A head gasket leak could let water into the pistons. If water was getting into the oil you should have noticed brown, milky oil.

A slow leak would not show spots on the driveway, but you should notice green crusty stuff in the vicinity of the leak.

 

My oil wasn't milky or anything, just dirty, and it's not a slow leak since I lost half my reservoir almost overnight.. I appreciate the input though!

 

I've got a '98 4-cylinder, manual transmission, 10 years now, 184K. My coolant leaks were from the top of the radiator, where the plastic top was crimped to the metal part, and a leaky water pump. I replaced both, pretty straightforward.

Another place to look would be on the floor of the passenger side, could be leaking from the heater core in the dash, so such leakage would be more hidden. So look under mats and carpet on passenger side.

Sometimes park and then wait 10 minutes to search for leaks, the engine/coolant actually gets hotter and builds up more pressure then (found leak in Suburban's heater hose once that way).

 

Was the radiator itself full? If the radiator was not full the radiator will draw coolant out of the tank again as the cooling system cycles hot to cold.

 

Couldn't you get the loaner tool, attaches to radiator cap area and you pump up with air to pressurize the system, then seek out the source of such leak?

These kits are like $100 at HF, so try Autozone and O'Reillys for loaner tool, comes with different size adapters.

 

first check to see if the radiator is full. then fill the reservoir. if you can't visually find any leaks around anything then it is probably the head gasket. head gaskets on the vg33 can be kind of finicky theres a very long torque procedure for the heads when putting them on..... two leaks spots if it was to leak externally at the heads would be driver side front and passenger side rear. theres two little set screws at those two locations. the head gaskets like to brake there if improperly installed.

 

I haven't ever filled it up before. I topped it off to the max line and now today it's back to halfway empty.

how is it now after a second top off?

 

It's also possible that there had been a lot of air in the cooling system, like the air was never purged out last time coolant, thermostat, radiator, etc. was serviced.

But folks typically report cooling issues when that happens.

Yes, one of the more serious causes could be a bad head gasket, these typically get damaged by overheating. But we surmise that one who cannot find the leak (not dissin' you) is likely not going to do a head gasket job himself.

 

don't be afraid todo a HG yourself. its not bad, the biggest part is getting the intake off. after that a breaker bar and a impact gun and the heads our off.

 

I started having hairline cracks in the top plastic portion of the radiator. I'm at 143,000 miles. Earlier I had a premature fail of my water pump, the coolant was coming from the weep holes but it was hard to tell from just looking at it.


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