2006 Zephyr head gasket

[2000sport]

Hello folks.

A friend of mine called me yesterday to come look at their 06 Zephyr, saying it began to run rough out of nowhere.

car has alot of mileage (175k) but is up to date on maintenance.

I scanned it and got multiple cyl misfire, and misfire cyl 4,5,6.

I thought it was odd for all 3 of bank 2 cylinders to be missing, and noticed a smell of burning coolant in the exhaust.

replaced one coil and plug and made no difference. checked compression, only seeing 90ish PSI on all 3 cylinders.

Im thinking its a bad head gasket, but before i begin a 14.3 hour journey down pulling the head off of this thing, I wanted to bounce this off of you guys.;

 

[G-RELL]

knowing nothing about that engine, perhaps a timing chain off?

 

[2000sport]

that was my other guess. but the smell of coolant led me more towards the HG.

Its a 3.0L duratec with VVT

 

[LS4me]

that was my other guess. but the smell of coolant led me more towards the HG.

Its a 3.0L duratec with VVT

The Duratec has been around for at least 18 years and I have never heard of a head gasket problem. Did the engine overheat at some point? IIRC, the actual PSI number isn't as important as the difference between each cylinder. I have heard of the old 3.8L having head gasket problems, though we got ~185K miles out of the Sable we had before we traded it in.

 

[2000sport]

the car smells like burning coolant, is low on coolant, and the coolant is contaminated - I too have never really heard of HG problems on the Duratec's, thats why I posted here. Everything points to HG at this point.

 

[Telco]

Just because a particular engine isn't known for head gasket problems doesn't mean this one doesn't have a failed one. ANY engine that uses head gaskets can have one fail.

Is it 90PSI on the one bank only or on all 6 cylinders? There should be no more than a 5 percent difference in pressure across all 6 cylinders, and if the one side is 90 and the other side is noticeably different then you'll have your answer.

 

[2000sport]

I will be compression testing the other bank once I get the manifold pulled.