I took my car to the shop today to have some stuff installed. Once it finally got on the dyno to do some pulls about the 3rd pull I noticed radiator fluid pouring out from right front side of the car. There seemed to be bubbles in the radiator reservoir causing it to spew out of the overflow tube.

The boost was set at 20psi and never went any higher. I had fresh radiator fluid put in the car before I brought it to the shop.

I was told the bubbling was happening because the head gasket is blown. Has anyone experienced similar issues?

 

Your head gasket is blown.

 

I second the head gasket is blown.

 

Pretty much not what I wanted to happen at this point with the car. Is this common for a car with 90k miles?

I have had the evo for the past year but never noticed any fluid coming out from the reservoir. Looks like the head will come off and be checked out.

I plan on adding ARP head studs, some retainers, and gsc s2 cams while the head is off. Hopefully I am not leaving anything out of this list for the head.

 

Yeah that sounds good depending on what your goals are? Head gasket going out just depends on what mods were on the car and how much power you where running.

 

if you will do cams and retainers might as well change out the valve springs with some upgraded one.

 

its the headgasket, same thing just happed to me pull the head get it resurface install your arp head bolt = done.

 

Well my mods are listed in my signature. I am running pretty basic mods. The highest hp I saw on pull 3 was 305hp(280 torque) but that was just a base pull and nothing had been tweaked. On the second pull the car seemed to cut out some(found a bad coil pack). No further pulls were done because of the coolant leaking.

I was told the head would be resurfaced and checked for warping.

 

Sorry to hear that bro, I had coolant leaking after a dyno, but it turned out to be the coolant hose that runs through the turbo was bad. Makes me think twice about getting those head studs done quicker.

 

I was hoping to hold out two more years before I had to pull the head. I had plans for a built head and block by buschur w/ upgraded turbo. Well things happen and thats the way it goes I guess.

 

You could have over filled the radiator/system. I would check the oil and coolant for contamination first. Maybe do a leak down test.

 

Yeah def. make sure the shop does a leak down test before replacing the head gasket.

 

head gasket

 

my friend's dsm runs high 20 psi and was pushing coolant because of his head lifting. he replaced with arp studs and tighted down with moly lube for 100lb of torque (i think) and it stopped pushing coolant.....

maybe you can do arp studs and tighten it down to their specs and maybe you'll be ok without having to redo the studs... i'd try that first.

 

Let me get this right? You were at a shop, on the dyno, saw the bubbles/pouring fluid. The shop employees tell you "It's your head gasket" (which I agree, it probably is). But they didn't offer to pull out a $30 compression gauge and do a 5min compression test to verify this? Not the type of shop I'd like to deal with any more...crossing the t's and dotting the i's is big in my book.

I agree, it's probably the headgasket...but I second some of the other responses that there *are* other things that can cause the same symptoms:

1. You just replaced the coolant, did you do it properly or were their air bubbles in the system that you just happened to purge out on the dyno.

2. Are there any bad hoses, poor connections that could have sucked air in?

3. Overfilled cooling system?

Anyhow, get a $5 compression test done and find out if the headgasket is OK. Or they can do a full leakdown test in lieu of the compression test (but if they don't have the equipment to do a compression test, or the wherewithall to perform one, then they probably don't know how to perform a leakdown test). Don't go by some guy's word when he has no interest in actually finding out; and a bunch of us internet hero's diagnosing the problem from 1000mi away without ever seeing the car. Find out for sure.

I've seen shops do some really shady stuff so they could charge people more $$