I've got a '92 Toyota Celica All Trac with the 3SGTE engine. I noticed a week ago that I had a white coating showing up in the joint between the turbo and the exhaust manifold, it the joint between the downpipe and the turbo and unfortunate what appears to be a crack in the top of the manifold. I immediately checked the radiator and it was low, taking about 1/3 of a gallon. Here's what I'm seeing.

I've done some research and got some opinions from some of my car buddies and the consensus is that it is either a leaking head gasket dumping coolant into the cylinders or the coolant seal in the turbo (Toyota CT26) is leaking and dumping coolant there.

I pulled all of the spark plugs and checked them. (I found in the process that I also have an oil leak into the #1 & #2 spark plug tubes. Yay) Here's what the plugs look like. Pay no attention to the oil and the plugs have about 30K or so on them.

1 plug

Plug #2

3 plug

Plug #4

I'm concerned that the #2 plug appears rather clean compared to the other three. I've checked the oil and it looks good, no evidence of coolant. I drove the car to work this week, 40 miles round trip each day, it was down about a third of gallon again so the coolant is going some where. I would think that if I'm dumping that much coolant in #2 that I should see some evidence in the oil. On the other hand, if the coolant seal in the turbo is leaking, I don't see how the coolant is getting into the manifold or how how it would get to the joint between the turbo and the manifold.

I'm at a loss here. Either way, this isn't going to be cheap or easy I expect.

Looks like plug 2 is steam cleaned. I'd do a pressure test on the cooling system and pretty much plan on doing a HG.

Looks like time for a rebuild. At least a head job.

nitro_alltrac wrote: I've done some research and got some opinions from some of my car buddies and the consensus is that it is either a leaking head gasket dumping coolant into the cylinders

That one.

or the coolant seal in the turbo (Toyota CT26) is leaking and dumping coolant there.

Make note of the people who said this; you may safely ignore anything they say about any technical matters ever. They are so wrong that there aren't words to describe it.

Turbos do not have water seals anywhere. They just have a water jacket around the bearing housing. There are no seals and there is nothing to seal. The only way coolant could get to the exhaust system would be if the housing was cracked, and in that case it would have to first go through the oiling system, and from there go into the exhaust and in that case you would see a lot of oil in your coolant and coolant in yoru oil and giant clouds of blue smoke from the exhaust long before you noticed a little coolant staining on your exhaust manifold. Which, I hasten to point out, is upstream of the turbo, and failure analysis of blown turbos suggests that exhaust flow doesn't allow anything to go upstream. Downpipes clogged with brown oil soot and manifolds clean, that sort of thing.

In short, you've a cracked head or burnt head gasket, as evidenced by the spark plugs.

Thanks for the input folks. This is what I've been think as well. Just wanted a second opinion.

Knurled, I thought as much about the turbo. I had looked up an exploded parts drawing for the CT26 and couldn't see where there would be coolant seals. It appeared to me that the water passages were cast into the housing. Just wanted additional input on the matter.

So, it looks like I'm off to do the head gasket.