I bought my first Blazer last night and am pretty excited. I bought a 1992 4x4 with a 4.3. Ran fine last night, but this morning when I cranked it, white smoke billowed from the exhaust. I called my buddy over, he put his gauge on the radiator, and the pressure didn't drop, it went up to 18 lbs.. There was no water in the oil, but half my coolant was gone. My question is, if my head gasket is intact, where is my coolant going, where is the smoke coming from, and why is pressure building in radiator.

 

wait until your engines cold. then pop your radiator cap off. start your truck. look in the radiator to see if you see bubbles. if you see bubbles you got a bad head gasket. dont forget to put that cap back on

 

No Bubbles

 

thats good, that mean your head gasket isn't bad. search info up on intake manifold gasket. they were prone failure on these trucks, i'll search and see if i can dig up some old threads.

 

Thanks alot, there is just loads of info on this site.

 

yup , just dont do what one guy on here did. he left a rag in the intake after he replaced the gasket. last i heard he had to pull the engine. blew it up. so take your time and dont leave any tools or material in there. from what it sounds it sounds like a lower intake gasket failure. look through some other post to see if the symptoms seem similar.

 

Yeah if its your lower intake leaking, then the coolant is getting burned in the engine and thats why the white smoke on startup and no milk in your oil. Thats a good thing cause the intake gasket isnt too hard of a fix, should take you a couple hours with regular hand tools. the most time consuming part will be cleaning off the old gasket material. Put a rag down where the pushrods are too keep the crap out of the motor when you are doing the cleaning and YES pick it up before you put the intake back on. Ive seen the rag left inside before by a professional mechanic I worked with in a shop, the customers car lost oil pressure the next day and toasted the motor... The oil filter was full of rag threads and the shop had to buy that customer a new engine. That shop then switched the shop rags from that ratty brown color to bright orange ones so something like that cant happen again in the future. It was a 350 in a 1/2 ton truck. You will also be able to see where the leak was when you inspect the gasket edges.