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Started to notice a little bit of a decrease in fuel economy, bout 3mpg less. Car overheats if kept in 1st gear in tight traffic, 5-10mph with lots of coasting. Losing coolant somewhere. Car has felt as if there's a slight miss when I take off sometimes. I did a compresion test today. Noticed the plugs were white with a bit of buildup. Cylinders ran left to right 135---120---90---110. Last year they ran 157 across. 189k miles.

I put the plugs and wires back and went to town and now the car is missing out even more. Through all the gears especially if I press the gas heavily. It obviously needs new plugs/wires but does it seem like it needs a head gasket as well or is there something else I should look at?

That slight miss could be your intake getting junked up. Poor Sea Foam directly into the main vaccum on the intake and have someone else there to keep ur car running while you do this. That should take care of your miss problem aside from the sparkplugs.

Just used Seafoam last month. I need to figure out the problem as a whole...especially the compression issue and everything else I described.

sounds like a leaky water pump with a bad bearing.

SuperK wrote:sounds like a leaky water pump with a bad bearing.

Not questioning your intelligence or anything... my car is around the same compression + or - 10 to 20. What would a water pump have to do with compression? I'm just learning about the ins and outs so please don't flame me!

It sounds like a head gasket to me. Do you have excessive steam out the tailpipe?

I was thinking of the overheating in certain gears... my friend had a bad head gasket and it wasn't necessarily affecting his compression because it usually affects just one cylinder in my own experience. In my own opinion if the valves aren't seating or the rings aren't holding, that's where you lose the compression... but if he's overheating in certain areas, I would also think that if the coolant isn't circulating... it could be attributed to a bad water pump. you'd be able to see a bad head gasket if the oil is "beading" under the valve cover. that's the easy way that I was able to tell.

I just recently replaced my oil pan gasket, cam & crank shaft seal, water pump gasket, and oil pump gasket. When I put everything back to gether I had the timings 180 out. After I adjusted everything back to norm runs like a top... point of the story now my car is progressively getting worse and doing th same thing urs is doing.. :/ not sure what the deal is yet. Will find out this weekend and let you know when I find something out.

my car is actually doing the same things... well along the lines of it.... Rough Idle, Loss Of Power. Check engine light if i stay in a gear too long. I'm Actually thinking its my piston rings. or what you guys said. head gaskets. but i'm getting it looked out today. i'll post up when i figure it out.