well, I have been keeping an eye on the coolant level and over the past 2 days, it has not consumed any..............yet. If there was a damaged head gasket, wouldn't it have consumed some by now? the wife drives it about 2 hours each day on the highway, so thats about 4 hours highway driving and still no coolant consumption.


maybe it was just an air pocket that made the coolant drop?

when it was overheated, my brother shut if off right away, and as a result it pushed lots of coolant out of the overflow tank I am assuming b/c when he shut it off, it stopped the flow of the coolant and it sat on the hot parts of the engine and expanded and boiled it out of the overflow tank????

in any case, there was a lot of coolant that was pushed out of the system, we filled it with water we had on the trip, but I would imagine there was some air in the system.

we have about 4 more days until the weekend, I will keep my eye on the coolant level, if it doesn't consume any, is it safe to say it was an air pocket???

also, with 170k miles, smoke could maybe be engine oil burning??? I do every once in a while have to top off the engine oil, maybe that is the smoke I see????

thanks again for any input.