Bar's Leaks Head Gasket Repair

I have a 3 cylinder, diesel, 19 horsepower landscape tractor that blew a head gasket (or head, or block, don't know) and was getting exhaust gasses into the radiator water. This caused over pressure and would blow all the coolant out of the radiator in just a few minutes. Since I've taken off diesel heads before and found them to be cracked or a crack in the block, I didn't want to go that route as a first effort. I want to use the tractor before winter comes darn it. I ordered this from Amazon, and followed the directions to the letter. Since I didn't have a spark plug to remove (remember, it's a diesel), I opened the compression release for each cylinder until I found out which one was giving me trouble and left that one open during the first part of the process. Net, this stuff worked. While the tractor was running I held the end of the overflow hose in a jar of water and watched the bubbles come out. In a few minutes there were less bubbles, a few minutes more, even less. I ran the tractor for a little longer than the instructions and then drained and refilled it. There were a few bubbles at first, as compared to a blast of compressed exhaust gasses when I started, and those went away after driving the tractor around the lot a little. It's only been a few weeks since I did this, so I don't know how long the fix will last. However, I got a bottle of the other Bar's product Block Seal 1109 and put half a bottle in the radiator to take care of any residual problem. Haven't had to add water at all and there are no bubbles in the overflow bottle. If you can't fix it right by replacing the proper parts, get this stuff; it actually does what it says it will.

Fixed leak and is running 90% better

Scotty Kilmer used this stuff on his youtube channel. Worked for me too. I still made sure my radiator was clean as possible. If you have rust in your cooling system it will not work.

##UPDATE AFTER A FEW DAYS Although this worked for a few days, the head gasket started leaking again so I am going to bite the bullet and pull the head. It was worth the $8.00 to give it a try. In my case, it did not work. ##### When a head-gasket starts leaking, it can do different things depending on where the leak is. You might see coolant coming from your tail-pipe, or oil in your coolant reservoir, or even coolant leaking from underneath your engine. I would be hesitant to use this stuff if there were oil seeping into my coolant, or if water was really gushing out of my tail-pipe (indicating a massively warped head or a badly damaged head-gasket). In my case, my truck over-heated and after fixing the initial problem (water pump went out), I found I had a tiny amount of water coming from the tail-pipe, and one cylinder was misfiring from coolant seeping into it. I know that the head needs to be pulled and taken to a shop; however, at the moment I am short on money and time to do that. I decided that this would be a good use-case for trying a head-gasket sealant, as I am not looking for a permanent fix but rather something to keep the truck running until I can set aside the money and time I need to properly tackle the problem. There are a lot of opinions being thrown around about using head-gasket sealant, so I tried to sort through the feedback from people who have actually used it, and stayed away from arm-chair mechanics who were just repeating things they have heard from their daddies. The other thing I did was to read the instructions carefully from the actual package (it is behind the label on the bottle, or you can download it from the website, although the website instructions had slightly different run-times from the package). I re-read the instructions several times to understand what was going on. What I gathered is that it is important to flush ALL of the antifreeze COMPLETELY out of the cooling system BEFORE you add this to your car. From the instructions, it sounds like antifreeze can make this stuff harden, so you do not want the two to meet, so to speak. With this in mind, I flushed the coolant with water three times to be sure that I had it all out, and then let the car drip-drain overnight. What I mean is that I emptied all coolant, filled with water, ran the truck for 10 minutes, then drained, repeat.. I decided to remove my heater-core from the coolant-system-flow. This was easy in my truck, since the tubes that run to and from the heater are right at the top-back of the engine, so it was simple to just remove and re-connect the in and out tubes together and completely bypass the heater. I could not think of any good reason that the heater would need sealant running through it, and I did not want to risk clogging my heater-core. I then added the sealant exactly as it said in the instructions. I did not deviate from the instructions other than to err on the side of letting the truck idle slightly longer than it suggested, and of course I had removed the heater so I did not run the heater at all. After running the stuff through the truck, per instructions, I flushed the system again. I took my time and really flushed the radiator, reservoir, and engine block as thoroughly as I could with a garden-hose. I removed my thermostat and ran the engine with water. I noticed my thermostat had some of the goo on it, so I cleaned that off the best I could. I ran the truck again with water in the system, drained and repeated that a few times. I then let the truck drip-drain over night again. After all of that, I put everything back together (thermostat, heater, etc) and added coolant to the system. I took the truck for a drive around the neighborhood and it seemed to be running fine. There is no longer coolant trickling from the tail-pipe. The truck does not seem to be misfiring like it was. Over the next month I will observe and report back on any issues. In Summary: Flush all antifreeze before adding the sealant After following the instructions, flush your coolant system really well before adding antifreeze back to the system Reading through some of the complaints, it sounds like many people did not follow the instructions exactly (..just dumped the stuff into a system full of anti-freeze..), or used this trying to correct major head-gasket issues.

I was getting HUGE smoke clouds from my 2011 Prius with 220,000 miles on it. I had a blown head gasket with water going into the cylinder. At about 210,000 miles, I modified the thermostat so that it let the coolant flow all the time and then de-pressurized the radiator so the engine could run cold and it at least minimized the effects of a blown head gasket. And that helped get me about another 10,000 miles before I junked the car. But then the head gasket problem got so bad that I got huge smoke clouds at about 220,000 miles. I used Bar Sealant, and that did the trick, but I still have to run the car de-pressurized. If I get another 25,000 miles out the car before I junk it, that would still be a huge help as I'm a bit broke right now until I get my retirement pay next year. So far I've gotten another 4,000 miles out of the car, and that counts for a lot! God bless.

Didn’t work, bought Blue Devil and it worked the very first time.

It’s decent for a “get me by” fix but honestly? Get blue devil if you want it to last longer than a couple months

1999 Olds Intrigue with 3.5L engine, 162,000 mile. Head gasket leaks are very common with this engine. Had a very small head gasket leak, losing about 8 oz of coolant in 3000 miles. Could smell the leak but the coolant would boil away from the leak area before it had a chance to drip out. I used the product as directed about two months ago. The leak stopped immediately and the fix appears to be lasting fine. Keep in mind that using this product is a two day adventure. You must triple or quadruple flush the cooling system first. There are several lengthy run and cool cycles required. Then flush thoroughly again before adding coolant. Take your time, let the engine cool overnight in the final phase. In the end, your patience and work will pay off with a successful fix.