Just picked up a 1997 JX convertible. 2.5L, 150,000 miles. The previous owner had been told by 2 different repair shops that the head gasket is bad. There is antifreeze mixing in the oil. He had ran it this way for 20,000 miles! He did do regular oil changes, but for some reason was using a very heavy weight oil. (I can't recall what it was exactly). Right before he quit driving it the radiator sprung a leak and he overheated the engine.
Does it sound plausible that the head gasket is the culprit? The engine sounds and runs great.
A bud of mine seems to think, that with whats happening, that it sounds like the intake manifold gasket is blown?
Is it highly likey that the aluminum head warped when he overheated it? Not sure how long he drove it or how severly he overheated.
Any thoughts are appreciated.

 

To be completely honest, he's done damn good to keep the engine running this long... ours finally blew up at 130k miles... There was a recall on the cooling system a while back ago, but seeing as how most of these cars are no longer in warranty, and they're just getting old, they don't offer to fix it for you without charging you an arm and a leg.... If you have A/F in the oil, it's a good bet that the head gasket is probably blown, or the head warped like you said... When ours quit, the temp was pegged out on red and it just quit running... If that engine got hot enough to quit, wether it runs good now or not, it's a good bet to just buy a new engine... We're finally wrapping up our engine replacement at about 40 hours of man power 80 if you count it twice for two people, though we really didn't need both of us the whole time.... Best I can tell you, is to pull the heads and take them to a machine shop where they can tell you if it warped or not, and wether or not it can be fixed... just to get those heads out, I'd say you're looking at about 8 hours, then another 9 or 10 to get them back in... it's a finicky motor, and it'll be a chore to fix it, but that's going to be up to you... shops will charge you quite a bit for it, so, I'd think about making it a good project.... All of the freeze plugs tend to corrode out on those motors too, so I would check those while you're in there... along with the motor mounts... good luck, I'll be in touch if you need anything...