1997 cobra blown head gasket, what next?

Where did you find the coolant? Underneath the valve covers, on the valve train? Or did you find the water around the intake and between the heads? There's a huge difference. It sounds to me like you are just seeing coolant leaks outside of the engine, not mixing with oil, but please clarify it.

These engines aren't bad about blowing head gaskets, especially without power adders.

bhuff30 said:

These engines aren't bad about blowing head gaskets, especially without power adders.

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+1 very rarely do 4.6 blow head gaskets, even with a power adder its very rare because they have MLS gaskets....

So how about some more details? Where is the smoke coming from? What color is it? Do you have to add coolant or oil at times?

The milkyness on the PCV is nothing to be concerned about. That area typically can have milkyness due to moisture from the crankcase (specifically blowby).

as stated above alot of motors will have a little bit of that milky stuff on the pcv or oil cap. it's jut normal moisture in the crankcase. dodges are the worst with this. now your running rough problem could have everything to do with the two very important codes you have stored in your computer. it sounds like to me you have a vacuum leak somewhere. if you are familiar with the ways to check for a vacuum leak than do it, if not than just take it to a reputable shop so they can take a peek at it. i dont think you have a head gasket problem at all....just a lean running engine because of another problem.

Sounds just like mine when I blew a headgasket, it would overheat from combustion gases leaking into the coolant system. I didn't see any milky oil/water mixtures, but my gasket was fried I saw it myself when u got my heads taken off.

yea i know, i was pretty distraught myself when it happened

the way mine started was that every now and then it would overheat just like yours and it would spit out coolant because it got so hot. So one day i was cruising down the freeway and it turned off on me. Turns out almost ALL the water had either been spit out or evaporated from the heat and the block was running under load almost bone dry. I cussed a little, filled it up with water again, and it ran fine.

So about a month later im on the freeway again and my car suddenly starts shaking violently, the CEL is flashing at me, and i didnt know wtf was going on. Turns out the driver's side gasket was fried and water was pouring into two cylinders, so only 6 cylinders were firing. I was getting billowing clouds of white smoke coming out of the exhaust while it was runnig.

Had a mechanic pull the heads, the one with the messed up gasket was pretty charred and noticeably heated, but he was able to plane the bottom of the head enough to make it even. Im sure there was some warping but obviously not enough to screw up my heads. The only thing he did make sure to let me know was that I should by some of those cheap head gaskets, the ones that are made of that cheap fibrous material instead of straight up metal performance ones because the cheap ones would seal better with some of the imperfection the head had.

so all in all, he pulled apart my motor and planed and cleaned my heads/valves, while also fixing some other things like broken tensioners, etc. With some new seals/gaskets it cost me about $6-700 total but thats because he fixed alot of other little things, labor itself was 350 not sure if thats good enough although he pulled the entire top off and resurfaced the heads, etc.

im guessing it blew because of the times it overheated, which were caused by the faulty gasket in the first place, because i tried EVERYTHING else to make it stop overheating, from replacing the t-stat, to cleaning the rad, etc.

if you get it fixed, BUY NEW GASKETS, ALL OF THEM lol

i made the mistake of not buying new manifold gaskets and now i can hear a leak

other than that my car is fine, its been fine for over 16,000 miles

good luck man.

it was a certified mechanic that works at our local ford dealership, but he did it on the side, most mechanics do work like that on the side. Try to find a mechanic like that if the shop wants too much

yeah i had to drive mine like a mile or so to the mechanic too, it just sputtered while throwing white clouds of smoke, im lucky it didnt hydrolock lol

good luck man.