[Mr_Tomahawk]

Alright Wrenches,

I am sure some of you saw my post a few weeks ago regarding my death touch (and poor taste) in cars...this is a bit of a spinoff and I wanted to drop this post in this thread to get the professionals response.

My 07 Explorer Sport Trac currently has its check engine light on. There is apparently a miss in cylinder "x". A mechanic I took it to changed the sparks plugs, cleared the code, just to have the check engine light come back. He kept it at the shop and watched it for a day. He came to the conclusion that I have a head gasket leak and coolant is leaking into a cylinder head. $2,000+ to repair.

Personal observation; after the truck sits all night and I hop in and fire it up, I get a lot of white [sweet smelling/coolant] smoke coming out of the exhaust once I turn it over. It idles somewhat rough at this point. Once I give it a little gas and after about a minute, the smoke clears up and it runs as good as can be. My assumption is that I am just burning off the coolant that has leaked into the cylinder head overnight.

I take the truck to another mechanic...kind of a small town guy who works on cars on the side. He has a good reputation... BUT, he SWEARS it is not my head-gasket. He is ran a compression test and found no pressure lost and also said there is no signs of coolant in my oil. He isn't sure what it is at the moment, says its a nice truck, but he is currently having me run a couple of bottle of fuel injector cleaner through it for the next month and wants me to bring it back.

My questions: Because Mechanic 1 says it head gasket leak, and Mechanic 2 says it is not....I tend to lean toward Mechanic 1 but want Mechanic 2 to be right. I just don't know what else would cause the white sweet smelling smoke when I initially turn the truck over. Q: Should I try using an over the counter head gasket sealer?

The truck has 125K miles and the wife isn't fond of dropping $2k plus into the truck, neither am I...so i wasn't sure if trying the gasket sealer would be worth it?

I have heard good and bad stories on this stuff....just wanted to get some of the gear heads opinions on this stuff and what brand should I use? Also, how long does it last...could I get another 50k miles off this sealer stuff?

Thanks!