hey guys

i recently started tear my 94 T-bird and i noticed something that caught my eye when i tore off the the upper intake manifold, I happen to notice when i got the intake off a odd coloring inside my upper intake kinda like coolant or water was traveling through there and it seem pretty odd that it would be an odd brownish color especially since of how low miles it is, i also happened to notice some ports where blacker than others and some where a rusted brown color and i read somewhere that a sign of a blown upper intake gasket was hydro locking and coolant getting into the cylinder which is what my car was doing before i parked it but i wanted to know what y’all think if its worth just putting an intake gasket on it and see what happens or should i just go farther in?

 

I am assuming it's a V-6. Those images do not necessarily mean the lower intake gasket is leaking. Were you losing coolant? If the engine hydro locked, it would stop dead in its tracks.The cooling system should be pressure tested to see if pressure bleeds off.

 

Yea i was losing coolant not at a fast rate thought, i could top it off and around 2 months its would be around 2 quarts or so low on coolant but wasnt a crazy amount that it drank or leaked, i had a leak since march of last year it started losing coolant but everytime I checked the oil i found no traces of it entering the oil pan and i think if I remember correctly i did a leak down in may and all i found was a slightly cracked radiator but it help pressure pretty good and still after i changed it i was losing antifreeze and it didn’t leak hardly anything after that.

The hydro lock is real recent it did it 2x on two different occasions once was at the end of November the started would engage the flywheel and i would crank and get stuck and the other time was the end of last month it did the same thing but this time after i let the cylinder dry it started and a big smoke cloud puffed out and i ended up shutting it down fearing the worst and all i found was water on certain spark plugs but the oil still looks clean and i have no milky oil or build up in the radiator to suggest an blown head so that got me curious if the Upper intake gaskets let go since i did find antifreeze where the gasket was

 

It is far more common to see heagasket issues with the 3.8 than intake gaskets going bad. If you go down to the headgaskets, the intake gasket has to be changed to get there. I would look over the spark plugs first. A plug that has been washed in coolant will appear very clean with no deposits. The # 6 cylinder is what blew on my 3.8 and is the most common cylinder affected. Like I suggested, diagnose first.