UGH!!! Is this what I think it is??? (WARNING: Many ugly pics)

[obaa996]

A while back, my wife took the kids for the weekend to see the inlaws, which finally gave me a chance to dink around with the car a bit. I figured I'd change the oil myself since I had the time, rather than taking it to the quick-lube, and give it a basic tuneup. Kinda tweaked when I got under the car to see oil all over the pan, but then I looked further up, and saw something even uglier. Are these marks what I think they are? Are they the dreaded coolant tracks? I looked at the head gaskets, and they appear to be a thin metal sandwiched by two paper sheets; there looks to be some oil seepage too that's not coming from the valve covers. I pulled the plugs, and they looked pretty funky too; I would have expected that they would at least look similar to one another, but they don't. I'm attaching some pics of the plugs and engine below, now that I finally have a digital camera, and am curious to know if there is any definitive way of determining if I have leaking head gaskets, and if there are any better tests for this. Keeping my fingers crossed...

FWIW, it's a '94. I've had it for the last 6k or so, and it's never overheated, etc. although it seemed to need a bit less than 1 qt of oil between changes. The PPI by viper tech in the area I bought the car gave it a clean bill of health...

 

[RedEnuf93]

Yes, your gaskets are gone (or going)...
I took similar pictures of my -93, no leaks though or problems with overheating.
If you want I can e-mail them to you.
Chuck Tator took care of mine and car came back stronger than ever,
Lauri

 

[garolittle]

It makes you wonder how top notch engineers could design such a crappy cooling system. Thanks for nothing Lamborghini!

 

[SNKEBIT]

aaba, I don't think we needed that many pics

 

[Yves]

Sorry man...you should have bought my car
But since it is a 94, it was bound to happen.
Make sure you pick up the GenII style head gaskets when you replace them.

As far as repairing it I would not suggest to go to the PDX VCA endorsed Dodge dealership. I made that error myself. You'll pay about double of what you should pay.
On top I had to find the GenII headgaskets all by myself (they were about to install an exact replacement of the originals).
To top it of, my car got returned with a damaged rim.
Why can't we have honest people like Chuck Tator on the West Coast ?

 

[GTSTF]

running a little rich on a couple of those plugs?

 

[obaa996]

Sorry about the too many pics; I can't seem to edit the post, so I just removed the pics. Should help load faster.

Thanks for the confirmation; I guess I'm now truly a GenI owner.... Of course, I *COULD* have bought a nice used black '94, if the owner hadn't flaked out and changed his mind about selling the car....

It looks like this will most likely be covered under the powertrain care warranty, so that's one bullet dodged. I had heard that they used to pull the engine out for a complete rebuild, so if that's the case, maybe this is a plus? At any rate, it's going to the dealer (yes Yves....) on Monday. At least the weather is nice enough
that I can get in some fun before it disappears for a while again.

About the plugs; seems really weird, don't it? Some are chalky white, while others are very brown/black, and the rest are normal. I tried to make some correlation between the plugs and the spots I saw on the engine, but couldn't find one. Maybe one of the ignition coils are weak? The pattern doesn't match that... I'm throwing on a new set of wires along with the plugs; hopefully that will clear up as well.