Taking off my air intake and antifreeze.

[Rasp]

I have decided to go ahead and fix my antifreeze leak on my 2001 Buick Lesabre. It now has plumes of smoke out of the tail pipe and the sickly candy smell that goes with it.

As I was taking off the air intake duct I noticed that it had some antifreeze in it.

Now knowing that, does that sound like a head gasket or is it the intake manifold only?

I bought a Lacrosse but I still need to fix the Lesabre or no one is going to buy it?

[Rasp]

Well what do you all think? I am taking parts off my car one step at a time. Might take weeks to actually finish.

I actually started this project with the assumption that my head gasket was indeed the cuprit. But today when I took off the air intake duct I found antifreeze in the air duct. I didn't have any on the actual filter but the duct had some in it. I assume the antifreeze was spurting out of the throttle body and into the air duct.

Now the reason I figured it was the head gasket was because it was losing coolant. No coolant on the garage floor. Took it to a few garages, some said it was a head gasket leak other said no it wasn't. At this point I figure who really cares I'll just sell it. But before I actually get the chance to sell, I now start to get the white smoke (and yes it has the antifreeze smell to it).

So is it a head gasket for sure or could it be an intake manifold issue? Or could it be both? I guess my real question is this

If it is a head gasket problem how come I see antifreeze in my air intake duct? Again I assume it is spurting out of my throttle body?

[Airjer_]

If its a 3.8 liter with a plastic plenum than its not out of the question for the plastic to be degraded around the EGR tube. The other possibility is that the seal behind the throttle body (again with a plastic plenum) is bad or the plenum is warped or rotted behind the throttle body.

[Rasp]

Would that also cause the antifreeze to come out of my tail pipe as well?

[Airjer_]

If there is anit-freeze in the intake than it will end up in the cylinders and ultimately out the tail pipe. The typicall scenerio for these is the owner will drive somewhere getting the vehicle up to full operating temp. Then shut it off and go about there business. Then come back out to the car only to find that it turned over for about a half a second and then stopped. When the intakes rupture they will fill the intake with coolant and most of the time will hydroloc a cylinder. Quite often we end up replacing the starter because the nose cone will brake off as well. After all the repairs are made the vehicle will smoke for quite some time until all the residual coolant is burned off.

[Rasp]

So that actually sounds good. Because I was thinking head gasket. I actually had this done a year ago obviously didn't fix it correctly.