Do i have a bad head gasket

Asked by GuruJ53JH Aug 03, 2020 at 02:55 AM about the 1997 Mercury Sable GS Sedan FWD

Question type: Maintenance & Repair

Hello
I have a 1997 mercury Sable (v6) so about 2 weeks
ago when I started the car it would idle but it would
die out so I was driving to work and the car just died
out I was able to get it into a parking lot and I noticed
that steam was coming from where I put coolant so I
drove it to work and after about 2 hours I checked the
coolant and it took all I had and it didn't even top it of
so I took it to a shop and they did a diagnostic test
and two separate carbon test and both was positive
indicating head gasket failure and suspect leak is
internal they put on seal tabs to reduce coolant so I
had a friend of the family to look at it he works in a
mechanic shop plus going to school to be a mechanic
he said he 98% sure it's not a head gasket and told me
that it's either a hose or the water pump or the
radiator can someone help me out thanks

1 Answer

103,215

Just do a compression test to be certain if it is or isn't a head gasket. You can rent or even borrow a tester from most any auto parts store. It threads into the spark plug hole. If any cylinder tests well below other cylinders, then that is considered to be a blown gasket. Meantime you need to make sure the cooling system is up to par before driving it, constantly driving it and running low on coolant and overheating engine will drastically reduce engine life.

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