Today's Events:
1) Left home and after the car was at a normal temperature (with highway driving, but not really pushing the engine at all), my heat was cold.

2) Left to go somewhere else, drove it a good bit harder (pushed for acceleration), heat came on hot.

3) Driving down the interstate, accelerated to pass a car, and I hear faint *click* and the sound of the exhaust (which i normally love) gave a continuous hiss when i was on the gas. (enough of one to scare me) The hiss is louder at higher RPMs.

4) Stopped to check on the hiss, and put more antifreeze in the car (bad water pump, different story). Dropped antifreeze resevoir cap into the engine, never to be found again (did not fall onto the ground, even after driving home). At the time, I did not have ANY coolant in the reserve tank. (Sorry for underlining, but I really hope that the above is my only problem for today.)

5) Got home, sat in the parking lot of my complex and revved/drove the car. (The antifreeze that I added was about half gone, so I refilled it and just assumed that the car drank what it needed.) The hissing is not really apparent during revving unless you get up to about 5000 rpm, but when you are driving, no matter what gear you are in, the hissing is very apparent when you get to about 2000 rpm.

6) My mother was there, so I had her crank the car after it had been off for about 5 minutes. She cranked (no gas revving) and the muffler "spit out" two small shavings. There are no apparent marks on the outside that anything is wrong. I turned the car off and came in to talk to you guys. I really hope somebody can HELP ME!!! as I am distraught...

Ok, venting over...suggestions may begin.

 

ummm... sounds like your max just ate a head gasket. Check for coolant in the oil.

 

i doubt it has anything to do with the muffler.. those shaving could just be some sort of debrit... was it just recently installed? or maybe it could be some sort of gasket

 

It was not installed recently... I think it was just random debris...It just started doing the hissing today...

I just drove it some more (not pushing it, very light driving) and the muffler also has a gargling sound to it. Help!

 

is there a loss of power at all

is the hiss comming from the engine bay or under the car

 

ya id say head gasket check oil for antifreeze, hissin could be air escaping from a cylinder because of a blown headgasket!! unno hope not though for ur sake.

 

Ok...I checked my oil for antifreeze earlier today, but I didn't see anything but normal oil...I will definitely check it later tonight...

As far as loss of power, there really isn't one that I know of, but I really hear the hissing at 2000rpm, so I don't push it past 2500rpm and haven't driven it very far. So as far as loss of power, I don't NOTICE one, but I'm not pushing it hard enough to really have one.

How much for a head gasket and how hard to install?

The sound comes from the back of the car at the muffler, sounds like air hissing and little drops gurgling, but the gurgling is very light. The hissing however, is enough to send chills down my back cuz it just SOUNDS expensive...

BTW, can I still drive it? (very short distance from my house to work....like 1 mile, I'm not an idiot, not gonna drive 6 hours on it) Or will driving it make it much worse???

 

Drive as far as you want.
JUST PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR GAUGES!
if you really did blow your head gasket you'll overheat pretty quickly normally (But not in this weather)

 

A Agree JUST PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR GAUGES! If its the rear headgasket its gunna be a btch to change sounds like it might be, specially if ur hearing water sizzling means that ur loosing coolant onto the manifold possibly and are u sure that ur water pump is leaving and its not coming from a bust gasket. If it is that rear gasket ur lookin at prolly like 300-600 to have it changed id say depends on the mechnic if ur gunna do it I think that the motor needs to be tilted foward to get the head off i may be wrong but ur gunna have to use some crazy angels to get a socket in there. Good luck hope its not the head gasket and dont accelerate fast at all u may be able to get extra few weeks out of it if your very easy on her

 

Even WITH the hissing, I can drive it just fine??? (It creeps me out.)

 

Random debris? You mean they crawled up in there for the warmth while you weren't looking only to be spit out?

Come on, they had to come from some where.

Mufflers don't hiss and they don't gargle....

Cooling systems both hiss and gargle.....

 

90SEBlack: VG doesn't need to be tilted to get heads off. I did it this summer, there is waayyy though room.

Anyway, I wouldn't drive it much until I had it looked at by someone that con determine the problem. Before you do drive it, check both the anit-freeze and the oil.

 

Ok, the oil looks a lot less like normal oil now, the mixing has begun (it seems). I guess the antifreeze got tired of leaking to the ground and wanted to leak somewhere more important so that I would pay more attention to it. Now, where is the head gasket (more specifically) and how much does it cost to replace it???

(must be pretty pricy cuz internetautomar hasn't given me a price yet.....)

Paycheck go bye-bye! Bye-bye paycheck!

 

did you ask?
sorry I didn't notice
the prices are on my webpage.
the head gasket is between the head and the block.
Get a FSM if you want more detail or if you want to attempt to do it urself.

 

lol...trying to say i'm a and I can't do it myself???

Just kidding, I'm gonna look at the manual and see how hard it is. If it's a lot of work, then I'll just have to let somebody else do it...

 

I tore down my VG this summer. I had several broken exhaust studs, so I pull the heads. I had a valve job done too. Anyway, it was a couple of weekends worth of work for me. But the FSM was invaluable.

I'd never taken an engine apart before... but I'm pretty good with fixing/repairing/assembling things. So, if the thought scares the hell out of you, don't do it. If you know that the car will run again, then you are golden...

Oh, and having tools helps too...

 

lol....tools, what's that????

I'm not scared, just don't want it to take forever, gotta have a pretty good turnaround...

 

You can do it in a weekend if you're decently mechanically inclined and don't have your head up your butt... I've never done it on a Max, but I've done a head swap on my Stang - I took my sweet time cuz it was a winter project, but I could've done it in a weekend.

 

If you really are a newbie to auto repair, then replacing a head gasket isn't where you should start. Especially on a car like the Max. That is unless you can find somebody who REALLY knows how to do this job and you can just follow them around to watch and hand them tools. This is one of those jobs that inexperienced people find easy to do while taking it apart, but it just never goes back together right.

Even for an experience backyarder this is a long weekend project.

Exec: Wallet Dump

This may be a two paycheck'r

 

Mustang? Easy job comapred to a Max. EASY! If it's a 302 I could do both heads in a Mustang in a short weekend. If it's one of the 4.6 Mod V8s then it would take a long weekend. There is alot more room and and things are more accesable in a stang then in a Max.

 

Oh I agree totally...Once I had the radiator, fan, and water pump out I could stand in the engine bay and do the rest! (87GT=5.0, fwiw) I just wanted to relate my experiences if they could help this guy form an opinion at all...

 

Like I said above, I did the Max engine as my first project... Sorta anyway, I had done a fuel injector once.

 

I'm spoiled, I didn't have a "first" project.
I grew up in the shop so I've been helping work on cars since I was 10 (dropped an engine in a big a$$ dodge van from the inside).
But I haven't met a job that I couldn't tackle.
Until recently.

 

check the exhaust studs, how are your motor mounts, if the lower one is bad you may have torn the flex pipe, I know that happened once on my gxe.

 

Exhaust studs are fine as far as I know. Everything as far as placement (items that I can see from plain view) is fine. I was just driving down the highway, I accelerated, the car upshifted to provide the power, and when it did, I started hearing the hissing sound from the back right of the car.

I just assumed muffler from there, but I've gotten every answer except that. I don't really have the money to take it this place and that, so is there a way I can check the gaskets without killing myself??? I looked at my oil in broad daylight today, and it looked fine (just dark). Not milky. My coolant was leaking (I've been told waterpump) faster than it normally does, but other than that, just the annoying hiss.

I would like again to thank everybody for their help. I'm still trying to narrow it down so that if I HAVE TO take it to somebody, I won't get raped. I've heard head gasket and rear gasket, can I look at anything to narrow it down to one of them???

 

same gasket. a V motor has 2 head gaskets