


Odds are its the upper intake mainfold.

Actually Hans..plenty of cast blocks and heads have had head gasket issues.

The 3800'* don't follow that suit.

so with all that water and steam coming from the air filter, do u think its the intake or do ineed to take the actual throttle body off to confirm

If you take off the throttle body..you will see that the intake is full of water. Which a head gasket won't do. It' will push water out the tail...but not the throttle body.

If you pull the intake manifold off... look in the area where the EGR stovepipe goes through it. It will be brittle and probably have a visible hole.

When you got to the parts store.. it was leaking, you turned it off..pressure built up and being that it was leaking...it filled the intake and open cylinders..that'* why it didn't want to start.

well i guess thats my project for tomorrow. i hope the water is still in it.

When you and your buddy from the dealer did the gaskets, did you use the new aluminum lower gasket like shown in the techinfo article? Did you inspect the upper intake before reusing it, in particular around the EGR stovepipe? Also, don't just look at it...poke around some. You may find that what looks like rather solid plastic, is not. If you've already used the new lower intake gasket, you probably can just get away with replacing the upper. All that information is in the link that Bill gave you.

It will be..that lower intake holds over a gallon in my estimation.