Headgasket going?

Hello Everyone,

The car in question is my son's '91 Golf, with the 1.8l Digifant II
controlled engine (engine code RV). The car has about 200,000 miles.
The car is loosing some coolant, and when starting up the engine in colder
weather there is more white smoke for about 10 seconds than I would like to
see.
We already replaced the water pump (it was leaking there a bit), and have a
new plastic coolant outlet flange (the front one is also seeping a bit) that
we will put on.
The engine is pulling strong, not missing, and not overheating.
Just wondering what are the chances of headgasket failure?

Thanks, Peter

"Peter Orban" > wrote in message
...
> Hello Everyone,
>
> The car in question is my son's '91 Golf, with the 1.8l Digifant II
> controlled engine (engine code RV). The car has about 200,000 miles.
> The car is loosing some coolant, and when starting up the engine in colder
> weather there is more white smoke for about 10 seconds than I would like
> to see.
> We already replaced the water pump (it was leaking there a bit), and have
> a new plastic coolant outlet flange (the front one is also seeping a bit)
> that we will put on.
> The engine is pulling strong, not missing, and not overheating.
> Just wondering what are the chances of headgasket failure?
>
> Thanks, Peter

FWIW I just sold my 200K mile mk2 GTI 8V, same RV engine except Digifant 1
(california). Only smoke I had in the morning was a big puff of blue for
about 5 seconds, to be expected of a car this age. The only coolant leaks I
had was the coolant flanges (as you noted w/yours) and earlier this year I
had a leaking radiator. My radiator was leaking slowly for a long time with
no visible puddles where it'd drop about 6 ounces over a couple weeks.
Towards the end though it'd dribble enough after being parked at work for 8
hours though. So what I'm saying is a slowly leaking radiator might not be
obvious for a while but still will cause the level to drop. Got a new
radiator for about $70 online (I forget where though but shop around...I've
seen prices on them vary quite a bit) and swapped it in in about 2 hours by
myself. Takes some wiggling to get the old one out and the new one in w/o
bending any fins and w/o dismantling too much of the car but it can be done.

"Madesio" > wrote in message
...
> On Tue, 3 Jul 2007 15:47:36 -0400, "Peter Orban" >
> wrote:
>
>>Hello Everyone,
>>
>>The car in question is my son's '91 Golf, with the 1.8l Digifant II
>>controlled engine (engine code RV). The car has about 200,000 miles.
>>The car is loosing some coolant, and when starting up the engine in colder
>>weather there is more white smoke for about 10 seconds than I would like
>>to
>>see.
>>We already replaced the water pump (it was leaking there a bit), and have
>>a
>>new plastic coolant outlet flange (the front one is also seeping a bit)
>>that
>>we will put on.
>>The engine is pulling strong, not missing, and not overheating.
>>Just wondering what are the chances of headgasket failure?
>
> Pretty high if you've overheated it bad enough. A compression and/or
> leakdown test will tell you for sure.

True but he didn't say it overheated...he said it's actually not
overheating.