Pulling heads

Hello all!

Its been awhile since I posted. Last winter my 96 RMW overheated when it was subzero. I expected to find a stuck thermostat but tracked it back to simply low coolant. I had a mechanic check it out and he could not find a leak, and suggested it had a blown head gasket. I've put some miles on it since then, and it runs fine, except its losing about a half gallon of coolant every 250 miles.

I have some broken exhaust manifold bolts and I'm thinking about pulling the heads to repair those and see if I can find the leak. Thoughts?

A blown head gasket would show up in other ways than just coolant loss. That much coolant loss would certainly be detectable in the exhaust or in engine performance. Any sign of contamination in the engine oil?

Do you have white exhaust smoke? That is direct evidence of a coolant to cylinder gasket leak. If you pull your plugs, and some are really clean, that is where the leak is.

has the engine ever struggled to crank at all?

had one of my trucks where it would crank fine but suddenly slow down before cranking fast again (almost as if one cylinder was binding on part of it's stroke) once it was running it was fine and I drove it that way for over a year before the truck overheated due to low coolant, and yes it was because of a blown head gasket which was also causing the crank issue aswell due to coolant in the cylinder, but the only thing other then the odd cranking was vapor out the exhaust, problem was the problem started in the winter.

heater core is probably leaking. had same thing and took me a month to figure out. check the AC drip line for coolant as it will leak into the condensation tray and leave that way.