Can Ash cause a blown head gasket

The air filter should handle the ash... But at the same time the smoke levels experienced in Eugene, Oregon area during the fires this year have never been higher in all of recorded history. So it is possible that the problems your car had that led to the headgasket blowing were exacerbated by those conditions, but the air filter would of handled most of it and as a student of all the fires I've never come across any people with car problems other than the usual vehicle melt that occurs when you're fleeing for your life through the flames...

 

Blown head gasket on a G2 is rare but common on a G3.

Blown head gasket is because the car has seen a bad overheat. This is caused by 3 things one is the water pump belt fell off the front of the engine or 2 the water pump is shot from lack of maintenance or high miles easy to see get a flashlight look all over the front of the motor for dried up green or red flecks that's coolant coming out of the pump weep hole and 3 the car has no temp gauge so by the time the check engine light comes on because of severe overheat the head is damaged.

Take the black plastic cover off the top of the rad you will see the rad cap. Open the cap its probably dry as a bone in the rad.

 

Ash was vastly worse in eastern Washington in the summer of 1980. Volcanic ash, vastly worse than wildfire ash, just after Mt. St. Helens blew up and out. While there were car problems, and plugged air filters, I don't recall any outbreak of head gasket failures.

 

Exactly.

I can see a tiny bit of ash getting through the air filter before the filter plugs up and scoring the cylinder walls and contaminating the oil. But a blown head gasket? How does ash increase cylinder pressure enough to do that? If anything, scored cylinder walls would reduce compression. Or does it magically warp the head?

 

My opinion is that the ash would just burn up in the combustion process. Did your car start running worse during the fires?

BTW, my mother in law does the same thing coming up with crazy theories. The combination of church bells and crows in her maple tree has something to do with the smell of smoke in her neighborhood. I always forget the details because they're so ridiculous.

The only time I can kill one of her theories is when I can prove it. Like the time she kept calling to tell me that her heater was blowing cold air for some weird reason. I explained over and over that it was impossible especially since the temp in her home was stable. I finally went over to suspect the issue. What she was feeling was air being sucked into the cold air return. I proved it by holding a piece of paper close to the vent as we both watched it get sucked onto the vent. She was like "oh, I get it." Theory over. Unfortunately I've got nothing on the crows and church bells. LOL

 

Volcanic ash is generally a much larger particle size and it was a one time event that didn't disperse anywhere near as far as the unprecedented PNW wildfires this year... The PPM of wildfire smoke and ash in Oregon were from many different fire events, a couple of which burned 100K acres in a single day and the particulate size of the smoke is much smaller and far more dangerous than ash.

But then again no matter what I say about any subject you'll do all you can to disagree with me which is why I've no interest in involving myself in discussions on these threads with you anymore. I'm hear to help people keep their Prius on the road and avoid all the trolls who aren't here to do the same.

 

Thanks for the response. Can you please be more specific? Dangerous in what way?

 

Apologies, dangerous to human lungs not cars: http://www.bccdc.ca/resource-gallery/Documents/Guidelines%20and%20Forms/Guidelines%20and%20Manuals/Health-Environment/BCCDC_WildFire_FactSheet_CompositionOfSmoke.pdf

 

I think that was a reference to the PM2.5 smoke aerosols, the extremely tiny particles that require MERV-13 filters or better for home air quality improvement. The kind of smoke we had for a couple weeks.

Whereas I took your original question as referring to the much larger ash particles, the ones large enough that we can actually see them settled out on our cars and other outdoor surfaces after the very worst of the smoke days. These are similar in size to the volcanic ash we had forty years ago, and settle out comparatively quickly and close to the fire location.

 

Ash will not blow a headgasket under any circumstances. As for your mom requiring proof, the air filter kept all the ash that mattered out of your engine. Any small stuff that got through simply got burned and expelled out the tailpipe. That is the proof.

Or you could blame Bob. Bob caused it. Well,you need proof he didn't? Well that is about as hard to do, since Bob is a tricky fellow...

 

Ash won't hurt the head gasket but it can seriously clog the air filter, possibly to the extent that the car can barely run. However if the ash also contains some embers it can small burn holes in the filter, or worst case, light the filter on fire. Admittedly the latter is very rare, and is usually only seen on vehicles which are very close to a fire.