FWIW, 5 years ago, I had a crack between the valves on one of the heads
of my '84 7 passenger that was bad enough to put combustion gasses into
the coolant.  I drove it over 1,300 miles that way, in order to get it
home, by cracking the bleeder screw in the radiator so that excessive
pressure wouldn't build up.  Of course, I was losing coolant at the same
time so I had to pull over and add water, every 30 miles, in order to do
this.  Using that method, it never overheated.

Anyway, I never had the white smoke talked about here.  When I did a
compression test, the bad one (where the crack in the head was)
wouldn't come up to pressure and wouldn't hold pressure for taking a
reading.  After I removed the heads, I had them pressure tested at a
machine shop (it cost me $35.00 US per head) and, as expected, that one
failed so I replaced the one head and all has been good since.

Mike

Wesley Pegden wrote:
> Geo,
> Did blowing the head gasket leave your compression normal?
> Thanks,
> Wes
>
>
> Geo & Kathleen Hahn wrote:
>> FWIW -- whenever I've had a blown head gasket with a subsequent
>> internal coolant leak I've been able to smell the coolant in the
>> exhaust... even when the leak wasn't producing notable white clouds.
>>
>> Geo
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wesley Pegden" <wes@CS.UCHICAGO.EDU>
>> To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
>> Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2007 2:20 PM
>> Subject: Re: White smoke? (UPDATE)
>>
>>
>>> ...Still has all the symptoms as before.  Out of the tailpipe, apart
>>> from
>>> white smoke I see now that it's dripping some grayish liquid---what I
>>> might guess to be a mixture of coolant with oil?.
>>
>