2002 grand am 3.4 Gaskets?

My buddy recently had this upper and lower intake gaskets replaced. Would anything that the mechanic messed with cause the head gasket to go bad? Its been two weeks and now the head gasket seems to be bad. It also seems liek they rigged up something to the overflow reservoirs going to the manifold.



Thank You

No, LIM has nothing to do with head gaskets, it is possible that your LIM and head gaskets were bad at the same time but the pressure of leaking coolant was divided to head gasket and lim and maybe more was leaking on the lim side, so he did not notice much leak on head gaskets until lim was fixed and now he has one holle less so now all the pressure is concentrating on the allready weak headgaskets.

How do you know for sure the head gaskets are bad? Was a compression test run or were the heads removed? What are your current symptoms?

There is only one coolant reservoir and what was rigged? Remember the coolant reservoir is not just an overflow reservoir but an integral part of the pressurized cooling system since the radiator does not have a filler neck or cap.

Its not uncommon for the head gaskets to fail in the 3.4, especially in the minivans, but not out of the question in a car.

This is another way to see if the gasket is bad. If the head gasket is bad, the radiator hose should be pressurized before the car gets up to temperature. You always can get the anti-freeze tested for combustion by products. If it is positive there may be a bad head gasket. Are you getting a constant white smoke out of the exhaust.

In most cases the temperature rise will be dramatic and you'll see an indicator of overheating like driveability issues and the temp gauge will be way up there towards the red zone. Also, any pressure will most likely exceed the rating of the coolant cap which is 15 psi and dump out the overflow port on the reservoir plus you will see bubbling in the reservoir.

Hopefully the OP tells us the symptoms before we all speculate too much.