Last night (technically this morning ).. i drove about a 120 mile round trip out to a friend's college. about half way home on the highway, i noticed i really had to push the gas down in order to maintain my speed and my acceleration was almost non-existant. i was going approximately 85-95mph most of the way home. so when i got off the highway i notice the sluggishness of the engine even more. on acceleration, there was a slight clack/clicking sound that would go away once i got up to about 30 mph. about 2 miles off the highway, 2 blocks from my house, huge plumes of white smoke began emitting from my exhaust when i'd hit the gas. i left an awesome trail of thick white smoke the entire 2 blocks home. i got to my house, shut the car off, the exhaust was still smoking a little and white smoke started coming out from underneath the hood. i also heard something bubbling under the hood (was probably the radiator, which has a crack in it) but there wasnt any extreme heat coming out from the grill and i was pretty sure the temp gauge was in the normal zone. the sun was coming up and i needed sleep, so i figure i'd just check it out with my dad later (he does all of the maintnance on the car, it was previously his).

i woke up and tried starting it. it started on the 2nd try, but ran a little rough. so i shut it off and had my dad look at it about an hour later. he looked in the radiator and saw brownish, umm.. 'stuff', which he believed to be rust. and in the side reservoir, there was a ton of chunked up brown stuff. so my dad then tried flushing the radiator out and while he was doing it, he decided to try starting it. when he did, water shot out of the radiator. not good. so he then proceeded to pull the spark plugs, and 2 of them on the passenger side had the tips melted or corroded off. they were missing the firing points and he fears that they might have fallen off into the engine and messed everything up. he bought new spark plugs to see if we could get it started and into the garage behind my house, but it wouldnt start.

so my dad is saying it could be a blown head gasket, cracked cylinder head, broken valve, or an entirely messed up engine. what do u guys think? there's no way i'm getting rid of this thing cuz i love it and have so many memories with it, so i'm already starting to look at new engines. but does anyone think there's a possibility that the engine is fixable?


BTW, its a 93 explorer with 4WD, 6 cylinder (not sure which size), with 168000 miles on it.

 

for the time, money and effor to rebuild it, i say just throw in the 302. then you'll haul some *** and get that lopey sound blub blub blub blub blub.

sorry to hear about it...