YotaTech Forums - Rebuilt 3VZ-E Burning Coolant!?

Here's the background. This January, the engine in my '91 4x4 pickup had a burnt exhaust valve on cyl. 6. I decided to rebuild. I took out the engine, tore it down, and rebuilt the entire thing; I didn't take any shortcuts. That means I took the heads and block to a machine shop, where they cleaned everything, bored the cylinders, resurfaced the block and heads, cut the valve seats, ground the crankshaft, new pistons, etc. I replaced EVERYTHING.

Back in May, I got the motor back in and it's been running great. I've only put ~5000 miles on it since then, but I haven't had any problems. About a month ago, I was hearing some sloshing around in the dashboard, and I come to find out the coolant is a bit low. I figured maybe there had been an air bubble in the heater core all summer and that I hadn't noticed because the valve had been closed. I topped it off, and a couple weeks later, it's low again...

Now I'm constantly looking in my mirror checking my exhaust. There is NEVER any white smoke once the engine is up to temperature. But, for the first 3-5 minutes, it seems like there's a little more smoke than there would be from just condensation.

I think I'm posting for two reasons. First, I really don't want there to be a blown headgasket/cracked head, and I'm probably in denial. So if you can think of anything else that might be going on, I'd love to hear about it. The second is that I really don't want to spend a bunch more money on this engine, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to tackle this cheaply. Based on the fact that the heads and block were just resurfaced, I'm worried that one of the heads or a cylinder wall is cracked. If that's the case, then I can't really think of any cheap way to fix this. On the other hand, if it's a leaking headgasket, then I don't want to just slap another one on because I'll probably have the same problem in a couple thousand miles. Any ideas???

Thanks!