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She had a head gasket replaced by a local mechanic in early July. I replaced the water pump in Sept due to tiny seepage from the weep hole. Cooling system seems quite tight and holds pressure well right now (by the "pinch the upper rad. hose" test it holds notable pressure for at least 30 min to an hour after being shut off. Maybe more.).
I put new plugs in back in Sept. or Oct. too, and I did notice that there was what appeared to be dried coolant, white and greenish goo, thickly coating the exposed part of the #3 plug. Since it was running right, not consuming any coolant, etc. I just assumed that the mechanic that did the head gasket work put the old plugs from before the gasket failure back in without cleaning them off at all.
But . . . when working under it a few weeks ago, to do the front struts/suspension, I saw white stains drooling down from the #3 spark plug hole. Given that she had the head gasket failure recently, I wrote it off as old stains from then. Kind of like I thought about the dirty #3 plug. Everything was fine, so anything else was unlikely. So I thought.
About a week ago, she needed about 4oz of coolant. No big deal, but for a car that has gone since Sept. without needing any, I thought it odd and became more vigilant. Night before last I took an inspection mirror to it and found that the stain running down from the #3 plug hole looked wet in places, and seemed to be bigger than it had looked from underneath the car. It is very hard to see from up top due to the exhaust heat shields, the turbocharger, and the down pipe. It is not easy to see from the bottom either. It does appear to be clearly coming from the recess for the #3 plug hole, not from the head/block junction under there. There are seepage lines running down from the plug recess and over the head/block junction.
She is not using up any coolant now, at least not a noticable quantity per week, so if there is any continuing seepage, it is very small. The car runs perfectly well.
The mechanic that did the head gasket job said that between the holidays, etc. he could not see it until Jan. 5. So I am scheduled to bring it in then. He advised to keep a careful watch on the fluids. FWIW, oil consumption is fine, for a 17-year-old 740 Turbo: 1 quart per 2500 to 3000 miles.
Do you guys think that this could be caused by a crack in the head that his machine shop did not find when they machined the head? Or is there some other thing that could cause the stains I am seeing?
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Scott Cook - 1991 745T, 1985 RX-7 GSL-SE, 1986 Toyota Tercel (Don't laugh, it is reliable, faithful AND gets 41 mpg!)
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