I own a 2001 Nissan maxima 20th anniversar, I just bought the car a week ago and love it, I took the car to meineke for an oil change and noticed the reservoir with a little brown and told me I had a blown head gasket and tried offering me their service. So I did some research and found that when a head gasket is blown the oil gets like a milky color before I took it for an oil change I check the oil on the dipstick and was a little low but just black as if the oil was old and took off the oil cap and looked normal(wouldn't the mechanic at menieke have noticed the oil color when he was pouring it out for the oil change ? So I did a few test myself I took the radiator cap and put a funnel to look for bubbles coming out, there was no bubbles coming out just really dirty coolant with some dark stuff but no bubbles, I checked the exhaust pipe and there is no smoke at all. I also heard that if a head gasket is bad the car will perform horribly, the car drives amazing with no problems what so ever , also the car has never overheated (that I know of) car does not overheat with me. Always a little below half. It honesty looks like the coolant has ever been flushed and also looks like it has more water than fluid so what do you guys think, sorry I'm new here

 

What is the color of the coolant? If it looks nice green you are probably good. Do a compression test.

 

No symptoms of blown headgasket then flush out the coolant and clean ur reservoir bottle really good. Dark coolant is usually rust because of water in the system instead of coolant. Honestly it might be worth it for you to change the radiator and coolant at the same time. The radiator is only like $60 brand new from rockauto brand is TYC which is actually a koyo.

 

It looks like older green with little black stuff up top

 

That's what I'm gonna do, the outside of the radiator looks old, I just cleaned out the reservoir today and it had a lot of stuff on the bottom, I want to flush it,what would be better myself to flush it or having brake masters or some other place power flushing it ?

 

Nissan coolant is darker than normal bright green stuff most people think of. I have the blue oem long life in my car. They would probably tell me someone put washer fluid in there.

Look at this picture from here.
http://forums.maxima.org/fluids-lubr...ant-flush.html

 

Mine looks like that a little but with black oily stuff like mud but it smells only like antifreeze? Maybe some rust ?

 

That's what I was thinking. I'm pretty sure that picture is brand new coolant and would imagine darker oem coolant getting dirty looks pretty bad to someone expecting fluorescent green stuff.

 

I placed all the coolant from the reservoir in a bottle, the top of the bottle is like a greenish brown and bottom like a sewer green, I see pictures online of gasket leaks with oil and coolant mixed as a white color or a light light brown color, if I knew how to post pictures here I would

 

Think chocolate milkshake also check the oil

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My oil looks good before and after oil change with no water or antifreeze in there

 

is there a white film under your oil cap?

 

No just oil

 

not a headgasket, just flush it out and put new coolant in!!

 

the white film is condensation from trips too short for the engine to warm up to operating temperatures. basically water that wasnt able to be burned off by the engine heat. is where you get the film on the bottom of the oil fill cap.

 

Then flush the coolant like stated above and call it a day.

 

I have water getting in my oil in my 2001 Nissan maxima I was tild it was a head gasket leak how do I tell which gasket is bad

 

you said you just bought the car a week ago,,,maybe the previous owner made a mistake to put motor oil in the radiator instead of antifreeze or water,,.your best bet is flush out the rad and see how it goes,,

 

It is possible to have a breached head gasket that has not reached the point of milky oil, smoke out of the exhaust and bad performance. The guy may have gotten rid of it because he knew that it was compromised.

As far as checking which cylinder has the breach there a a few methods. Pull the plugs. If one is really clean, that is probably the one. The plugs get "steam cleaned" from the combustion when the coolant is leaking into the cylinder.

Sometimes a compression test will reveal which one too. If you have a bad head gasket I would not worry too much about which side it is, because you need to do both.

 

Blown head gaskets can leak:
oil to coolant
coolant to oil
exhaust gas to coolant
exhaust to oil
exhaust gas between cylinders
oil outside cylinder head
coolant outside
coolant to cylinder

 

Blown head gaskets will not leak exhaust into anything, that would be a blown manifold gasket.