DH6twinotter

Hey all,

So, I was up the road at the store and noticed a bit of smoke coming up by the firewall. After a quick look underneath, I noticed about 1 liters worth of coolant on the pavement. I went ahead and drove it the half mile back to my apartment and popped the hood for a better look. After digging around a bit, it looks like the smoke is coming up from between the exhaust manifold and head, right at the back corner by the #6 cylinder.

The thing that gets me is that the truck runs fine. No coolant in the oil, no white stuff under the cap, no white sweet smelling exhaust--everything seems fine, except for the bit of smoke and coolant loss.

Is there anything down on that side of the block that may be spraying coolant on the exhaust manifold? Maybe a coolant drain plug or something? Or does a externally leaking head gasket sound like the culprit?

Truck has 204,xxx miles on it and head gaskets were replaced at about 134,xxx by the previous owners.

Any thoughts or suggestion would be great!

Thanks!
Daniel

Jay351

Almost sounds like your coolant is leaking out and hitting your manifold or somthing..
Sure does not strike me as a hg issue..

pruney81

Whenever my head gasket went it was smoking from around the exhaust manifold on the driver's side but there wasn't any visible coolant leaks.

881stGenRunner

does it only leak when the truck is off? Or does it do it when it is running too? I had a similar problem, mine turned out to be a small hose at the very back of the engine that had a small hole in it. It would be fine with the truck running since coolant was flowing, but when you turned it off and pressure built up, it would piss everywhere. I went to Advance and bought some similar sized hose, and replaced it. Problem solved.

kevinkal

Below cylinder #4 (next to 6), many 3VZ-E's have a coolant nipple coming out of the block going to an oil cooler. Any chance one of these hose connections is spraying up to the #6 manifold area?

A few years ago, my 3VZ-E's water bypass piple developed a pin hole leak that spewed coolant onto the crossover pipe between the engine and firewall. I think it was caused by acidic cooling fluid.

You obviously know that cylinder #6 is the hot one for a 3VZ-E and the likely place to get the dreaded head gasket failure. I took a quick look at a picture I had for cylinder 6's head gasket area shortly after removing my heads. It shows how much gasket thickness is near the coolant ports.. may help you find the leak. Hopefully its not the gasket though. pic is attached below.

DH6twinotter

Thanks for the suggestions! Forgot to mention that it doesn't start smoking or leaking coolant until after the truck get warmed up. After that it starts to smoke a bit from that back corner. After I shut it down, it'll smoke for a couple of minutes and stop. There aren't any hissing sounds or anything of that sort.

I'll see if I can take some pics tonight after work.

I also found a piece of gasket sitting inside my radiator about a month ago. I'll take a picture of that too.

Thanks all.