Except this advice will only work 1/4 of the time. Head gasket leaks will end up in the cylinders before it ends up in the V. It's only going to be the very studious owner that notices the puff of steam at the exhaust pipe before it ends up being a busted cylinder.

 

There were no crusty deposits, I didn't report that.

 

compression test wont tell you much of anything. scots racer had this problem, and it was fine day to day driving, but on the race track, it would puke the water out the overflow in 5 laps. yet, compression showed no problems. leak down might show it.

 

two different types of leaks. one might only puke water out the head gasket out to the valley. (easily fixed by barrs stop leak) the other out of the fire-ring, which adds pressure to the water jacket, and then if big enough, can draw in water to the compbustion chamber. pushng out under 1000psi+ takes a much smaller hole or breech, vs drawing water in, which is a bigger hole or breech.

 

no, the cap only makes the boiling point lower, but if it boils, due to lack of pressure, then coolant escapes out the overflow, and then the engine can overheat.

 

sorry I was referring to the fact of the coolant cap needing to be replaced.

Putting on a good cap will raise the boiling temperature thus more pressure can be made in the cooling system thus it will take longer for the coolant to boil over VS a bad cap the boiling temp will be lower thus boilover will occur at a lower temperature, and or coolant can be lost out the overflow.

The deal with the early cars is that they pretty much all need new HGs ,
most that have not been changed will ooze coolant along the edges it may not be wet but you will eventually see white crusty deposits along the HG edges,
thus you may smell coolant and be losing coolant but it evaporates before it puddles.
Similar issues happen to the plastic capped radiators, the flange usually fractures along the top edge of the right tank due to the airpocket thats created from the core being lower than the tank top, plus this is where the hottest coolant flows, thus flexing the tank more than the cooler left tank

The left tank doesnt have the issue because it runs cooler and it also has vent tube to get the air out

 

190 degrees isnt a big deal. Alot of cars run 180-190 degree thermostats because the higher temps allow for cleaner emissions.

Flush your system that Barrs stop-leak stuff is the devil . You can end up with a ruined radiator or more.

The temp gauge issue is very common. My temp gauge can be all over the map, then a slap on the pod it will show the 'true' reading.

You may want to have a coolant analysis done. Blackstone-labs does this for about 30 bucks. The presence of hydrocarbons and combustion byproducts would indicate a headgasket breach or cracked head, however usually when the head is cracked you get coolant in the exhaust, when the gasket is compromised it gets combustion in the coolant. (From my experience.) Cars can run pretty well with cracked heads and bad headgaskets (For a short period of time).

check this out - http://www.macallister.com/183/coolant-analysis.htm

 

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