help: rough idle, sweet smell, smokey...

[qbnb]

alright, so as the subject implies, my car just started acting funny. i drive a 1986.5 toyota supra. the body has 250000km and the engine has 80000km. on my way home tonight, as i pulled away from a light, i noticed the car chug a bit and a sweet smell coming from the vents. a couple minutes later, when i pulled up to my house, i also noticed an excess of exhaust and the sweet smell had not gone away. i sat for a minute and also noted that the car was idling pretty hard. does anybody have any idea what this might mean? i appreciate any and all responses i might get. thanks.

[Inthered]

Could be a coolant leak or blown headgasket. Check coolant and go from there.

[qbnb]

well, i hope it's not the headgasket. the engine, as i said, has only 80,000 km's on it and until today felt great. my stepdad (former mechanic) seems to think it may be a problem with the heater core, after i described the symptoms. how would i go about checking the coolant anyways; quick apologies, i'm still new. i should also state, that this jdm motor should still have a couple months remaining on it's warranty; parts not labor of course. any other ideas?

[qbnb]

alright, so i dropped the car off at certigard this morning and i should be hearing from them any minute now. the more i think about it, the more i'm thinking it's the headgasket that's gone. assuming it is, what would everyone suggest i do? should i go stock oem headgasket, or step it up and try some sort of metal headgasket? thanks for the input, i look forward to hearing from everyone.

[qbnb]

oh, and where is a good place for metal headgaskets and that sort of thing here in calgary?

[bituerbo]

Yeah that sounds just like a headgasket. Are you sure the engine has 80,000 km, or was it put in 80,000km ago? turbo or NA?

Sweet smell is coolant, rough idle most likely means it's not getting compression on a cylinder or cylinder(s), and white smoke out the exhaust is just the coolant leaking into the cylinder and burning off, so it's probably not going to be a heatercore. Good thing about the supra is it's an inline-6, which means it's only got 1 headgasket, which means there's no guessing which bank it's on.

Just get an oem, or oem equivalent headgasket, unless it's a turbo and you plan on upping the boost.

Engine's shouldn't be blowing headgaskets out at 80k, find out which cylinder it was and check the sparkplug and see if there are deposits, and what colour those deposits are (will also be evident on the cylinder head since it's going to be off anyways). My $$$ is on a lean condition.

[qbnb]

Originally posted by bituerbo
Yeah that sounds just like a headgasket. Are you sure the engine has 80,000 km, or was it put in 80,000km ago? turbo or NA?

Sweet smell is coolant, rough idle most likely means it's not getting compression on a cylinder or cylinder(s), and white smoke out the exhaust is just the coolant leaking into the cylinder and burning off, so it's probably not going to be a heatercore. Good thing about the supra is it's an inline-6, which means it's only got 1 headgasket, which means there's no guessing which bank it's on.

Just get an oem, or oem equivalent headgasket, unless it's a turbo and you plan on upping the boost.

Engine's shouldn't be blowing headgaskets out at 80k, find out which cylinder it was and check the sparkplug and see if there are deposits, and what colour those deposits are (will also be evident on the cylinder head since it's going to be off anyways). My $$$ is on a lean condition.

just out of curiosity, what is a lean condition?
and i'm sure you can imagine my suprise when a jdm 7m-ge with only 80,000km's blows its headgasket. go figure it happened a month, almost to the day, outside of the warranty. anyways, like i said, it's at certigard as we speak. hopefully they'll be able to tell me what the deal is. as for the metal headgasket, i just thought that might help prevent this from happening again...

[Weapon_R]

JDM engine = mileage UNKNOWN.

[qbnb]

89,000km according to the company that sold it.

[bituerbo]

Lean condition is when the cylinder isn't getting enough fuel to match the air going in. Rich condition is sort of similar, but there is too much fuel getting into the cylinder. I think optimal conditions would be something like a 12:1 mixure (12 parts air for every 1 part fuel) but that's irrelevant now, as I'm sure you dont' have an A/F meter to compare these numbers to.

The downside to running lean is that when there is less fuel and more air being burned, it generates too much heat, causing your engine to run hotter than normal. This is how a lean condition translates into you blowing your headgasket.

Causes for a lean condition are anything that would interrupt the flow of fuel to your cylinder; such as dirty fuel injector, old fuel filter, not enough fuel pressure (such as the injector being at the end of the fuel rail).

[bituerbo]

Originally posted by qbnb
89,000km according to the company that sold it.

Hehehe yeah, assume it had at least double that.

[qbnb]

alright, so i just heard back from certigard. they ran a compression test and found cylinder #1 full of coolant. they believe a blown head gasket is the best case scenario. they estimate cost for this repair to be upwards of $1000. now, seeing as how i've had this car for under a month, i'm ready to explode. there were no indications of any problems whatsoever. the guy said that there is also the possibility of a cracked head/cracked block. what does everyone think i should do?

[Weapon_R]

Originally posted by qbnb
alright, so i just heard back from certigard. they ran a compression test and found cylinder #1 full of coolant. they believe a blown head gasket is the best case scenario. they estimate cost for this repair to be upwards of $1000. now, seeing as how i've had this car for under a month, i'm ready to explode. there were no indications of any problems whatsoever. the guy said that there is also the possibility of a cracked head/cracked block. what does everyone think i should do?

Find someone else to do it for cheaper. I'm sure someone on here can do it for half of that.

[qbnb]

thanks, any help on pointing me in the right direction?

[bituerbo]

Sorry I'm new to town, don't know anyone I could personally recommend. Now you know the problem go into one of the more frequented forums and create a topic.