So far, since I've had the car, I've put in about 4 gallons of coolant but I have no leak that i know of. The car gets warm, then I check and there is nothing in the reservoir. After I put some in though it is cool again but I'll have to add some in a day or two. Can someone tell me what the problem might be?

 

It's going somewhere. Look for residual green spots all over the cooling system, Radiator hoses, and engine. What color is your exhaust smoke, if its white you are burning the coolant in the engine.

 

ok im pretty sure its white so im probably burning collant in the engine how can i fix this?

 

Are you saying the engine gets TOO hot? Where does the temp gauge sit when you are driving? Does it get beyond 3/4 of the way to max?

Well, it's a pretty safe assumption that you blew the head gasket. The proper fix would be to pull the head, send it to the machine shop to be checked / planed, and install with new head gasket. Doing the work yourself, you'll spend ~$100-$300 at the machine shop, and $50 for everything else to put it back together. If you take it to a shop and have them do all the work, you'll be spending $1k+.

Now, before you get suicidal (), I suggest pulling all your spark plugs and read the tips. You are looking for a plug that looks like it's been cleaned (or "steam cleaned" if you know what I mean ).

There is a cheap / somewhat long term fix that usually works for blown head gaskets... you add Bar's Leaks into your coolant, and it will seal off any coolant leaks. But it's pretty much like injecting pure fat into your heart (not very healthy for the coolant passages).

 

If you want to double check whether or not it's a head gasket you could do a compression test on the cylinders and see if compression in any of them is significantly lower than the others.

 

The engine was getting extremely hot. I burped the system and changed the hose going from the reservoir to the radiator out. Now it stays between half way to 3/4s on the temperature gauge. However, it seemed the last time I checked that there wasn't as much coolant in the radiator itself. A friend of mine driving behind me said he saw white smoke coming from my exhaust as I was getting on the freeway. I freaked and immediately started researching this. At any rate, I took a picture of one of my plugs--they all pretty much look like this--but seeing as I'm not the best at reading them, I was hoping to get some input.

 

So I've done a compression test and all of the cylinders are at 150 with 3 cranks and 170 with 5 cranks which I'm pretty sure the manufacture says it should be at 171 so it's normal. I've also done an oil change and I didn't see any coolant in the oil so I think I'm good on my head gasket. Could there be any other reason I might be losing coolant?

 

A good read about "blown head gasket denial": https://www.zdriver.com/forums/other-cars-223/damn-freaking-metro-29223/

Do all tests / checks mentioned in that thread.

 

Have you pressurized the cooling system with a pressurizer? If you can't find the leak with the pressurizer it is most likely that the cap is not holding pressure and the coolant is boiling out from the cap. Cap's not holding pressure are sometimes difficult to find because the coolant boils at a lower temperature and it doesn't make a mess and spray coolant everywhere.

Although you said you have smoke coming the exhaust that is the tell tale sign of a blown head gasket. It can be an easy diagnosis with the coolant pressurizer or a cylinder leak down tester.

 

So I decided to replace the head gasket working on getting the head off now gonna do the valve seals why it's off hopefully it's not warped. The intake manifold was a complete pain thinking about Dewebbing it any thoughts?

 

Just make sure you take it to a reputable machine shop to have them check it out. Usually they'll do a basic deck & valve test for free.

Search the forum for dewebbing. I've talked about it before as well as others. It's a lot of work.

 

I dewebbed mine but IMHO you need to do the heat shield as well with a thermal barrier like the DEI heat blanket. Also porting out the intake runners is a very good idea - at least take the flashing out and try to open it up as much as possible... Your intake runner is almost half the area of your intake valve...

Here's a pic of one of the NA plenums I did. I did the same thing on my turbo plenum but I cut the back off and did the back side of the runners as well. I also ported both of them for a 240SX TB.

 

Blown head gasket or leaking heater core.