Charley B

Hoping for an answer before Randy see's this.

Kid has a V-6 Toyota with a slight (occasional white smoke) head gasket leak and he's wondering if he can get by for a month with a stop leak until he can afford to tear it down.

Any thought's on advisability and/or type of stop leak?

Mrmerlin

Chas it might be a cracked head, has the car ever overheated.
Ahh some Toys have headgasket problems and were fixed by the factory recall

killav

I had an old chevy 350 that had an hairline crack in the exterior of the cylinder head that was fixed with a pour in the radiator "stop leak" stuff. The hair line crack was in the water jacket and was about 1.5 inches long. I bought the stuff from Carquest many many years ago and cannot remember the name. But it did work for years after I carefully followed the instructions. I do not know if it would be very effective with a "pressurized" type of leak around the cylinder head to piston area. I think he should give it a try cause it won't make it any worse for a month before he does the re-build.

Charley B

No overheating and no noticable loss of coolant. No evidence of water in the oil. Just an occassional cloud of white smoke out the exhaust after car has warmed up.

Is the silver flake stuff preferable or the Barsleak black crap the way to go.

SharkSkin

What is now a gasket leak may become a cracked block and/or heads in short order, even if he treats it with all due care.

A quick story to illustrate. I was living in an apartment where I could not change my own oil. My '74 Z had a minor headgasket leak like you describe, and I was nursing it along for the few weeks that I needed, kinda like you're describing. I was changing the oil every couple weeks as water built up in the system, until this one jackass at Oil Changers decided that he would ignore my request to NOT TOUCH A F"in THING under the hood except fill cap, filter and dipstick. So moron boy decides he's going to flip the pressure release on my radiator cap down.

10 miles later, what had been a stable situation of nursing an ailing motor along until I could get to fixing it right(probably head gasket & resurface head) was a cracked block and a head warped beyond rescue.

So... I'd say that if Kid is in a position to replace the motor, go ahead and roll the dice on a fix that may end up being more "temporary" than intended. If Kid has to fix it on the cheap when fixing time comes -- e.g. can't afford to replace stuff like ruined heads & block -- then I would advise against.

D

Bill51sdr

There was a recall campaign in the 90's on Toyota V-6's due to the fact that their red coolant, when not changed regularly goes acidic and eats headgaskets. The V-6 engine was especially prone to this for some reason. Toyota knows of this problem...

Charley B

All the recall info I could find (there's a lot of it) seemed to pertain only to the V-6 trucks, and apparently they quit honoring the recall in 2004.

Jim bailey - 928 International

I saw a 944 that was billowing plums of white "smoke" until it got a couple cans of Barr's leak. It then drove 30 miles to the wholesale auction started and ran for 15 minutes until it crossed the auction block and drove away with a new owner..... No white smoke after the treatment. Was it fixed? , nope.

Bill51sdr

Well, you didn't specify . I can't believe they actually honored it for that long!