saarishane@gmail.com

I recently bought this A4, knowing it had issues, as a project. I was told the head gaskets were shot, and true to form it does overheat after a short drive and has a misfire in cylinders 2,3 and 4. When it overheated, it spewed white smoke out of the engine bay, and you can smell the antifreeze particularly by the driver side of the engine block. It uses a ton of coolant, but I haven't seen an unusual amount of white smoke from the tailpipe, but it is dripping liquid consistently from there. If it was a head gasket issue, why is it possible to smell coolant in the bay, as if a hose were leaking? On the other side of the coin, I have not seen any puddles on the ground under the car, or anything dripping from the engine area. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

andrewA4

Sounds to me like it is leaking coolant into the cylinders due to blown head gaskets. Check the oil dipstick for traces of coolant (will have a milky texture). You could also get a coolant tester that will check for the presence of hydrocarbons in the coolant.

Hope this helps.

saarishane@gmail.com

That's what I was thinking, but wasn't completely sure. How much of a headache is it to pull the heads off to get to the gaskets? My dad is thinking we'll have to pull the engine to get the manifolds, particularly the exhaust manifold, off. Does that sound right, or is it possible to get them off with the engine in the bay.

Prospeeder

You leave on the exhaust manifolds, you just need to remove the 3 nuts on the exhaust flange. Doing heads on these is really no big deal. Put in service position, remove all belt stuff and tbelt, remove the intake, air injection valves, all the plumbing. the 5mm allen bolts holding the water manifold to the heads, some bolts holding pipes along the driver head and the dipstick unbolted and layed aside. Unbolt the heads, and lift away. I swapped heads on my 2.7T S4 in one day with engine still in the car, which supposedly cant be done.

Be sure to have them machined flat. These multilayer steel headgaskets dont really blow, the head gets so hot it warps and then the gasket is worthless. These have very very low warpage tolerance.