well i started my vacation last week and decided to go ahead and fix the exhaust leak i had from the header gaskets so i replaced them with new MLS ones from GM and everything was fine. well i get back from my nice trip to austin and on my way to work this morning i was slowing down for a car to turn and there was a pop and now i have a loud leak somewhere and the car is idling rough. i am thinking it may be a head gasket so my question is how would i go about checking that? and does anyone have any suggestions as to what else i may need to look for

 

Pop the hood with it running make shure there's no coolent or oil comen from the heads first befor you run it if that's square check your headers prolly the gasket you just installed but I would def. Exam along the heads and under the car for fluid how's the temp. look is the motor runnin hot??

 

car is staying at regular operating temp but yes it does warm up quickly. i've looked around and i can see no sign of any coolants or liquids around the block.

i ran the codes and got p137,160,301,1133,1153...any suggestions with these?

 

ok...well problem fixed. code 301 was cylinder misfire and when i went to check it....spark plug got shot out and was tucked under a something so therefore i didn't see when i did a quick glance at the motor. so...new spark plug is in and car is running good

 

Alright bro but be easy on her because something caused the detanation it's not normal to have a plugg blow out of the head look your other codes up and see what's up cause that's not cool to be chunkin pluggs il look your codes up get back with you!

 

Did you have the plugs out when fixing the exhaust leak? I can't possibly see how a tightened plug would shoot out of a cyl and not screw up the threads.

 

nope..plugs were still in.
i have never heard of anything like that happeneing either...when i looked at the plug a small portion of the threads were stripped but the new one went in and fits snug so i have no idea what happened

 

I think you might have got lucky!It could have been a lot worse.Just keep an eye on that plug.JMO,Mike

 

o yes...i seriously thought it was a blown head gasket and even when i saw the plug dangling there just hanging by the coil i also thought the threads would have been stripped. my question is though...why/how would a spark plug be shot out like that? when i replaced the gaskets maybe a few days before i went through and made sure all of the spark plugs were snug

 

I've seen that happen one time, when I was working at Saturn an ion redline blew a spark plug out of the head. The car was bone stock, and even gm couldn't come up with a good reason why it happened.

 

same here...i'm speechless really

but i have also noticed that after a month spark plugs on the drivers side sometimes come loose and i have to retighten them. not hardcore but when i move the connector boot i can kind of feel it wobble. think maybe someone who put them in before may have done something to cause this?

 

Could have worked its way out, does happen.

 

^^ This guy right here answered your question but you paid him no attention. You have detonation going on which is very hard on your motor. It is like a bunch of hammers in your combustion chamber. It backs the plugs out. Extreme heat there in TX and bad gas (too low of octane) could be part of it.

 

yeah i completely missed that post...sry bro
my next step is a tune though and i'm going to up the octane...just had a few things come up that set me back.

 

The tuner can see if the engine is "knocking" and pulling timing out. Hopefully you can get to the bottom of that before it hurts anything. Are you higher compression or anything?

 

not that i know of...stock motor and heads have never been changed so there's no new gaskets or anything that should change the compression