do these headgaskets look blown?

[S13Slide]

hello. i have a 97 ford tarus with the 3.0 engine. for a while the car had trouble starting in the mornings. first it just took a couple turns of the key to get it running as time went by it kept getting worse and worse where i'd take a dozen trys and when it started up it barely idled then eventually it picked up and idled/drove normal. at the same time i noticed white smoke from the exhaust. it never was a huge cloud making amounts but just enough to notice white smoke.

coolant was dissapearing also, it started out little then more and more coolant was gone and it was reddish brown. and looked like it was pouring out of the resivwar tank because the outside of the tank was covered in red/brown dirt.

i did a compression test last saterday with a craftsman compression gauge and the car warm

1 50psi
2 35psi
3 150psi
4 160psi
5 50psi
6 50psi

i was suprsed the engine even ran semi normal besides the hard to starting. then later that day the engine died and it wouldnt start up. i waited a couple hours and with some starter fluid it was able to start up again but it idled really really rough and no power at all. right away i assumed it was both headgaskets have finally blown.

i have the heads off and im looking at the headgaskets expecting them to be in peices or chunks broken off but they seem to be all intact. i dont know if thats what a blown headgasket looks like. btw the car never overheated or got hot, we just kept adding water. i guess im just asking if it sounds like a headgaskets that went bad? here are pictures of the two.

thank you very much for any advice




the other one.

[KimMG]

From the best I can tell using the pictures. There seems to be a couple of suspect spots on the gaskets. Coolant being forced out of the resevoir bottle could be caused by gasses from the cumbustion chamber leaking into the cooling system.
Before putting back together, make sure the surfaces on the block and heads are not warped.