So... I have a 1996 Tacoma wit the 3rz that has been slowly smelling more and more like coolant every so often and starts up stumbly when cold..... I get a white cloud every now and then too... I finally decided to pull the head and check out the gasket.. I noticed that my #3 cylinder had some white crust around the exuast manifold, so that cylinder was my suspect... Now, when I pulled the head gasket, the first thing I noticed was a bit of surface rust on the #3 exaust valves only, and it looked like it was leaking in very slowly from the exaust side.. When I further inpected the gasket, I noticed very small holes for each of the water jackets and then two holes on the end that were actually the size of the water jacket.. On top of it, the cylinder that had been leaking had one of these small holes plugged up with crusty
... In fact alll the small holes along the exaust side seem to have crusty build up, where as the intake side seems alot cleaner.. Why are these holes so damn small for all the water jackets except for the two on the end? Is it common for these holes to plug up? Could this have caused my leak? The small holes just dont seem right to me.. Any insight on this would be great as I cant seem to find anything on this topic... THANKS...
