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I took off my intake manifold to put on a millenia IM..... and two of the ports have a tiny bit of coolant on the vavles. The car has been sitting for a month.

Is my head gasket destroyed? Should I start crying?

Oh ya, cry a river and then some. I'm in the same boat and plan to do an engine swap instead of replacing head gaskets. F--- that sh_t.

Coolant.... on the valves.

How in the H does that happen?

I can't even imagine. Seriously. Some cars have coolant flowing through the manifold, we do not.

I know if you port out the exhaust side, you can accidentally experiment with water injection on the exhaust side.

Did you spill it down there?

its possible I spilled it because i did disconnect some coolant lines, but there aren't any signs of spillage, and its in very opposite ports.

Even if your headgasket was leaking, thats BELOW the valves, you'd have coolant in the cylinders.

Is it a lot? A little? might be a cracked head, but you should be able to see that.

Both heads would have to be cracked, they are in

XXC
CXX (c=coolant, x=dry)

I'll look at it again tomorrow. It's very weird for it to be up there. I could just be dirty water too, its been super humid out and it's been sitting for a month.

Its verrry suspicious

That is so messed. I don't know what to tell you. Check down the plug holes, is there any down there?

my k8ze also had the same issue when i took off the IM small amount on top of the valve but my car doesnt over head but does use a small amount of antifreez so i have to refill it every month like 1 qrt or so but runs good and doesnt get hot or act differnt and my car doesnt smoke either . been like this for more than a year

It probably dripped out of the IM. I know that when I recently pulled my Milli IM, I ended up leaking coolant all over the place, even a week+ after it was out of the car. It will leak more than you'd think it should, so I'd put my money on a simply drip issue. Smell the fluid too, as you likely know it will be a simple test.

Coolant flows through the throttle body, I don't know what the odds of that leaking are...

tehbrookzorz wrote:Coolant flows through the throttle body, I don't know what the odds of that leaking are...

Not that slim, and I meant TB, not IM I need to drop the late night browsing... It's 6 am now, and I just pulled a homework allnighter... 3rd one in a row.

Ok this is too weird, better call William Shatner.
Anyway when I start my Probe with the coolant cap off there's bubbles in the water. I know my head gasket is blown. Bubbles shouldn't be in the coolant besides the fact that my coolant disappears.

ive taken mine off and coolant goes everywhere im almost 100% certain that its just spilled there...

If you decide to do your head gaskets make sure you get the heads checked for true and checked for cracks.

Daninski wrote:Ok this is too weird, better call William Shatner.
Anyway when I start my Probe with the coolant cap off there's bubbles in the water. I know my head gasket is blown. Bubbles shouldn't be in the coolant besides the fact that my coolant disappears.

That could simply mean that you have a leak somewhere and your overflow tank is empty. When the engine cools and the coolant recedes it's sucking air into the system from the overflow tube. Then next start up bubbles are present.

This is not evidence of a blown head gasket.

to the OP... this is almost certainly just spillage. Removing the IM is a messy business.