Head Gasket?

I have a 94 ford Explorer, it has been running hot recently so I replaced the water pump, thermostat, hoses, and radiator. Since replacing all of this I notice that the water temp gauge is telling me everything is ok, but when I stop it will move up but never to the red area of the gauge. When I stop the car water is boiling back in to the over flow. Any idea what this is? My Grandfather told me to check for white smoke, and water from the tail pipe. I have not seen either of these.

Reply to
gsappraisals
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To me it sounds like a head gasket leak. On my '91 I put in about 1/4 can of radiator stop-leak that said it seals head and head gasket leaks just to determine if the thing was worth fixing. That was about a year ago and I have not had any problems since other than my heater core got clogged from the stop-leak. When the heater core was clogged the temp gauge was going pretty high up there. I had put in a whole can of stop-leak when the heater core got clogged.

Supposedly you can buy test strips from auto parts store to check for CO on the coolant which would indicate a head leak but I've never tried it.

I know it's a real PITA to get at a couple of those spark plugs but a compression test that shows one, or two adjoining cylinders with low compressiom would be another strong indication of a head leak.

When I had white smoke it was from a leaking intake manifold gasket. This is another common problem on the early Explorers. If you do have to replace the head gaskets then you'll end up replacing the manifold and valve cover gaskets too and then everything should be perfect ;-)

Reply to
Ulysses

My 92 did that years ago. The clue here was that when it started moving gain, the temp dropped back to normal. The answer turned out to be the fan clutch. The fan was slipping and did not supply enough air when idling at a stop. Once underway the air flow through the grill was sufficient to return things to normal.

Charlie

Reply to
Charlie Bress

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