Damn. Is it normal to replace head gaskets every two years? Are my driving habits to blame? Or is my mechanic just playing me?? I have new hoses, radiator, drive belt, water pump, t stat, rebuilt motor, and thousands of dollars later.

 

last year november, had my 3rd sets of head gaskets replaced. I guess they fail a lot

 

Have you been monitoring temps real time? And no, not by the gauge.

 

What type of anti-freeze are you using, green or red?

Every two years is not acceptable. Something is being overlooked before/during assembly.

Brian.

 

Oops, my post was lacking information. 3 times in 14 years appox. within 150K miles.

 

It's important when replacing head gaskets to send the heads out to a machine shop to get checked and planed if necessary. The shop should also resurface the valves and seats and install the new valve guide seals that come with the headgasket set. If warped heads are reinstalled the gaskets won't last long.

 

Using green only antifreeze, not using ultra gauge to read temps, never reached above half on stock gauge, no service light, just dripping from expansion overflow tube. It did this three years ago(dripping) and replaced cap. Problem solved. So.....maybe cap is malfunctioning. I went to autoparts store and tried a generic. Bad idea and took it back. And for $3 more, purchase one from dealer ship. After 70 miles later on highway, no leakage yet. Hope that that was the problem.

 

So, you're not even a hundred present sure it has a blown head gasket? You're just going by the loss of anti-freeze from the reservoir? I thought you were for-sure it had blown a head gasket, when l responded before. Are you getting any other symptoms...like smelling a sweetness at the exhaust pipe, unexplained loss of fluid, misfire code or any codes for that matter, ticking noise coming from head gasket area? These types of issues, combined, would lead to the issue of a blown gasket.

Hopefully, it's just the cap. Fingers crossed for a happy ending.

Brian.

 

IMO to burn out 3# HG's in 7 years there is other issues causing it, maybe a warped head etc, particularly if it's the same gasket leaking on the same side in roughly the same place.

 

And if you're going by the gauge on the dash, that's your first issue. That gauge has an insane range for what they think is good, so you need a phone application or ultra gauge or whatever to start.

My thought as has been mentioned, the root cause has never been identified and I'm with a few others that the head(s) might be warped and was never surfaced and such properly. In that case a gauge won't help much as the damage is already done- or was never fully fixed.