xe missfire

[belly257]

a mate of mine has a c20xe nova, and all was well untill earlier on today, we wene to donnington and it was fine most of the way there, then all of a sudden it started to have a missfire at mid range revs, and there is a fair bit of oil getting into the header tank and abit of blue smoke am i right in thinking head gasket failure although it idles fine?:confused:

[gazsnova]

id do the usual checks first compression, fuelling, ignition checks to much sure you havnt got 2 problems. i.e. weak coil pack and head gasket failure. from what your symptoms say then id guess head gasket, 'cause of the oil and water mixture, blue smoke id say a valve stem seal or at worse a ring has gone.
if you can modify a spark plug and an air line adapter (weld the 2 together) and lock off the crank with valves closed on ant of the pots then force air into the camber, you should be able to determine if a ring has gone in that pot. (feel if air is coming through oil cap) also works for bent valves, just feel if air is coming through throttle body or through exhaust.

hope this helps.