What is a self tailing winch?

Blown head gasket or motor? 88 wrangler?

• i have 1988 wrangler with a 4.2 and about 145k miles on it. when i first got it i had been getting a good amount of oil coming out the intake. i ended up getting it stuck in the woods for about 4 weeks until i ended up hauling a winch out to it myself and doing a self recovery. while in there it had flooded and i believe the water had sat all the way up around the windows, therefore my motor had gotten some water in it. now when i drive it all i get is massive amounts of smoke from under the hood and out the exhaust. i no longer get oil out the intake. both before and after it was stuck there were signs of water in the engine with the whitish foam on the dipstick. any hardcore jeepers or mechanics help would be great

• Answer:

  Wow. Sounds like you had a go of it. A good way to diagnose a blown head gasket is to do a compression check on the engine. You'll need to get a compression gauge and any adapters needed to fit the gauge into the spark plug hole. Usually most gages come with a selection of adapters; the plugs on the 4.0L motor are pretty "standard". Follow the instructions with the kit or do an online search for how to use it and how to interpret the results. Doing a compression check will also give you a good idea has to how well the cylinders seal and how equal (or not) they are. Equal cylinder pressures mean a better balance of power (all else being equal) from each cylinder and smoother running engine. A cylinder that reads excessively low or an adjacent pair that read low could be signs of a blown head gasket ...it could also be other things. Since you said you had water in the oil, consider having the cooling system pressure tested ...you might be able to borrow the tool from a local big chain auto parts store. The tester essentially pressurizes the cooling system and any leaks will show as a decreasing pressure or you may actually hear it leaking. Along with the compression tester, get a vacuum gauge. Once you do the compression check then connect the vacuum gauge. Again read up on it and follow the instructions. This simple gauge can tell you so much about the internal workings of the engine. It can also help verify (or not) a potential blown head gasket. These tools are not expensive and can tell you a lot about the state of health of your engine. Most are probably available free to loan at most big auto parts stores.