Depending on which engine you have, the first place to look on the way to the head gasket(s) is the intake manifold gaskets. To help with this, add a small bottle of dye to the coolant, then drive long enough for some coolant to be lost. Drain the coolant, then when you remove the intake manifold, use a black light to search on the gaskets. There's coolant passages in some intake manifolds, and those passages go into the heads, so a leak in the manifold gasket can let coolant get into the oil. The dye will show up as a bright yellow stain. You'll see that inside the passages, but you're looking for it in cracks in the gasket.
Intake manifold gaskets leak a real lot less than head gaskets but you never know; you might get lucky and not have to keep on going all the way to the head gaskets.
Tuesday, November 20th, 2012 AT 12:48 AM