Leaking Head gasket

[jaybird03]

I've got a strange thing happening, or at least seems strange to me. I took my car in today for it's oil change and with the change they said they did an inspection and that my head gaskete is leaking. Now, they didnt do a pressure test when i asked how they knew the head gaskete was leaking they said they could just look and tell. This doesnt make much sense to me I have a 96' Lumina 3.1 V6 with only 30,000 miles on it. I have only noticed coolent on the floor once and I checked my levels (oil and coolent) and it was a little low not much though so topped the coolent to its proper level and havent noticed any leakage since. There is no coolent in the engine and NO overheating at all and the engine isnt even getting that overly hot even after long drives. So I was wondering if there was anyone who could think of what the leak may be from. I was kinda thinking intake gasket but i could be wrong. It just doesnt add up to a head gasket leak i'm not even positive it would be the intake gasket b/c there is not much leakage maybe only a line. When there was the one leak that I found that once, i found coolent coming from the front of the compartment mostly and a small bit from the back. But like i said since then i've notice hardly any leak if not anything at all.Thanks for all the suggestions.

[dwalmop]

are you loosing coolant? is there white crap in the oil? are there air bubbles in the coolant recovery tank? Is there sweet-smelling white colored smoke coming from your exhaust? just trying to rattle off some symptoms so you could possibly tell yourself with quick inspection.

[jaybird03]

As far as I can tell i only have seen some coolant one day, so am I losing any coolant i would say yes a little, i've only had to add coolant once in the past 4 months and it was a minimal amount. There is no white crap as far as I can tell in the oil (I did have it changed today and they didnt say anything, its too cold to do it myself right now in Michigan There have been no air bubbles in the coolant recovery tank when i've looked a few times and there is no sweet-smelling white colored smoke coming from your exhaust. So that is why im suspisied and I think that someone is trying to take advantage of me.

[radioman2002]

Sounds like a load of crap to me, the only way somebody could SEE a leaking head gasket is if coolant was leaking out at the head where it meets the engine. More than likley if at all could be an intake manifold gasket, GM products from what I have found out are notorious for them. If your car leaked coolant only one time, you could have caused the coolant to come out of the overflow bottle.

[jeffcoslacker]

Leaking coolant externally leaves a tell-tale white trail when dry. They probably saw that, chances are it began at the manifold and they didn't see it, or didn't know to look for it there. If it leaks from the joint between head and intake, it will roll down to the head/block line, and trail downward from there. That's more than likely what they saw.