Hello all I'm a newbie at getting under the hood and diagnosing my toyota. I have an 85 pickup re and I don't get any power at full throttle. The truck starts however when I step on the gas there is hardly no acceleration and backfires (sometimes).

Things I've checked: distributer cap and rotor, spark plugs, compression, I've checked the valves spacing and chain to make sure it didn't skip a tooth, timing (also made sure it was at tdc), harmonic balancer (to make sure key way didn't slip).

My question is what are symptoms of a blown head gasket????

Any feed back would be appreciated. Thanks

 

Losing coolant, smoke from exhaust, chocolate milkshake oil, oil in coolant, sweet smelling exhaust.

 

compression and leakdown tests can help diagnose too

 

How would I perform a leakdown test... I did run compression test and the first piston is at 170 2nd thru 4th were at 150ish. I could retest. The engine oil does look chocolatey.

Another factor I noticed was that the exhaust manifold is glowing red...

 

Milkshake oil is not good. If that is caused by a head gasket then there is water in your oil and you want to get that fixed before your barrings are ruined. I want to hear opinions about the glowing exhaust. Is that caused by the fuel mixture?

 

Clogged catalytic?

 

Yea, gunna have to agree with rattle, clogged cat can cause exhaust not to flow freely and thus the manifold will get very hot, which in turn probably ruined your HG

 

Ok thanks to all for your replies, 2 ppl said the same thing that it could b caused by the clogged catalyic so I will check that out...