I know it has been discussed here ad nauseum and I have read a bunch on the subject using the handy search feature. But here goes:
My truck is my daily driver, made necessary by the death of my daily driver Ranger's abrupt stop against a tree. No, the vehicle was unoccupied at the time. Anyhoo, back to the Dodge. Over the past couple of weeks it has run just fine, but yesterday I noticed there was a ton of coolant all over the front of the motor. I noticed there was evidence of leakage from the overflow tank too, so it got me worried about the radiator. Nope, it's solid.
I cranked her up and saw a bunch of soot and water(?) flood liberally out the tailpipe. After a 20 mile drive, the water and soot were just as prevalent as when cold. So I pulled the plugs, and #1,#2, and #4 were black, wet, and generally covered in crud! The others were black-to-tan in color. I'm using Bosch platinum plus, which I have used exclusively in all my cars since 1990. I cleaned the plugs off and she fired right up as usual, but the sooty black inkiness still flows from the tailpipe, and I noticed there was a white-looking fog coming out of the oil filelr cap when I remove it.
So, just so I have more than one opinion, is this a head gasket going south perhaps?
This engine has roughly 82K miles, so it's not really worn out. Or is it?