My friend was driving behind me last night and he told me that when I stop I puff some white smoke from my exhaust. White smoke is coolant so I go to check my coolant level and sure as shit its very low. Now im worried because I have my first track weekend in like 3 weeks and I dont want the car to have any issues.
What could cause this? The only thing new on the car is a o2 sensor spacer, I just put that on 2 days ago to get rid of my CEL from the test pipe. But I might have been blowing smoke before I put that on.

 

flush system, see results?

 

Track day in question. Coolant leaks through HG so you can pull head and replace.

 

Ive been reading up and im worried that its a head gasket.
If it is how hard would it be to replace?
and how much would it cost if I have a shop do it?

 

It's not hard to do if you pay close attention, like any other head removal/reinstall. Not a good idea to let a shop touch your S unless you know FOR SURE that they have experience working on one.

 

Get one of the chemical test kits and check your coolant for combustion gasses. This is a quick and cheap way to check your head gasket.

 

White smoke can also be easily confused with light blue smoke which is usually oil. I would check into both. A compression and leak-down test will aid in your diagnosis. Also take a close look at the spark plugs as they can often tell the story of the engines condition.

 

Today I re-filled the coolant reservoir and had my friend drive the car while I followed.
The car did not puff any white smoke while on idle or on low RPMs, but I did notice some white smoke twice when he went WOT and into vtec. I checked the coolant reservoir afterwords and it did not seem to have burned any coolant. I also checked the oil level and it was fine, but I did not check before the drive to see if any was burnt.
I took out the spark plugs to do a leak-down test and they seemed fine to me. I should have taken some pictures and posted them here but I could do that tomorrow. I could not find a leak-down tester for rent anywhere so I went to harbor freight and got a cheap one. It was a complete piece of junk and I have no idea how accurate my results are because they varied a lot every time I tried it. In the end I got around 30 PSI in all cylinders. To be exact 1 and 3 were about 30, cylinder 2 was 30-40, and cylinder 3 was around 25.
I might try to find a good quality one and a compression tester soon and re-do it.
But whatever the problem is it seems to be very minor. It only blew a little smoke once or twice today and there was no visible amount of coolant burned.

 

a leakdown will tell you about your headgasket. it seems the air was not escaping out or to the other cylinders so you should be good. sometimes weird stuff happens and your car may clear it out by itself

 

Gonna try a flush and see what happens. So far it seems to not be a big deal but hopefully it doesn't get worse