Head gasket

[Stevesellars]

Hi all

I’m posting this on the behalf of a mate, he drives a 2007 1.9cdti 150 Vectra he thinks his head gasket gone, I say think he not sure! Is there a sure fire way/trick of finding out? All he said he gets a lot of whiteish smoke on start up and in low gears his car is serviced yearly and nothing was picked up on this last service in June.

[matthewp1633]

Is he losing coolant ?

[Stevesellars]

He marked it off to keep an eye on it.

[Steel]

Could try a combustible gas leak detector to see if anything is seeping from the combustion chamber into the coolant, something like this https://www.ap-tech.co.uk/products/details/4106.html

[fatfred]

White smoke...... unburnt fuel iirc

[Caveman_nige]

White smoke...... unburnt fuel iirc

nah thats normally coolant..

blue smoke is oil being burned,

black smoke is unburned fuel , or very dirty diesel )

[fatfred]

White smoke or steam? Two very different things.

[Dog_Book]

I had a full array of colours when I had a melted piston and 3 badly working injectors. Didn’t have any water loss though, but that was the 1.9 cdti not the 2.0 cdti insignias have like in this case but I’d assume they are very similar with only a few differnces