My head gasket diagnosis pictures - 3 years ago

3 years ago, at ~180k miles my 2013my head gasket failed. It had some stumbling going away from stop signs and maybe at cold start and a misfire code. It also had minor coolant loss. The problem wasn't noticeable for very long before I did the repair - probably just a matter of a few weeks.

The car has 230k miles now and is doing really well.

Before I took the engine apart, I also looked inside the combustion chambers with a borescope and noticed a drip of water going down the side of cylinder 1. This roughly correlates to the spot I saw once I had the thing apart and noticed bare spots in the gasket. unfortunately, I didn't save those pictures.

I used a block test kit to 'confirm' the failure though I think there was plenty of other evidence of the problem.

I have had the car since around 20k miles and it is well maintained. We use this car preferentially for short trips, so the 180k miles were relatively high duty cycle of starts/stops which I think is the big factor in wearing the gasket.