Blown Head Gasket?? Please Help.
 

curses! My Evo has 33K miles, never had any problems, only performance-related mod is a K&N drop in filter, just yesterday I got in, turned the key and it immediately started idling all weird, lots of white smoke pouring out of exhaust, strong gasoline smell, etc... basically all the signs of a blown head gasket, from what I've gathered. :crap: but I don't have any mods, and just 20 minutes beforehand I'd been driving the car and it was fine!! I don't get it. Why would this happen so suddenly??? Don't wanna take it to Mitsu but I will, esp if by some miracle they fix it under warranty.....

help please??? I'm fairly mechanically inclined, but have no experience with this particular problem. Anyone in the Austin area willing to help me, or any advice in general???? thanks.

dude, did you check your 02 sensor? change it out see what happens.

You should deffinetly take it to Mitsu....since you have done only drop in it should be under warranty even for Mitsu.....

Dude? You realize it is a woman right? :lol:

I agree, take it to the dealer and see if you can get it covered. Since you are an attractive woman you probably won't have any problem. ;)

haha well, thanks guys... I hope the dealership here doesn't suck too bad... I just don't understand WHY the head gasket would take a crap all the sudden on a stock car w/just a filter & no hard driving?? :( boo.... would you guys recommend upgrading the studs while I've got it all pulled apart for repair anyway?

LOLz...that's funny.

I dont think its your headgasket. My headgasket is blown and it does show all those symptoms.

you may want to get a stock air filter to put in just in case

^^ yeah, i'll just throw the stock one back in. i knew keeping it around would come in handy somehow. haha

UPDATE - they claim it was my EGT GUAGE (indirectly) that caused injector failure/misfire in cylinder#2... they said it was spliced into my injector wire, but couldn't really explain HOW or WHY that would suddenly cause a problem (I've had the guages installed for months now). Also, my installers said they spliced it into an IGNITION wire, not the injector wire, but how the hell am I supposed to argue that with Mitsu... *sigh* **** it, I'll let the performance shop work on my car from now on, they even offered to fix it if Mitsu gave me hell, which they obviously did... also, the guy "helping" me was really quite an ******* the whole time for no damn reason... I'll almost be glad when my "warranty" is up so I don't have to worry about this ****...{thumbdwn} sorry, had to vent...

Did they confirm that it was a head gasket problem now?

they are such @$$holes at mitsu. My friend had a 02 Galant with 36,000 miles that blew the auto tranny. They said that it broke because he had a cold air intake and aftermarket tail lights with modified tail light wiring. If you have a non-oem air freshner in your car your pretty much F'ed. "Umm sir the reason your heat doesnt work is because you contaminated the air with this aftermarket freshner, so now your warranty is void."

^^lol yeah, that's about what it felt like... "I'm sorry ma'am, but this 'aftermarket' air freshener has created an uneven weight distribution, causing total drivetrain failure, which of course voids your warranty" or something... hahaha

and to Evo8LTW - no, the head gasket is fine. They said my EGT wiring was spliced into my injector wire, which somehow caused injector #2 to stick open, throwing a code for the injector and a misfire code for that cylinder. easily fixable, but of course a complete ripoff for them to do the work...

anyone know if this is true???? if the supposed wire-splicing caused the problem, then what the hell is the RIGHT way to install an EGT guage????????????

there would be no reason to splice and EGT gauge into an injector wiring that makes no sense at all. To install and EGT gauge, you weld in the bung, screw in the EGT probe, you run the wiring for the prob into the gauge and you attatch a ground wire, a 12v hot wire and a 12V hot wire to the light terminal so when you turn on your heads then your gauges light up too. To make them light up you can just catch a wire off the under dash fuse panel. I personally wired mine to constant 12v so the guage is always lit up. Tapping into an injector wire is the most obsurd thing I have ever heard. Do you have pics of this supposed wire that was tapped? Also was it tapped under the hood or under dash?

^^unfortunately I have no pics... the guys who installed my gauges said they did NOT splice anything into an injector wire, but they did say they spliced into an ignition wire... I've never had any problems with my performance shop (who installed my guages months ago), so I have no idea what's going on... so ^^^^ you're basically saying there's no reason whatsoever for any wires to be spliced together at all?