jakemu24

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Ok. I have long list of symptoms for this problem so hopefully I can get a good answer. This is for an 87 951.

Car stumbles at cold start up until it warms up for a minute. A small amount of white smoke comes out the tail pipe which smells sweet, again a small amount.

Sometimes I find a small puddle of coolant directly under the center front of the car, but I can't tell exactly where it is coming from.

In the picture by the circle #1 I find a little puddle of coolant directly under the hose that connects to the engine.

There is moisture on the top of the oil cap, but the oil and coolant are clean.

Temp guage moves towards hot relatively quicky after hard use of the turbo. It then goes back down to the normal zone when the tubo is not engaged for a little bit.

I am assuming that there is some internal comsumption of coolant. I don't know if this is a head gasket leak or not? If so, maybe just a really small one? Could the themostat be the culprit or will only the head gasket allow an internal leak?

Any ideas guys? How serious and costly is this?

Techno Duck

Water under the oil cap isnt a big deal as water tends to condense there.

When you say stumbles, is it misfiring (IE running on 3 cylinders)? Next time it does this, immediately shut the car off and pull all four of the plugs. One may or maynot look wet (probably will). Look into each cylinder with a flashlight and you may find coolant pooling on top of one of the pistons.

A trick you can try is to run the car up to normal, temp. Then shut it off. Wait about an hour or two and start it up again. If the car misfires, you probably have a leaking headgasket. You can double check this by doing the same exact thing, but after shutting the car off, carefully depressurize the cooling system by removing the cap (again do this carefully). Start the car up an hour or so later..it probably wont misfire. My car was only leaking coolant into the cylinder when the car was shut off.

Compression test may, or may not turn up problems. It did not for my car with a split fire ring on the headgasket.

Sounds like you are having the same issues i had with my n/a when my headgasket went. The leak was small enough that a compression test turned up even compression on all cylinders. Car misfired on cold starts (but did not if i depressurized the coolant system before). Car temps went up very quickly, but dropped very quickly also.

jakemu24

good idea, ill have to try that.

Mongo

Does your car also push coolant out of the reservoir overflow hose (i.e. a puddle just below the left front wheel somewhere?) That is a sure sign that a compression leak through the head gasket is pressurizing the cooling system, hence a head gasket failure.

Lizard944

Looks like you have a part of the water pump circled. Mine was recently leaking from that exact spot. I borrowed the pressure tester from Autozone and saw the leak. It was just the gasket leaking and fortunately not the pump shaft seal. Problem fixed by tightening the several pump bolts that you can see. Thankfully, I didn't have to remove the timing covers . If you can see coolant streaming down the front of the exposed part of the pump, then it's probably just the gasket. Tap lightly on the several bolts that you can see to "wake up" the threads, and tighten them a little. Don't overtighten, you don't want to break one... Rough running in the a.m.. "sweet smell in exhaust" Are you confusing a coolant smell with a rich smell?? Will run richer when cold starting. Still using 20w-50 during these cold mornings? Engine will run richer and rougher until that molasses warms up.

jakemu24

I have not noticed any coolant overflowing. As for the small leak, i have never acctually seen it leak, but have found a puddle the size of a nickle or quarter on occasion. The car does run rich but the white smoke tells me it's the coolant. I just really don't want it to be the head gasket because that's more work then I'm looking for.......