Picked up a 96 GT awhile back, it was pushing coolant out of the tank when you try to start it, steaming smells like coolant from exhaust, and if you open the tank and smell it, it smells like raw exhaust fumes..

So after days of deliberation, tonight i started to pull the heads/intake off for a head gasket job not knowing for sure that that was the problem..well, i think its confirmed now that it is a head gasket, but what do you guys think?

 

pull the sparkplugs .. the cleanest ( new looking ) will be where the leak is ..

 

I think that guy used crappy oil

 

plugs are comin out next. Cant say about the oil, but i personally dont use anything but Castrol & Lucas

 

My friend's 4.6 was stained rust colored like that motor and he used Castrol, I believe. Not sure what does it. I just used whatever cheap crap I found and my motor looked fine after 70k miles (until I melted a couple pistons).

Did you drain the oil pan yet? The sludge on the top of the valve cover definitely looks like coolant/oil sludge, but I'd expect a fair amount of coolant to be in the pan. If so, you definitely want to drain it since there is a lot of steel/iron down there that doesn't like water.

If you do end up doing head gaskets, Ford makes a head changing kit for about $100 that comes with new head and exhaust gaskets (which would be about $300 by themselves) and head bolts. Do NOT have the heads decked, as it will throw off timing.

 

headgasket, flush radiator as well

 

Lucas is not good for the 4.6 the oil passages are way to small for it.

 

I wouldn't use any additives at all.
Do some oil research here: www.bobistheoilguy.com
Hope everything goes well.

 

After looking on corral forums, they seem to think its just condensation from where the car sat up for 4 yrs, so they are saying to flush all the oil out, clean it out as best as i can, and see what it does then

 

Looking at the first couple lines of your original post, I would disagree.

But it shouldn't hurt to try and run it if you want as long as you don't let it run for too long.

 

yeah im with twnscw...i'm more than willing to bet it's a headgasket

 

I have some head bolts laying around (new Ford TTY bolts) if you do end up taking the heads off

Also, if you do end up taking them off, find some PI heads and PI intake and get another 40-50 rwhp for relatively cheap.