Head gasket Dripping

Rookie · February 16, 2004

I have a weird one here, a few days ago It was a nice day but cool and dry. I was working on my truck and noticed a small spot of coolant on the drive way. Long story short the passengers side head gassket is leaking, but only when the motor is first started and been sitting all night. it will leak a spot about the size silver dollar. once the motor heats up it stops and quits untill the next morning. any one else have this or can explain why. this goes agains every thing i have ever seen.

GM GIMP · February 16, 2004

The 5.7 Vortec has problems with intake gasket leaking.

You might want to double check for that. The only fix

is to replace the gasket.

ADDZ71 · February 16, 2004

My 1998 Z71 5.7 has been doing this for about 4-6 months. Same symptoms but I have come to the conclusion it is the Intake Gasket like mentioned above. Mine only does it upon cool down i.e the expansion of the metals close the leak up and when it cools back down overnight does it leak a drip or two. It is on the back of the engine and I have decided to just keep an eye on it and fill reservoir if it gets low or the leak is larger before repair which I have heard to be in the $700 range.

badass96z71 · February 21, 2004

On my '96 I experienced the same problem on the driver side. Swore up and down it was my head gasket. Started tearing it apart and found the intake ports on my heads were pitted and rotted out. Since I was that far I decided to yank the heads and give em a look see, they were fine. Being that my truck had about 120k on it I didn't want to spend the money for machine work or new heads so I grabbed some JB Weld, filled in the pits on the intake ports of my heads, slapped in some new head gaskets and threw her back together. No leaks, no problems (so far!)