Blown head gasket on an original 406?

[Clois Harlan]

Sunday a friend and I were driving our cars under normal conditions (no high speeds or rpms) and at the end of our cruise as he pulled into his driveway I noticed some white smoke from his right side pipe. He said his temp gauge had moved up to over 200 deg as we pulled up to his house. We both thought he had a blown head gasket. After work I went over to his house last night to help him pull his heads. Since the smoke was coming out of his right side exhaust I was expecting to see a cracked head or some evidence of water migrating to one of his cylinders. Neither of us found any obvious signs of a blown gasket. I promised to help him pull the heads Monday night.

He had already pulled his valve covers when I got there and the right side showed significant water in the valve cover, left side looked fine. He is taking his heads into one of our machine shops today and I told him to take along his head gaskets and let me know where they were leaking if at all. By the way the block and cylinder walls looked good too. Neither of us could see any place where a leak had occured. If there had not been all that coffee colore stuff in the valve covers and oil I would have sworn the heads and gaskets were fine.

So here is my question: Have any of you seen a situation like this where everything looks good but you know there is some problem somewhere?

In hind sight we probably should have done a compression test before doing anything but Jon was anxious to see what the problem was (maybe he was looking for an excuse to tell his wife he needed to order some aluminum heads) I was just glad it wasn't my car this time.

Thanks for your input.

P.S.-Jon if you are reading I am sorry for your problems!